I don’t believe everything on the internet is a lie (although of course I don’t believe everything on the internet is true either). You have to read it and judge for yourself.

In the case of getting medical advice, there is an inherent bias to finding anecdotes on the internet. The people who post are going to be the people who have something to say. That’s going to be either people who had a life changing positive experience, or who have something to complain about. The middle-ground experience is underrepresented.

However, there is value in anecdotes. The doctor can tell you high likely a given side effect might be, but people on the internet might have a better description of what that experience is like.

I try to take in as much information as I can when I am making an informed decision, including things like asking my doctor, finding anecdotes on the internet, and finding actual scientific papers.

If your car is making a rumble noise, you take it to a mechanic who tells you its a failed wheel bearing. Do you then go and change the gearbox because you dont trust professionals?

Thanks for the great input everybody!

I’d say it’s a matter of what are the chances of bad advice. If something people on the internet are talking about is widely known, there would also be papers with research, and I’m better off reading that. If it’s a niche stuff, their talk on the internet doesn’t bear statistical significance anyway.

Sure, there are scammers and incompetent doctors, but I would rather ask several people with a medical license, than several thousand laymen that think they are competent enough to give advices

Why trust the one professional who went through a decade of training and has my multi decade history over a group of people who spoke with their professional who went through a decade of training and doesn’t have my multi decade history?

Well if I have a bad reaction to a medication, my doctor can work with manufacturers to also prescribe a medication to prevent the problem, or a more generic drug without those effects. where a group of random people will do the equivalent of throwing shit at the wall and hope it sticks.

Because a lot of things online are blatantly false, you can’t tell if people are memeing, astroTurfing, have some weird agenda, or they all listen to one misinformed influencer.

Your doctor, on the other hand has a medical duty to operate in your best interest, and to inform you of your best options.

Are doctors always correct? Do they always have the time to understand your issue? Hell no. You’re still responsible for your own health care, but the doctor is supposed to be the dispassionate, invested, and rational consultant to help you on your journey

So if somebody doesn’t have the time, energy, background, language skills, to actually look at research, it is reasonable for them to say I’m going to go with my doctor, and not other people. That’s fair, that’s your heuristic, nothing wrong with that as long as it’s done intelligently

If you’re trying to convince somebody to go against their doctor’s advice, the burden is on you, to provide them overwhelming compelling evidence. The probabilities they’re operating under are that their doctor is correct and you are misinformed. The onus is on you to do all of the work, to prove your position. That’s a high barrier

One very good example of what you’re describing is the people who were insisting that vaccination gives you magnetic blood during the Covid outbreak. I’ve become very suspicious about the wisdom of crowds.

Getting a second opinion is a very common thing for people with serious conditions. Not really sure what you’re on about.