For years, we talked about health misinformation as if it were mainly a knowledge problem: patients encountering false claims online, doctors correcting them and the better information winning.
That no longer describes the world we live in.
Across Canada, almost nine in 10 people search online for health advice. The problem is not only that bad information is easy to find, it is that the digital environment increasingly rewards material that is emotionally charged, identity-based and tribal. The result is that health misinformation does not behave like a simple factual error. It behaves like belonging.
That distinction matters.
When a person arrives in a clinic worried about vaccines, fluoride, supplements, cancer “cures” or Artificial Intelligence-generated health advice, they often are not bringing a blank slate and a sincere question alone. They may also be bringing a social world: influencers they follow, communities they trust, political signals they recognize and a set of beliefs that is tied to who they are. Correcting one claim in that setting is not just a matter of offering better evidence. It can feel, to the patient, like a challenge to identity itself.
The Canadian Medical Association’s (CMA) recent health and media tracking work found that susceptibility to false health information is high, and that more Canadians are experiencing real consequences from acting on misleading claims. In 2025, 62 per cent of Canadians reported encountering health misinformation at least occasionally; 23 per cent reported a negative health reaction from following online health advice. By 2026, the CMA reported that almost nine in 10 people in Canada were going online for health advice, with AI adding another layer of risk.
This is why it is too simplistic to say that people just need more science.
Of course facts matter. But facts alone do not explain why certain health claims persist after they have been publicly debunked. They do not explain why some ideas become symbols of independence, rebellion or group loyalty. They do not explain why a treatment with weak or nonexistent evidence can become, for some people, a marker of which “side” they are on.
We have seen what happens when health questions become politically coded. In the United States, confidence in the safety of COVID-19 vaccines has shown a sharp partisan divide, with KFF reporting in 2025 that 87 per cent of Democrats were at least somewhat confident in vaccine safety, compared with only 30 per cent of Republicans. That is not just a data point. It is a warning about what happens when health choices become identity signals.
The consequences show up in the exam room.
Physicians are still among the most trusted voices in health. A CMA-commissioned survey found that 81 per cent of people in Canada trust physicians most to provide information about their health and the health system. That trust matters enormously. But it also means doctors are increasingly being asked to clean up damage they did not create: algorithmic amplification, influencer culture, politicized distrust and now AI-generated health content that can sound confident even when it is wrong.
If health misinformation is partly an identity problem, then our response must be bigger than fact correction. We need better digital-health literacy, yes. We need stronger public communication from trusted institutions. We need platforms to stop privileging the most inflammatory content. We need professional regulators and health organizations willing to speak clearly when claims are false. And we need to teach, much earlier, that scientific uncertainty is not the same thing as scientific emptiness.
Most of all, we need to stop pretending that neutrality is enough.
When health claims become loyalty tests, silence leaves the field open to the loudest and most performative voices. By then, the physician in front of the patient is not just discussing risk and benefit. They are negotiating against a feed, a tribe and a worldview.
As a medical student and educator, I worry that we still underestimate how much the information environment now shapes clinical care. We tell people to be informed. Many of them are trying. But what they increasingly encounter online is not careful evidence.
Canada’s health misinformation problem is no longer only about what people know. It is about what health beliefs now mean.
And until we respond to that reality, facts alone will keep arriving too late.
