Why you shouldn’t treat the internet as your doctor

Sheena Mitchell (0:00)

The Hard Shoulder, with Ciara Kelly and Shane Colman. On Newstalk, with Ciara.

Ciara Kelly (0:08)

Now, many of you will have given in to the temptation to consult Dr. Google, or perhaps even worse, Dr. ChatGPT, with your health questions.

And is it going to give you hypochondria, or is it going to give you good advice? Does it actually cause harm? For more on this, I'm joined now by Saoirse Hanley, columnist with The Irish Indo, and pharmacist Sheena Mitchell. You're both very welcome. Thank you for joining us. Let's come to you first of all, Saoirse. Are you somebody who likes to use Dr. Google, Dr. ChatGPT?

Saoirse Hanley (0:39)

For a second, I thought you were introducing me as a pharmacist as well. And I was like, well, I mean, I have done extensive research on Google. Well, you have been on the internet.

Exactly. I have accessed it.

I am like a doctor's nightmare in the sense that when I attend an appointment, like I'm asking them for the real answers, but I've probably looked up about 17 variations of that answer on Google before. And absolutely the temptation to plug that into something, whether it's ChatGPT or Copilot, whatever I have access to. I'm not a big user of it at all. So for me, that would really be the only thing that takes me to that part of my computer. And absolutely, I have been known to do that and to drive myself to mentored with it. Like I think it's something that I know is not a healthy habit for me personally, but it's at our fingertips. It is so easy to do. And sometimes you think you're going to get absolutely the answer you want. But as I've been writing about, it's the same as the like Dr. Google fallacy. I'll always look for another answer anyway. So it's really kind of shooting myself in the foot.

Ciara Kelly (1:41)

As an actual doctor, I was always amazed whenever I ever stuck anything into it. All roads lead to death and horrible forms of cancer and things. It doesn't matter whether you have an itchy ear. The next thing you know, you've got itchy cancer of the ear. It seems to me that, and it was quite ludicrous, some of the suggested diagnoses that were, we have an expression in medicine, common things are common. So if you have a wart on your finger, it's probably a wart on your finger. Do you know what I mean? So but there is that temptation because we use, I suppose, Google and ChatGPT search for so many things.

Saoirse Hanley (2:17)

Well, we do. And even if you are just Googling something, if you're not being really vigilant about it and adding minus AI into the search term, it's going to give you an AI overview realistically of what's going on in the universe anyway. And as I have discovered, unfortunately, if you hit more info on that, it's going to lead you to a little box where you can input another question and a follow up. And then before you know it, you're in a dialogue. And like that, it isn't telling you, yeah, that thing on your finger is probably just a thing on your finger because it's winter and you've got dry skin. It's probably, I mean, I went to the doctor the last time being like, well, I actually get manicures and I'm really worried that this thing on my hand is probably early stage melanoma from the UV lights. And she was looking at me and the doctor was like, well, I think it's a patch of dry skin on the side of your hand. But obviously I looked it up and Google said it could be dry skin on your hand or it could be early stage melanoma from the UV lights.

Ciara Kelly (3:05)

By the way, I'm not really trying to laugh at you because that's horribly worrying though if you're told by ChatGPT that you have a melanoma, which is a very serious form of skin cancer, that's actually would scare many, many people.

And you're now way worse off than you were before you looked it up. Let me bring in Sheena Mitchell as well, pharmacist. Sheena, there actually can be harm, can't there, that comes from using these search engines in this manner because they can cause significant health anxiety in people.

Sheena Mitchell (3:37)

Absolutely. And look, I'm not innocent here either. I mean, I think we have to accept to a certain extent that people are always going to be curious. People are always going to Google.

And, you know, so I suppose it's how to do that safely. And I had to laugh when I heard Ciara say, all of a sudden you're in a dialogue because we have definitely all been there.