“Consider the source” – how often have we heard this from our wise advisers and parents over the years? Here’s how to apply that statement to your health care decisions.

More and more patients are reading about health conditions and their treatment on their own. There are as many sources for this information as there are patients and illnesses.

Most widely-disseminated health care news (in the mainstream media) is obtained from major medical journals. These journals are published by large groups like the American Medical Association (AMA) or American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). Groups of physicians make up the editorial boards and they choose which research papers are fit to be published each month.

Occasionally some research will be considered so important that mainstream media gets a whiff of it and spreads the news.

Eliminating sources of bias is a lofty goal of most honest research physicians and scientists. Most journal publishers make it easy to identify one source of potential bias in a research article – financial associations with companies that may have a vested interest in the outcome of the research.

This video will help explain how to find this information using a simple example.

In the video, I do a Google search for “platelet-rich plasma study” – this is one example of a way to begin any search for accurate information about a medical condition or treatment. You’re looking for journal articles that help you find out who or what organization sponsored (funded) the research in question.

The company who sponsored the study is one of the manufacturers of a product similar to that used in the research paper in question.

If you have deeper full-text access to the article, you may also be able to see if the authors (physicians or scientists) have any associations with sponsoring or other companies. This information is often listed at the beginning of the article.

Just because research was funded by a company that makes a product used in the research doesn’t mean the conclusions of the research are wrong. It simply means that a potential source of bias exists, and you should take that into account when using data from such research to decide what to do or put into your own body.