Fact vs Fiction in Veterinary Medicine
Unraveling the Myths: Your Guide to True Pet Health
We live in an information age where we can look up and get access to any information the internet has to offer. Some of this information is quite valuable, while some is actually misinformation. How does one tell the difference?
Oftentimes, social media blows up with misinformation, and we get a viral storm about certain foods killing our pets or mysterious infections taking down our dogs. It can be difficult to navigate. Here are some tips to help separate fact from fiction.
Question the Source:
The best thing to do when you are hit with information about your pet is to question: Who is giving me this information?
Is the person a veterinarian or veterinary professional?
Or is it just someone who is famous on TikTok?
Or is it a company trying to sell you something?
These are great questions to ask because you get to distill down to WHO is making these claims.
For example, a TikToker made claims on products that would prevent your dog from getting ‘the mysterious dog illness,’ she also shared link to her online store to buy these products. This person is not a veterinarian nor do they even work in the veterinary field. This information may not be correct and is usually over-dramatized. If the person is a veterinarian, feel free to Google them and do a little research about who they work for, where they received their degree, and how long they have been in the industry. When you look things up, you can decide if this person is credible. Yes, there are veterinarians who are imposters! Recently a Florida man was arrested for doing so!
Think Critically:
Critical thinking involves doing some work! You need to actively (get busy) and objectively (without personal biases, emotions, or preconceived notions) analyze the information, consider other or the opposite perspective, and question the assumptions. Does the information sound true? Is it too good to be true? Is the opposite true, or is there another set of information that should be considered?
Recently a dog owner said their pet was sick after eating Purina food. Does this mean it was the food that made the dog sick? Or could it be other things making the dog sick and it happens to eat purina food? If you and your friend eat pizza and you get sick but your friend doesn’t, was it the pizza? It could be, but it could also be that you caught a flu bug and your friend didn’t. Just because it appears the pizza made you sick doesn’t mean it was the pizza. Thinking critically requires the ability to evaluate evidence, identify illogical information, and weigh different arguments or viewpoints.
Ask Your Veterinarian:
As a veterinarian, we are often faced with clients looking up information on the internet and making conclusions based on the information they find. When clients bring us information, it can be very helpful, but sometimes it is not information that is credible or peer-reviewed.
Peer-reviewed information means other professionals (like veterinarians and scientists) have weighed in on the topic at hand and made conclusions based on data and facts. Sometimes the data causes us to make conclusions and have opinions; it may not actually be facts but interpretations of the facts. This is where it can get tricky. This is why some veterinarians do not agree all the time, and why one veterinarian may tell you one thing and another veterinarian tells you another. That is called a second “opinion.”
As we learn and practice, we develop our own set of information based on the patients we see. The more patients we see, the more we learn and understand. If two veterinarians have different opinions, it doesn’t necessarily mean one is right and one is wrong; it means there may be a variety of ways to look at things.
Embrace Science Over Drama:
The scientific method was developed to find repeatable results or truths. For example, if you feed a certain drug to 100 cats and they all vomit every single time, then we know that drug causes vomiting in cats 100% of the time. The experiment showed us repeatable results, and results are accepted as correct as long as other scientists did the same test and reviewed the validity of the results. This is how science works. The more you read and try to understand a concept, the more information you will have and the greater chance you will have in separating facts from fiction. If things are sounding overly dramatized, like thousands of dogs are dying from that “certain” pet food, fact-check it immediately. Is it the pet food or did the pet develop an unrelated disease but happens to be eating that food? Pet food companies are very responsive and want your pets to be healthy, so they stay on top of providing quality products. They will also do recalls if they have a legitimate concern for the health and safety of your pets.
Is Someone Trying to Sell You Something? Be Skeptical:
If a really cool product is on Facebook and they repeatedly tell you how great it is, and you can’t find any other information anywhere else and no one else has ever heard of or tried it…guess what? It’s probably too good to be true.
I have clients ask me all the time about products on the internet that are going to clean their pets' teeth without doing an expensive dentistry. So far, none of the products I have ever evaluated do as good of a job as scaling and polishing teeth under general anesthesia. There is a lot of misinformation and product promises that are just not good “science” behind them. Navigating this can be time-consuming but certainly worth it in the long run.
There is so much information bombarding us from many different directions in the information age. Remember to question the source, think critically about the claim, ask your veterinarian, embrace science, and make sure you are not being sold something without fact-checking. These tips will help you make more informed and better choices for your pet’s health and well-being.