Sunday, February 15, 2026

Online exposure to medical misinformation concentrated among older adults

Study by University of Utah communication researchers finds few Americans encounter low-credibility health websites.

University of Utah

Even as misinformation proliferates across the Internet, sites containing low-credibility health information remain relatively scarce and unseen.

That’s according to new research from University of Utah communication scholars who tracked web-surfing activities of more than 1,000 U.S. adults for four weeks. But the findings, published in Nature Aging, illuminate a dark side. Traffic to such sites is concentrated heavily among older adults, especially among those who lean right politically.

This indicates the most vulnerable population is the most likely to be exposed to potentially harmful health-related information online, according to lead author Ben Lyons, an associate professor in the Department of Communication.

Good news with a catch

“It’s sort of good news, though. Overall, the levels are pretty low,” Lyons said, emphasizing that it’s still a small number of people, young and old, who are drawn to dubious medical information while surfing the web. “Not all older adults are like this, but the outliers are concentrated among older adults.”

Prior research by Lyons and others has established that older Americans are more likely to engage with and share political misinformation. To investigate whether this is also true for health information as well, Lyons and his colleagues, Andy King and Kimberly Kaphingst, collaborated with the U’s School of Medicine and Huntsman Cancer Institute.

They found that older folks do not generally engage with questionable health information on the same scale as they do with partisan political content.

“The age effect is way bigger for politics,” Lyons said. “People see politics as way more entertaining than they would health-related content. So there's less of a motivation to want to share these things. You don't get a feeling of team identity from sharing health misinformation like you would for information that puts down your political opponents.”

Analyzing 9 million page views

To conduct the study, the team analyzed both survey results and actual web-browsing and YouTube-viewing data. The survey data were gathered via questionnaires midway through the four-week study period.

During this period, the participants landed on about 9 million URLs, including 500,000 YouTube videos, according to the trace data. Lyons and King coded the websites for health content, separating those by commercial and informational content. Of the 1,055 domains categorized with the health tag, just 78 or 6.8% trafficked in low-credibility health information.

Only 13% of participants visited even one such site during the four-week period, and those visits made up just 3% of all health-related browsing.

But the exposure was highly concentrated in a small group of people. The top 10% of participants accounted for more than three-quarters of all visits to low-credibility health sites.

Since older adults have more health burdens and make more medical decisions, they tend to spend more time seeking out health information online. It would naturally follow that they may be more likely to be exposed to medical misinformation, so the researchers examined the ratios of visits involving low-credibility information. They found these ratios to be much higher for older adults.

“Most people are not visiting these kinds of websites,” Lyons stressed. “Visits are pretty rare overall, but the sort of patterns we've seen in numerous trace-data studies tend to be replicated here. It's older adults, in particular, those who consume more right-leaning partisan news. We wouldn't necessarily hypothesize that from the get-go.”

How Internet users wind up on websites with low-credibility information

This aspect of the findings surprised Lyons’s team, which explored the “referral” sites, the ones that directed the user to URLs with low-credibility health information, to see what was driving this traffic.

“Are people going through Google search, or are they being referred through Facebook? We're not really seeing that in this data,” Lyons said. “We’re also not seeing people being referred through partisan news media, even though that is a correlate. What we found, at least in the referral data, is that it's a more insular type of thing. They're visiting these because they visit other low-credibility sites, they're clicking through, and they're spending more time on these sites. They're going to them directly.”

In another finding, the team discovered people who already believed false health claims or had more conspiratorial views were more likely to encounter dubious health content, indicating exposure isn’t random.

This study suggests that improving online health information environments and helping people better evaluate what they encounter may be especially important for seniors. At the same time, the findings show this isn’t just a “health misinformation” problem, but rather something tied to broader patterns of how people navigate the internet, which makes solutions more complicated.

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The study, titled “Exposure to low-credibility health websites is limited and is concentrated among older adults,” was published in the journal Nature Aging on Feb. 4. Co-author Rebecca Barter is a research assistant professor of epidemiology at the University of Utah. Lyons, King and Kaphingst hold cross appointments in the U’s Cancer Control and Population Sciences Program, run by the Huntsman Cancer Institute, which funded the research. These findings will be incorporated into Lyons’ forthcoming book, “Dubious News and the Aging American,” published by Oxford University Press.

DOI

10.1038/s43587-025-01059-x

Method of Research

Data/statistical analysis

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Exposure to low-credibility online health content is limited and is concentrated among older adults

Article Publication Date

14-Feb-2026

Outdated mortality benchmarks risk missing early signs of famine and delay recognizing mass starvation

Researchers urge overhaul of famine classification standards

Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health

Recent global crises have exposed the limits of a universal mortality threshold for declaring famine—an approach that can obscure how famine actually unfolds across different populations. In a paper published in the Lancet, researchers at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and colleagues call for a fundamental re-examination of how famine thresholds are defined.

“The mortality thresholds used by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) were developed for rural African settings, not middle-income urban populations,” said L.H. Lumey, MD, PhD, Columbia Mailman School professor of Epidemiology. “There are stark disparities in how famine mortality is assessed across contexts.”

Lumey and co-authors argue that widespread starvation can remain officially unclassified for prolonged periods because it does not meet the IPC’s Phase 5 benchmark of two deaths per 10,000 people per day. As a result, mass starvation may go unrecognized until it is well advanced.

The authors also note that the IPC relies on absolute mortality rates, while overlooking sharp relative increases within specific age groups. Evidence from the Dutch Hunger Winter—an event extensively studied by Lumey—illustrates this point. The crisis was marked by declining birth weights and fewer births in the population, followed by a dramatic rise in child mortality. In major cities, infant mortality in March 1945 climbed to four times its prewar level, while mortality among children ages one to four increased seven-fold. Yet, as Lumey observed, “these dramatic increases would not meet the current IPC famine threshold for children under five.”

Moreover, mortality is inherently a lagging indicator. By the time thresholds are reached, preventable starvation deaths have already occurred. The classification process can also become politicized, as access to reliable mortality data is often restricted or manipulated.

“Identifying earlier indicators of famine stress could shorten the time between acute food insecurity and rising mortality,” Lumey said. “A more sensitive and context-specific approach would support faster humanitarian action.”

Co-authors are Ingrid de Zwarte, Wageningen University; and Alex de Waal, Tufts University.

Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health

Founded in 1922, the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health pursues an agenda of research, education, and service to address the critical and complex public health issues affecting New Yorkers, the nation and the world. The Columbia Mailman School is the fourth largest recipient of NIH grants among schools of public health. Its nearly 300 multi-disciplinary faculty members work in more than 100 countries around the world, addressing such issues as preventing infectious and chronic diseases, environmental health, maternal and child health, health policy, climate change and health, and public health preparedness. It is a leader in public health education with more than 1,300 graduate students from 55 nations pursuing a variety of master’s and doctoral degree programs. The Columbia Mailman School is also home to numerous world-renowned research centers, including ICAP and the Center for Infection and Immunity. For more information, please visit www.mailman.columbia.edu.

Journal

The Lancet

Article Title

Rethinking famine classification: A call to act on historical famines’ lessons

ARACHNOLOGY

Scientists show how to predict world’s deadly scorpion hotspots

International research team pinpoints high-risk areas to inform global scorpion sting prevention

University of Galway

image:
A Giant Asian forest scorpion (Heterometrus sp.)
view more
Credit: Andrew Downes, Xposure

An international team of scientists have identified how to pinpoint and predict hotspots for some of the most dangerous species of scorpion in the world.

The researchers have established the key environmental conditions that determine where lethal, venomous arachnids thrive - findings that could help shine a light on flashpoints for scorpion stings in tropical regions across the globe.

The team of scientists used field observations in Africa combined with computer modelling to predict where dangerous scorpion species are most likely to be found and what factors influence their distributions.

Their analysis uncovered a striking pattern - soil type largely determines where most scorpions live, while temperature, both average and seasonal ranges, play a key role for some species.

Crucially, not all scorpions behave alike. Some are adaptable and widespread, while several others showed extremely restricted predicted distributions, suggesting narrow habitat requirements and localised risk zones.

The research was conducted by an international team from University of Galway, in partnership with University Ibn Zohr in Morocco.

The findings of the study are published in Environmental Research Communications. It focuses on central Morocco, one of the most severe global hotspots for scorpion stings, and aims to guide prevention strategies, as well as the development of new diagnostic tools and antivenoms.

Dr Michel Dugon, Head of the Venom Systems Lab at University of Galway and senior author of the study, said: “The findings could save lives. By pinpointing where dangerous scorpions are most likely to appear, health authorities can target awareness campaigns, train frontline medical staff, and focus community prevention in high-risk areas, especially protecting children. The approach can be applied wherever scorpions pose a threat, from Brazil to the Middle East and India.”

Scorpion stings are a hidden global public health crisis, particularly across tropical and subtropical regions. Every year, more than 2 million people are stung. While most stings cause pain and swelling, some species can deliver venom that leads to very severe illness and death, especially in children and older people. Globally, scorpion stings are estimated to claim the lives of more than 3,000 children annually.

While antivenoms exist for a range of scorpion species, medical teams often struggle to identify which species is responsible, making timely, effective treatment difficult.

To address this issue, the researchers used a computer-mapping tool called Maximum Entropy to predict where dangerous scorpions live and what environmental conditions they prefer.

The analysis uncovered the striking patterns. Using globally available data on soil, temperature, and other habitat factors, the scientist demonstrates a way to pinpoint high-risk scorpion areas outside Morocco, including regions of the tropics where detailed species records are limited.

The research was carried out by established and doctoral scientists from both universities, with support from University of Galway undergraduate students who travel to Morocco annually as part of their Bachelor of Science Zoology programme.

Dr Dugon added: “Overall, we know very little about the ecology of scorpions, their venom and the best way to treat scorpion stings. Our international collaborative efforts aim to develop new tools for the prevention, diagnostic and treatment of scorpion stings globally. This requires multidisciplinary teams including public health specialists, clinicians, zoologists and members of local communities.”

Fouad Salhi, doctoral researcher at the University Ibn Zohr of Agadir and first author of the study, said: “This research shows how biodiversity data can inform public health policies. By combining long-term fieldwork with ecological modelling, we were able to identify where dangerous scorpions are most likely to occur. We aim to have real-world impact — supporting prevention strategies, improving medical preparedness, and ultimately contribute to the reduction of the burden of scorpion stings, both in Morocco and beyond.”

Dr Colin Lawton, Head of Zoology at University of Galway and co-author of the study, said: “University of Galway is gaining momentum as a centre of excellence in zoological research, addressing questions of global importance, from fish stock to mammal conservation and animal-borne disease mitigation. We are very proud to integrate our BSc Zoology students into our research activities and international partnerships.”

The full study in Environmental Research Communications is available at https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2515-7620/ae3fef.

Ends

A golden Moroccan scorpion (Buthus sp.)

Credit

Dr Michel Dugon, University of Galway

Caption

A Moroccan fat tail scorpion (Androctonus sp.), one of the deadly scorpions of North Africa.

Credit

Dr Michel Dugon, University of Galway.

Dr Michel Dugon, Head of the Venom Systems Lab at University of Galway, with a Giant Asian forest scorpion (Heterometrus sp.)

Credit

Andrew Downes, Xposure

Journal

Environmental Research Communications

DOI

10.1088/2515-7620/ae3fef