ArticleJournal of general internal medicine2025
A Pandemic of Misinformation: Understanding Influences on Beliefs in Health and Conspiracy Myths.
Article in Journal of general internal medicine, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed.
- Development and Preliminary Evaluation of the OCODES Digital Strategy in Response to Health Misinformation: Nominal Group Technique and Retrospective Usability Evaluation Study.JMIR formative research · 2026Article
- Reducing Buprenorphine Misinformation as a Strategy to Improve Adoption in Primary Care.Substance use & misuse · 2026Article
- Correlates of COVID-19 Vaccine Regret in the United States.Journal of general internal medicine · 2026Article
- Article
- Digital Divide or Educational Divide? The Impact of Social Media on COVID-19 Vaccination in Middle-Aged and Older Adults.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2025Article
- Health conspiracy theories: a scoping review of drivers, impacts, and countermeasures.International journal for equity in health · 2025Article
- Why does health literacy matter, and for whom? Explaining the differentiating impact of health literacy on vaccine attitudes.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundPersonal characteristics may be associated with believing misinformation and not believing in best practices to protect oneself from COVID-19.
objectiveTo examine the associations of a person's age, race/ethnicity, education, residence, health literacy, medical mistrust level, and sources of health-related information with their COVID-19 health and conspiracy myth beliefs.
designWe surveyed adults with hypertension in Maryland and Pennsylvania between August 2020 and March 2021. Incorrect responses were summed for eight health (mean = 0.68; range 0-5) and two conspiracy (mean = 0.92; range 0-2) COVID-19 questions. Higher scores indicated more incorrect responses. Statistical analyses included two-sample t-tests, Spearman's correlation, and log binomial regression.
participantsIn total, 561 primary care patients (mean age = 62.3 years, 60.2% female, 46.0% Black, 10.2% Hispanic, 28.2% with a Bachelor's degree or higher, 42.8% with annual household income less than $60,000) with a diagnosis of hypertension and at least one of five commonly associated conditions. MAIN MEASURES: Sociodemographic characteristics, health literacy, medical mistrust level, source of health-related information, and COVID-19 conspiracy and health myth beliefs. KEY
resultsIn multivariable analyses, participants who did not get information from medical professional sources (prevalence ratio (PR) = 1.28; 95% CI = 1.06-1.55), had less than a bachelor's degree (PR = 1.49; 95% CI = 1.12-1.99), were less confident filling out medical forms (PR = 1.24; 95% CI = 1.02-1.50), and had higher medical mistrust (PR = 1.34; 95% CI = 1.05-1.69) were more likely to believe any health myths. Participants who had less than a bachelor's degree (PR = 1.22; 95% CI = 1.02-1.45), were less confident filling out medical forms (PR = 1.21; 95% CI = 1.09-1.34), and had higher medical mistrust (PR = 1.72; 95% CI = 1.43-2.06) were more likely to believe any conspiracy myths.
conclusionsLower educational attainment and health literacy, greater medical mistrust, and certain sources of health information are associated with misinformed COVID-19 beliefs. Programs addressing misinformation should focus on groups affected by these social determinants of health by encouraging reliance on scientific sources.
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What Socratic holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.