ArticleFrontiers in medicine2020
Online Information of Vaccines: Information Quality, Not Only Privacy, Is an Ethical Responsibility of Search Engines.
Article in Frontiers in medicine, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 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
10 citing papers in PubMed, 22 citations in OpenAlex.
- American, British, and Italian Online Information on the Health Risks Associated With Eating Meat: Cross-Sectional Study.JMIR formative research · 2026Article
- Readability analysis of breast cancer resources shared on X-implications for patient education and the potential of AI.Breast cancer research and treatment · 2025Article
- Current engagement with unreliable sites from web search driven by navigational search.Science advances · 2024Article
- Behavioural interventions to reduce vaccine hesitancy driven by misinformation on social media.BMJ (Clinical research ed.) · 2024Article
- Spreading of misinformation on mass media and digital platforms regarding vaccines. A systematic scoping review on stakeholders, policymakers, and sentiments/behavior of Italian consumers.Human vaccines & immunotherapeutics · 2023Article
- COVID-19 vaccine uptake and associated factors among adolescents and youths: Findings and implications for future vaccination programmes.PLOS global public health · 2023Article
- Online information on medical cannabis is not always aligned with scientific evidence and may raise unrealistic expectations.Journal of cannabis research · 2022Article
- The Joint Effects of Social Norm Appeals and Fear Appeals in COVID-19 Vaccine Campaign Posters on Self-Perceived Communication Quality and Vaccination Intention.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Article
- Premature consent and patient duties.Medicine, health care, and philosophy · 2021Article
- Online information on face masks: analysis of websites in Italian and English returned by different search engines.BMJ open · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
12 authors at 8 institutions in 4 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The fact that Internet companies may record our personal data and track our online behavior for commercial or political purpose has emphasized aspects related to online privacy. This has also led to the development of search engines that promise no tracking and privacy. Search engines also have a major role in spreading low-quality health information such as that of anti-vaccine websites. This study investigates the relationship between search engines' approach to privacy and the scientific quality of the information they return. We analyzed the first 30 webpages returned searching "vaccines autism" in English, Spanish, Italian, and French. The results show that not only "alternative" search engines (Duckduckgo, Ecosia, Qwant, Swisscows, and Mojeek) but also other commercial engines (Bing, Yahoo) often return more anti-vaccine pages (10-53%) than Google.com (0%). Some localized versions of Google, however, returned more anti-vaccine webpages (up to 10%) than Google.com. Health information returned by search engines has an impact on public health and, specifically, in the acceptance of vaccines. The issue of information quality when seeking information for making health-related decisions also impact the ethical aspect represented by the right to an informed consent. Our study suggests that designing a search engine that is privacy savvy and avoids issues with filter bubbles that can result from user-tracking is necessary but insufficient; instead, mechanisms should be developed to test search engines from the perspective of information quality (particularly for health-related webpages) before they can be deemed trustworthy providers of public health information.
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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.