The Positive and Negative Influence of Search Results on People's Decisions about the Efficacy of Medical Treatments
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Date
2017-10-01
Authors
Pogacar, Frances A.
Ghenai, Amira
Smucker, Mark
Clarke, Charles L. A.
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
ACM
Abstract
People regularly use web search engines to investigate the efficacy of medical treatments. Search results can contain documents that present incorrect information that contradicts current established medical understanding on whether a treatment is helpful or not for a health issue. If people are influenced by the incorrect information found in search results, they can make harmful decisions about the appropriate treatment. To determine the extent to which people can be influenced by search engine results, we conducted a controlled laboratory study that biased search results towards correct or incorrect information for 10 different medical treatments. We found that search engine results can significantly influence people both positively and negatively. Importantly, study participants made more incorrect decisions when they interacted with search results biased towards incorrect information than when they had no interaction with search results at all. For search domains such as health information, search engine designers and researchers must recognize that not all non-relevant information is the same. Some non-relevant information is incorrect and potentially harmful when people use it to make decisions that may negatively impact their lives.
Description
© Frances A. Pogacar, Amira Ghenai, Mark D. Smucker, and Charles L. A. Clarke, 2017. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The definitive version was published
in the Proceedings of the 3rd ACM International Conference on the Theory of Information Retrieval (ICTIR'17), ACM. , https://doi.org/10.1145/10.1145/3121050.3121074
Keywords
Health Search, User Study, Misinformation, Harmful Effects