The Internet has no shortage of reputable and reliable sources of medical information. WebMD solicits content from physicians and medical researchers; it regularly features articles by medical specialists at the top of their professions. The Mayo Clinic website summarizes up-to-date information from the doctors and caregivers who practice at the best hospital in the country.
The internet, however, suffers from a critical shortage of healthcare blogs that look at medicine, fitness and wellness from a layperson’s point of view. Many wellness blogs turn out to be not-so-clever cover-ups for snake oil sales; others turn out to embrace 19th century quackery as “the new age of medicine.” Some healthcare blogs pile medical jargon so high and deep that even doctors can’t read it. And some simply insult their readers with proclamations like “sadness is a sign of depression.”
The Internet needs a reliable source of medical information for ordinary readers; The internet needs a trusted healthcare blog that maintains high standards for reporting and shows respect for readers. A good healthcare blog should absolutely be…
Up-to-date and accurate: Modern medicine continues to evolve and advance, and especially has become much more receptive to the findings of “complementary” or “supplemental” medicine, more commonly known as naturopathy. Research on the human genome has changed the way scientists think about the etiology of some genetic diseases, and controversies continue in epidemiology, especially about the causes and treatments of autism. A trusted health blog will regularly discuss new findings and credible new studies; it will also not hesitate to debunk unreliable reports.
Smart: A good healthcare blog must strike a balance between medical language, which is too arcane and esoteric for its readers, and stupid cartoons, which simplify complex topics and trivialize serious medical problems. A truly valuable health care blog will often examine common medical problems “from the inside out,” detailing how people face or manage their chronic illnesses.
· Open-minded and objective: Nothing offends readers more than healthcare blogs that promote pseudoscience in order to sell products of questionable value. For one thing, readers don’t want to see a blog that advocates anything other than the “established science” of the medical establishment; on the other hand, no one can trust “emerging science” citations. An everyday health care blog will follow the canons of journalistic ethics, reporting the news objectively, factually, and in detail, based on authoritative sources.
Practical readers want news that they can use. A skilled healthcare blogger will cover topics of interest to broad and diverse audiences. Nearly seventy million Americans, for example, want to know how they can safely lose weight, prevent diabetes, and restore their cardiovascular fitness. By contrast, very few readers need know that modern psychiatry has largely discredited “multiple personality” diagnoses.
Consistency: For most readers, consistency is the hallmark of completeness. Readers especially want to see the blogger asking and answering the toughest questions about a topic or condition; and they want to see the blogger as their representative and advocate in scientific discussions.