I was interested in this article about the results of a survey on the prevalence of various health care myths in the general public. In addition to listing seven of the most common misconceptions, Larry Schwartz also summarized the findings on where people get their information and the likelihood of believing the misconceptions based on ethnicity, education, and profession.
Based on the survey, it is clear where medical information is coming from. By far, the source of health information (or misinformation) is the internet. Seventy-one percent of Asian Americans report they get their health information online, followed by 59% for Caucasians, and 58% for both African Americans and Hispanics.
…Other health info sources include family and friends, and doctors. Asian Americans are least likely to get their information from a physician (18%), while Hispanics are most likely (35%). African Americans are most likely to follow the medical advice of family or friends (14%), while Hispanics are least likely (7%).
…Some professions, it would seem, are more easily taken in by myths than others. People in the marketing and advertising industry are the least likely to correctly identify medical myths, with only 52% accurately calling them out. They were tied with broadcasting and journalism, which should give us pause (FAKE NEWS!).
The military professions were most able to identify myths, at 62%. Somewhat shockingly, they beat out the scientific professions, who came in at 59%, barely ahead of homemakers at 58%, who disconcertingly in turn beat out the medical profession at 57% (apparently working in the field does not assure protection from incorrect medical information).
People with professional degrees led the pack in being able to accurately identify medical myths, at 61%. Overall, college degrees beat out those with only a high school degree or GED equivalent (who came in at 54%). The surprise here was that PhDs just barely beat out the high school crowd at 55%.
A fairly common health insurance mistake is confusing deductible (the amount which the policy holder must pay before the insurance kicks in and pays anything) with annual out of pocket maximum (the amount of deductible plus co-pays that the policy holder is responsible for before the insurance pays at 100%.)
# 1 machineintelligence
Uh, what’s a deductable? Just joking but we don’t have them in Canada. We suffer under that awful, socialist single payer system where every resident is is covered (possibly with a few strange exceptions)
I imagine our people would be well up there believing the myths.
Here’s what bugs me about this “summary”, saying things like
It was a survey of 2000 Americans, which means it has a margin of error (one standard deviation) of around 2%. That means that none of that group “beat” out the others. They’re all statistically the same. Yeah, there are probably some difference by the time you get to the last group (advertisers, etc.. at 52%), but that rank ordering is just ignorant BS.
Actually, now that I think about it, it’s way worse than that. Your first source has the graphic that says it was a survey of 2000 Americans. Here’s what they say is the methodology:
That means that any particular group (“scientist”, “medical profession”) probably had sample sizes in the tens, which means huge error bars.
That means that the whole list, from advertisers up to the military is one huge mash.