Cyberchondria: Online Diagnosis Leads to Obsessive Fear

    Imagine this: you find a strange rash on your arm, scratch it, then decide to visit Dr. Google, and within three mouse clicks, waves of anxiety reverberate through your body because you're certain you have skin cancer.

    Actually, you now have stress—because of self-diagnosis via the nearly limitless health information online.

    Now Microsoft has completed the first formal study of health-related Web searches, and the rise of so-called cyberchondria: the distress caused by searching innocuous symptoms, and finding links that then quickly lead to extreme conclusions.

    Studying the search behavior of about a million users, Microsoft researchers found that a search for chest pain would more likely lead to a link for the worst-case scenario like heart attack, than to the more mundane, "indigestion." Because of the popularity of "heart attack" links, those are typically the ones that come up near the top of search results.

    The study shows that the anxiety from the initial search persists, as the user follows with multiple searches for serious illnesses, and goes through at least one significant interruption at work.

    The authors advise Microsoft to develop a new Web search tool that makes initial health searches more accurate. So that Dr. Google stops scaring his patients.

    網絡疑病癥：在線診斷導致過度恐懼

    設想如下情景：你在手臂上發現了皮疹，你開始撓，然后決定問問谷歌博士，點擊鼠標次數不超過3次，你開始覺得焦慮席卷你的全身，這是因為你確信你得了皮膚癌。

    實際上，你現在是太緊張了——原因在于你是利用網上提供的幾乎無窮無盡的健康信息做出的自我診斷。
 
    目前微軟（Micorsoft）公司完成了第一項正式的與健康相關的網絡搜索研究，發現了所謂的網絡疑病癥的上升。網絡疑病癥是指在搜索一些良性癥狀的時候，找到一些相關鏈接，這些鏈接很快引導人們得出極端的結論。

    通過研究大約1百萬網絡使用者的搜索行為，微軟研究者們發現對胸痛的搜索更容易導致鏈接到最糟糕的情況，比如心臟病，而不是更一般的“消化不良”。因為有關“心臟病”鏈接的普遍性，這些就成為搜索靠前的結果。
 
    該項研究顯示起初的搜索結果帶來的焦慮具有持續性，因為這些使用谷歌搜索的人接下來會對嚴重的疾病進行多次搜索，在搜索過程中至少會明顯地打斷工作一次。

    這些作者建議微軟公司開發一種新的網絡搜索工具，從而使初次的健康搜索更加準確。這樣的話，谷歌博士就不會再嚇到他的患者們了。

    Vocabulary:

    Cyberchondria：網絡疑病癥（來自hypochondria: 臆想病） 
    Diagnosis：診斷 
    Obsessive：迷戀的；過度的 
    Rash：皮疹 
    Scratch：抓，撓 
    Anxiety：焦慮，擔憂 
    Reverberate：反響 
    Distress：痛苦 
    Innocuous：無害的；良性的 
    Symptom：癥狀 
    Scenario：可能的情景 
    Mundane：世俗的； 
    Indigestion：消化不良 
    Initial：開始的； 
    Persist：持續 
    Interruption：打斷； 
    Accurate：準確的；精確的