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Financial interests motivate dental professionals to spread misinformation, says study

Snopes, a fact-checking website, featured very little content on misinformation spread about oral health, according to a new study. (Image: T.Schneider/Shutterstock)

BAURÚ, Brazil: The circulation of health misinformation online has been a topic of concern in recent years, social media providing easy access to wide audiences and little regulation. Researchers from Brazil conducted an analysis on oral health misinformation online to determine what groups of people were sharing the information and the reasons for doing so. They found that the misinformation was mainly spread by dental professionals with financial motivations and primarily dealt with incorrect information promoting alternative oral health treatments.

To identify misinformation on dental topics, the researchers, at the University of São Paulo’s dental school in Baurú, used Google’s advanced search, and the resulting websites were screened by two independent investigators to compile a list of false or misleading messages. The oral health misinformation found was categorised into four types: that created or spread for informational purposes, for political purposes, for financial, social and/or psychological purposes by non-dental professionals and for financial, social and/or psychological purposes by dental professionals. The spread of this misinformation was investigated on Instagram, Facebook and Snopes, and CrowdTangle was used for tracking misinformation posted on Instagram and Facebook.

Most (41.9%) of the misinformation items were found to have been produced or disseminated by dental professionals with financial, social and/or psychological interests, followed by misinformation created or spread by non-dental professionals with such interests (24.8%), misinformation with informational interests (24.2%) and misinformation with political interests (9.1%). Five prevailing topics were identified, in descending order: periodontal disease, root canal therapy, toothache, fluoride and dental caries. Facebook was the primary platform used for the transmission of the identified pieces of misinformation, followed by Instagram.

Snopes was noted to have debunked only 5.9% of the misinformation identified by the team. The researchers suggested that this may indicate a lack of criticism by and awareness of oral health information seekers and thus this topic of misinformation not coming to the attention of Snopes.

The team also identified anti-fluoridation propaganda as a focus of content connected to political interests and found that information about public health policies was systematically depreciated on social media platforms because of the overriding political interests of platform users. Misinformation produced or disseminated with financial interests was statistically more common than misinformation with political interests however.

Misinformation created or spread by dental professionals was more commonly shared on social media. Misinformation with financial, social and/or psychological interests produced or disseminated by dental professionals and misinformation with political interests occurred significantly more than misinformation with informational interests on Instagram. The researchers noted that it was difficult to determine whether the posts by dental professionals were fraudulent. They thus supported the development of artificial intelligence algorithms for improved detection of health misinformation in addition to improved oral health education interventions and suggested that dental professionals and dental health companies need to be aware of their responsibility in providing correct oral health information.

The study titled, “Exploring online oral health misinformation: A content analysis”, was published online on 29 May 2023 in Brazilian Oral Research.

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