Sue McWilliams DNP, RN 6/27/2026
Have you ever found yourself watching a video or reading an article about a remedy for a health problem you are dealing with? Maybe it appears in your social media feed just after you’ve searched for your symptoms. The person speaking sounds confident. The comments are filled with people saying, “It worked for me.” Best of all, you don’t need an appointment, a waiting room, or a difficult conversation with your health care provider. You simply click a button, and the product is on its way. It promises better health, more energy, a younger body, or even a cure.
When you’re worried about your health, that kind of promise is hard to ignore.
Of course, miracle cures are nothing new. Long before social media, there were traveling salesmen selling bottles of “snake oil” that supposedly cured everything from arthritis to digestive problems. The phrase snake oil salesman has survived because it captures something that has always existed: people willing to profit from hope, especially when people are frightened, desperate, or living with chronic illness.
What has changed is the speed and reach of those messages.
Today’s snake oil salesman may not travel from town to town. Instead, they appear on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, or podcasts, often reaching millions of people in a single day. Some have no health credentials at all. Others do have credentials but promote ideas that fall well outside the scientific evidence. Many present themselves as independent thinkers exposing “hidden truths,” which can be especially persuasive to someone who feels that conventional medicine has not provided enough answers.
This raises an uncomfortable question. Why are these messages so convincing?
It would be easy to blame gullibility, but that explanation misses something important. Most people are simply trying to solve a problem. They want relief from pain, answers about a frightening diagnosis, or hope after treatments have failed. When someone offers certainty in the middle of uncertainty, it is understandable why people listen.
Another part of the answer involves the difference between misinformation and disinformation. Disinformation is false or misleading information that is deliberately created or shared to deceive. Misinformation is false information that people spread without realizing it is inaccurate. On social media, those two often become intertwined. A misleading claim may begin intentionally, but after thousands of people share it believing it is true, it becomes misinformation circulating among well-meaning individuals.
Social media platforms make this process remarkably efficient. Algorithms reward content that generates emotion and engagement, not necessarily content that is accurate. Bots, coordinated campaigns, and repeated sharing can make a claim seem credible simply because people encounter it over and over again. Before long, someone’s entire feed may reinforce a single narrative while presenting very little information that challenges it.
This is where health literacy becomes part of the conversation.
Health literacy is often described as a person’s ability to find, understand, evaluate, and use health information to make informed decisions. At first glance, that sounds straightforward. But when you think about it, understanding health information requires much more than reading ability. It involves interpreting statistics, weighing risks and benefits, recognizing credible sources, and understanding that scientific knowledge changes as new evidence emerges.
Even highly educated people can struggle with these tasks when the issue affects them personally. A frightening diagnosis or concern about a family member can make anyone more vulnerable to simple explanations and absolute answers.
Reading level also matters. Much health information is written above the level recommended for the general public. While many organizations now aim for materials written around a sixth-grade reading level, a substantial proportion of adults have difficulty understanding complex medical information. When explanations become confusing, people often turn to sources that feel simpler, more relatable, and easier to understand—even when those sources are inaccurate.
Then there is critical thinking, a skill that often receives less attention than it deserves. Evaluating health claims requires asking questions that are not always intuitive. Who conducted this research? Has it been replicated? Is this evidence based on one person’s experience or on carefully designed studies? Is someone trying to sell me something? These are difficult questions, particularly when a video presents a compelling personal story that feels more convincing than statistics.
The COVID-19 pandemic illustrated just how powerful this combination of uncertainty, fear, and rapidly changing information could become. Scientific understanding evolved quickly as researchers learned more about the virus, but that evolving knowledge sometimes created the impression that experts were inconsistent or unreliable. At the same time, false claims spread across social media at extraordinary speed. Some promoted conspiracy theories about vaccines, while others encouraged treatments that lacked credible scientific evidence. Research suggests that exposure to health misinformation contributed to confusion, reduced trust, and lower uptake of evidence-based preventive measures, although the exact impact on health outcomes is difficult to quantify because many factors influenced the course of the pandemic.
Unfortunately, COVID-19 was not an isolated example.
Health misinformation now surrounds nearly every major health topic: cancer treatments, weight loss, healthy aging, mental health, chronic pain, nutrition, hormone therapy, autism, and vaccines, among many others. Vaccines provide one particularly visible example because misinformation has contributed to declining vaccination rates in some communities. As vaccination coverage has decreased, outbreaks of diseases such as measles have re-emerged in places where they had previously been rare. The relationship is not always simple, but public health evidence consistently shows that reduced vaccination rates increase the risk of outbreaks.
One of the more challenging realities is that misinformation does not affect only people with limited health literacy. Anyone can be persuaded under the right circumstances. When someone appears trustworthy, shares a compelling story, or claims to have discovered information that others are supposedly hiding, those messages can become surprisingly persuasive. Social media algorithms reinforce this process by continuously recommending similar content, making it increasingly difficult to encounter alternative perspectives.
Health care professionals experience this challenge every day. Patients sometimes arrive convinced that an unproven supplement, detoxification program, or alternative treatment will solve their problem. Simply dismissing those beliefs rarely changes minds. In fact, it may strengthen them.
That realization has made me think differently about these conversations. Correcting misinformation is rarely just about presenting better evidence. If it were, the problem would probably be much smaller than it is.
Instead, these conversations often begin with understanding why someone believes the information in the first place. Are they frightened? Frustrated? Feeling dismissed? Looking for hope? Those questions matter because trust is built through relationships, not simply through facts.
Helping someone navigate health information takes time. It requires listening before correcting, asking questions before offering answers, and recognizing that changing deeply held beliefs seldom happens in a single conversation. People need information they can understand, delivered in language that is accessible and respectful. They also need space to ask questions without feeling judged.
Compassion, empathy, and trust are not alternatives to scientific evidence—they are what make scientific evidence easier to hear. When people feel respected rather than criticized, they are often more willing to reconsider what they have read or watched online.
There will probably always be people selling miracle cures, just as there will always be people searching for hope during difficult moments. That part of human nature is unlikely to change. What can change is how we respond. By improving health literacy, strengthening critical thinking, and approaching these conversations with patience rather than ridicule, we have a better chance of helping people make informed decisions based on the best available evidence.
Perhaps that is the real antidote to today’s snake oil salesmen—not simply more information, but better conversations.
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