ReviewCureus2018
Influence of Internet and Social Media in the Promotion of Alternative Oncology, Cancer Quackery, and the Predatory Publishing Phenomenon.
Review in Cureus, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 22 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
22 citing papers in PubMed.
- Susceptibility of cancer patients and caregivers to online cancer misinformation: a qualitative interview study.Supportive care in cancer : official journal of the Multinational Association of Supportive Care in Cancer · 2026Article
- Does Social Media Use Associate with Vasomotor, Sexual, and Musculoskeletal Symptoms in Breast Cancer Survivors Receiving Endocrine Therapy?Journal of clinical medicine · 2026Article
- "Do You Know What Birth Control Actually Does to Your Body?": Assessing Contraceptive Information on TikTok.Perspectives on sexual and reproductive health · 2025Article
- Social media "SoMe" in neuro-oncology: a review of the literature.Journal of neuro-oncology · 2025Review
- Canadians' knowledge of cancer risk factors and belief in cancer myths.BMC public health · 2024Article
- A review of the WHO strategy on traditional, complementary, and integrative medicine from the perspective of academic consortia for integrative medicine and health.Frontiers in medicine · 2024Review
- Alternative cancer clinics' use of Google listings and reviews to mislead potential patients.BJC reports · 2024Article
- Use of complementary and alternative medicine by cancer patients in Colombia.BMC complementary medicine and therapies · 2023Review
- Advertising Alternative Cancer Treatments and Approaches on Meta Social Media Platforms: Content Analysis.JMIR infodemiology · 2023Article
- The Role of Social Media in Breast Cancer Care and Survivorship: A Narrative Review.Breast care (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Review
- The relationship between eHealth literacy and palliative care knowledge, attitudes, and practice among nurses: a cross-sectional study.BMC nursing · 2023Article
- What are the ways in which social media is used in the context of complementary and alternative medicine in the health and medical scholarly literature? a scoping review.BMC complementary medicine and therapies · 2023Article
- The effects of acute hydrogen peroxide exposure on respiratory cilia motility and viability.PeerJ · 2023Article
- Who chooses alternative sources of information about childhood vaccinations? A cross-sectional study.Frontiers in public health · 2023Article
- Tracking discussions of complementary, alternative, and integrative medicine in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic: a month-by-month sentiment analysis of Twitter data.BMC complementary medicine and therapies · 2022Article
- Health Literacy of Newly-Admitted Cancer Patients in Vietnam: Difficulties Understanding Treatment Options and Processing Health-Related Information.Health services insights · 2022Article
- Quality and readability of online information on idiopathic subglottic stenosis.Laryngoscope investigative otolaryngology · 2021Article
- Characteristics of Websites Presenting Parenteral Supplementation Services in Five European Countries: A Cross-Sectional Study.Nutrients · 2020Article
- Social media for research, education and practice in rheumatology.Rheumatology international · 2020Review
- Comprehensive Approach to Open Access Publishing: Platforms and Tools.Journal of Korean medical science · 2019Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
In the last decade, electronic media has irrupted physician's clinical practice. Patients increasingly use Internet and social media to obtain enormous amounts of unsupervised data about cancer. Blogs, social networking sites, online support groups and forums are useful channels for medical education and experience sharing but also perfect environments for misinformation, quackery, violation of privacy and lack of professionalism. The widespread availability of such electronic resources allows some followers of the alternative oncology to spread useless irrational and controversial remedies for cancer, like false medicaments, miraculous diets, electronic devices, and even psychic therapies, as did charlatans in the past, providing false expectations about cancer treatments. Moreover, so-called predatory journals have introduced confusion and malpractice within the academic biomedical publishing system. This is a rising editorial phenomenon affecting all fields of biomedicine, including oncology that jeopardizes the quality of scientific contribution and damages the image of open access publication.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.