One of the inspirations behind Science-ish was the seemingly endless barrage of complaints by friends in medicine regarding the “Oprah effect” on their offices and hospital wards: patients making important decisions about a lifestyle choice or treatment option based on something they had seen on Queen of daytime talk.

Now, the Oprah Winfrey Show is off the air, but the after-effects of her work on childhood vaccination and menopause will surely haunt doctors’ visits for years to come. Of course, other media—before and after Oprah—have a powerful sway over patient decisions. Every day, newspapers dole out advice on how much alcohol and coffee to consume, how best to manage your diabetes, and the benefits of probiotics. New media play a big role in purveying health knowledge, too. In research into YouTube as a source of information on immunization, the investigators found that about half of the videos posted had anti-immunization messages, and the negative videos were more highly rated and viewed more often than those backed by science. Continue…