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A more accurate accounting requires we modify 'What is a way for us to reach the public and inform them of the dangers of self-diagnosing?' to 'Is there a way for us to reach the public and inform them of the dangers of self-diagnosing?'.After all, answers can't be helpful without explicit acknowledgment and discussion of the basis for the behavior that drives a given action. Health anxiety propels the impulse to self-diagnose.This answer covers howUnpredictability of ill-health and inevitability of death drive health anxiety (present day euphemism for hypochondria) and the self-diagnosis impulse.Much in biology still remains unknown and thus medicine is still more art than science. Inevitable pockets of ignorance thus fuel alternative information sources replete with inaccuracies and downright falsehoods.Access to information via the internet isn't synonymous with knowledge. Medical training is necessary to separate reliable and unreliable sources and pieces of information.Unpredictability of Ill-health & inevitability of Death drive Health Anxiety & the Self-Diagnosis ImpulseWith ill-health unpredictable and death inevitable, health anxiety is both long-standing and pervasive, and exists on a spectrum throughout the human population and all through history. Temporary preoccupations with disease wax and wane in response to the dips and rises in individual life circumstance.At some point or another during our journeys, who has not suffered the death of a loved one or the diagnosis of serious illness among those near and dear? Not even the most sophisticated medical systems of our time can change those facts. Since health anxiety and fear of death are thus ever-present parts of life so is the need to self-diagnose.While Hypochondriasis - Wikipedia simply exemplifies the extreme end of what is clearly a spectrum of health anxiety-related behavior underlying the self-diagnosis impulse, its history suggests this urge is deep-rooted and long-standing, providing rich fodder for artists such as Molière - Wikipedia whose The Imaginary Invalid - Wikipedia rightfully remains a masterpiece with its splendid riffs on the pomposity and jargon that often attends medical practitioners and the ease with which it satirizes our fear of death.Lives of notables happen to be better documented through history and their list teems with hypochondriacs. As Susan Baur notes in her book, Hypochondria: Wonderful Imaginings, Robert Boyle, Immaneul Kant, Samuel Johnson, Lord Byron, James Boswell, Enrico Caruso, William James, Robert Burton, Robert Burns, Lord Tennyson, Charles Darwin, Sara Teasdale, Charlotte Bronte, Andre Gide, Beethoven, Percy Bysshe Shelly, the Goncourt Brothers, Leo Tolstoy are but a few of the notables known to have been hypochondriacs at some point or even through much of their lives. Studies also show surviving acute health crises such as heart attacks or enduring chronic illnesses such as diabetes and arthritis render the mind fertile for hypochondriac preoccupations.Much in Biology still remains a mystery & Medicine is still more Art than ScienceClearly, hypochondria is a dilemma for sufferer and doctor alike. Where does health end and disease begin and if, as hypochondria suggests, the lines between the two are perennially blurred, how could any doctor ever retain confidence in their own ability to diagnose and treat illness? No one likely threatens a doctor's sense of control and competence more than a hypochondriac.No wonder the medical profession has an extensive vocabulary to describe its disdain for hypochondriacs. According to Baur, the terms ranged from crocks, trolls, gourds, turkeys, cruds, nomads, hysterics in times past to doctor-shoppers, neurotics, problem patients, malingerers in more recent times, culminating in today's GOMERs (Get Out of My Emergency Room).This ever-present tension and impasse between medic and hypochondriac is grounded in some undeniable realities. Throughout history, the inevitably social aspect of well-being dictated (and still does) that diseases and their causes tend to vacillate towards factors deemed dangerous and unacceptable by the prevailing mores of the time. Further, medical practice was more often art than science. After all, modern medicine's scientific underpinning is decidedly recent, dating back to the mid-19th century advent of the scientific method and the germ theory of disease.Even today, not all diseases are yet diagnosable with convenient objective lab tests. A doctor's personal judgment is thus at play more often than not. No wonder then that even the much ballyhooed IBM Watson supercomputer was found to be very much less than adequate, let alone spectacular, with regard to cancer diagnosis (1).While science has begun to decode disease mechanisms far faster than ever before in history, much of biology still remains a mystery. This unsurprisingly creates pockets of ignorance about many health conditions, pockets ripe for exploitation by all stripe of quacks and snake oil salespeople who can now potentially traverse the entire globe courtesy the internet.Such scientific and medical knowledge gaps also create the conditions necessary for health anxieties to persist and even thrive. Epidemiological studies suggest health anxieties (assessed as hypochondria) range from a low of ~0.3 to a high of ~9% in various populations (2).To acknowledge the central role of health anxiety in our life we need only note its pervasive influence all around us. It supports the booming industry in vitamins and other dietary supplements, various forms of quackery and alternative therapies as well as any manner of diet, nutrition and exercise fads. Placebos also likely tap psychosomatic networks activated by ever-present health anxiety.Access to information & knowledge aren't synonymousModern mass communication technologies had already stoked relentless marketing of many spurious remedies when the internet came along to jumbo boost the entire enterprise into the stratosphere which is where we find ourselves today.Disease-centric non-profits and foundations add to this froth with their PSAs on early detection of various maladies. As societies increasingly fragment and individualize, such relentless marketing focuses our attention laser-like on our bodies and all manner of things that can go wrong with them. Culture is thus evolving to constantly stoke and nurture health anxiety.Distinctly a double-edged sword in being both boon and bane, access to medical information on the internet simply supercharges the pre-existing, well-developed self-diagnosis impulse into Cyberchondria - Wikipedia (cyber + hyperchondria) (3, 4). Where earlier visions of hypochondriac malaise were populated by then-prevailing standards for gore and horror such as skeletons, corpses, disembodied heads, knives and the like, today's accessible technology merely upgrades them to their modern counterparts readily available literally at our fingertips on digital device screens.Problem is the internet still remains largely unregulated while the even more recent advent of social media on the scene has vastly expanded the scale and scope of unverified health-related information as well as access to it.Thus, these days, whether doctors like it or not, Dr. Google and a variety of mini-mes, Drs. Bing/Ask/Yahoo, etc., and any number of assorted online symptom checkers (5) loom over their shoulders as they interact with their patients. Problem with layperson submergence in this surfeit of medical and pseudo-medical information is people differ widely in theirMedical literacy.Desire to learn more about their condition/disease.Ability to differentiate reliable and unreliable sources of medical information.Ability to perform diligent, thorough, objective searches within the scientific literature.Such limitations were already observed back in 2002 (see below from 6).No wonder studies find medically trained 'Googlers' are much better in arriving at the correct diagnosis compared to their lay counterparts (7). OTOH, engaging with medical information on the internet does appear to have health benefits as well,A case study reported it helped parents diagnose rare lysosomal storage disorders in their children (8).Helps cancer patients participate more actively with their treatment (9).Problem is the unregulated and unmediated nature of internet-based information conspires to allow the bad and downright damaging sources to outweigh the good and helpful. Even influential online resources such as Wikipedia widely vary in quality, completeness and accuracy of medical information (10).While attempts by medical institutions and practitioners to 'embrace' such influential online resources sputter along (11, 12), they haven't exactly sparked widespread movements yet. Medical professionals prioritizing their editing of Wikipedia medical articles would help a great deal (13, 14). Even granting some are interested, question remains whether doctors have the time to edit free online medical sources. And are online health information sources likely to get regulated? That would be the proverbial 'game-changer'.Bibliography1. IBM pitched Watson as a revolution in cancer care. It's nowhere close2. Creed, Francis, and Arthur Barsky. "A systematic review of the epidemiology of somatisation disorder and hypochondriasis." Journal of psychosomatic research 56.4 (2004): 391-408.3. White, Ryen W., and Eric Horvitz. "Cyberchondria: studies of the escalation of medical concerns in web search." ACM Transactions on Information Systems (TOIS) 27.4 (2009): 23. http://www.ordinedeimedici.com/documenti/Docs7-cybercondria-WhiteTOIS2009.pdf4. Starcevic, Vladan, and David Berle. "Cyberchondria: towards a better understanding of excessive health-related Internet use." Expert Review of Neurotherapeutics 13.2 (2013): 205-213. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Vladan_Starcevic/publication/235389719_Cyberchondria_Towards_a_better_understanding_of_excessive_health-related_Internet_use/links/0912f5122afdd7b7a8000000.pdf5. Semigran, Hannah L., et al. "Evaluation of symptom checkers for self diagnosis and triage: audit study." bmj 351 (2015): h3480. http://www.bmj.com/content/bmj/351/bmj.h3480.full.pdf6. Eysenbach, Gunther, and Christian Köhler. "How do consumers search for and appraise health information on the world wide web? Qualitative study using focus groups, usability tests, and in-depth interviews." Bmj 324.7337 (2002): 573-577. https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/2881/4444fe96b601e12f041128a6fa823e50f1fa.pdf7. Tang, Hangwi, and Jennifer Hwee Kwoon Ng. "Googling for a diagnosis—use of Google as a diagnostic aid: internet based study." Bmj 333.7579 (2006): 1143-1145. http://www.bmj.com/content/bmj/333/7579/1143.full.pdf8. Bouwman, Machtelt G., et al. "‘Doctor Google’ending the diagnostic odyssey in lysosomal storage disorders: parents using internet search engines as an efficient diagnostic strategy in rare diseases." Archives of disease in childhood (2010): archdischild171827. https://pure.uva.nl/ws/files/1502031/92807_339492.pdf9. Lee, Chul-joo, Stacy Wang Gray, and Nehama Lewis. "Internet use leads cancer patients to be active health care consumers." Patient education and counseling 81 (2010): S63-S69. http://www.pec-journal.com/article/S0738-3991(10)00552-5/pdf10. Reilly, Timothy, et al. "Accuracy and completeness of drug information in Wikipedia medication monographs." Journal of the American Pharmacists Association 57.2 (2017): 193-196.11. America’s future doctors are starting their careers by saving Wikipedia12. Azzam, Amin, et al. "Why medical schools should embrace Wikipedia: final-year medical student contributions to Wikipedia articles for academic credit at one School." Academic Medicine 92.2 (2017): 194. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5265689/pdf/acm-92-194.pdf13. Herbert, Verena G., et al. "Wikipedia–challenges and new horizons in enhancing medical education." BMC medical education 15.1 (2015): 32. https://bmcmededuc.biomedcentral.com/track/pdf/10.1186/s12909-015-0309-2?site=bmcmededuc.biomedcentral.com14. Shafee, Thomas, et al. "Evolution of Wikipedia’s medical content: past, present and future." J Epidemiol Community Health (2017): jech-2016. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Thomas_Shafee/publication/319328394_Evolution_of_Wikipedia%27s_medical_content_Past_present_and_future/links/59a515a00f7e9b4f7df674a5/Evolution-of-Wikipedias-medical-content-Past-present-and-future.pdfThanks for the R2A, Gideon Joubert.

Predatory JournalsThey not only scam the individual but scam the whole society.Predatory Journals are fraudulent scientific journals operated by unscrupulous individuals. They have mushroomed because it is mandatory to publish atleast 2 research papers to get promotion in academic institutions in India. For example for promotion to associate professor from assistant professor you need to publish two research papers.Research is tough. It needs time, effort, funding, patience and dedication. Publishing research on good journals is even more tough because of the rigorous peer review which picks out trashy stuff from the good research.Many teachers under pressure to get a promotion approach such journals to publish their data. Most of the time the data is falsified or copied from other research papers. The predatory journal charges thousands of rupees and publishes the submitted paper even without seeing what is written in it. This then becomes available publicly.Numerous researchers and patients access these predatory journals on the internet and get false information potentially harming the health of an individual. A doctor can read about a fraud paper and think it is genuine and advice a patient to undergo a particular form of treatment.The predatory Journals are disguised to look like famous journals.All an individual requires to start a predatory journal is a laptop and an internet connection and you can laugh your way to the bank.The government needs to regulate predatory journal for the common good of the society.Today's research is tomorrow's cure. Let this cure not be a fraud.Fake Science: Face behind biggest of all — ‘40 countries, million articles’Inside India’s fake research paper shops: pay, publish, profit“Paging Dr. Fraud”: The Fake Publishers That Are Ruining Science

Scam- Yes.Happens only in India- Not sure.Please bear with the length of the answer. Sorry.This is about a health scam that I experienced myself.Basic information: I live in Hyderabad, Telangana, India.I had Myopia (shortsightedness). I wanted to get the laser surgery done because I have been wearing my spectacles form the age of 9 years. And I was really fed up with them. As soon as I found out that I could actually get rid of them with a simple laser surgery I was just waiting to have my sight get stabilised, because only then the doctors will be operating on me.Eyes - laser eye surgery(Inserting link that would help you understand about the surgery and Myopia). So coming to the question:You are going to read about two hospitals.Let’s name them as:MLBoth the hospitals are a leading chain of exclusive eye hospitals at my place. I have been consulting the hospital M ever since I first ever got my eyes checked up for Myopia. So I have this trust in the doctors over there and hospital itself. When I turned 21 (the appropriate age for the laser surgery) I consulted the same hospital to know about the possibilities about my surgery. The doctor over there got all the respective tests done and suggested the following only suitable surgery for me:Phakic intraocular lens - where an artificial lens is implanted into the eyes.Cost: Around INR 2,00,000 for two eyes. (Minimal cost). Could vary depending on the quality of lenses that I wanted - lenses manufactured by Indian brand or by some foreign brand(more costly).Types of Refractive Laser Eye Surgery.So, at this hospital M, I was told that I was suitable for only one particular surgery (ONLY ONE) that is Phakic intraocular lens. This was the only option I had. Either this surgery or remain with spectacles for the rest of the life.So I went home, googled about the phakic IOL surgery. This surgery included implantation of an intraocular lens into the eye. This surgery was performed in patients who were contraindicated for basic laser surgeries like LASIK or PRK. I came to know that this surgery wasn't that safe and it wasn't laser assisted. I wasn't ready to have an artificial lens implanted into my eyes as it had complications. I preferred giving up on my surgery and chose to love my spectacles for the rest of my life. I was okay with my eyes being assisted with lenses on my nose rather than lenses inside my eyes. I didn't even go for a second opinion to find out about the surgery best suitable for my eyes because I had so much of trust in that hospital & doctors.Then after about a month, I thought of giving it a second chance and decided to consult another hospital L. I had zero hopes though. At this hospital the same tests were performed again.Different available laser surgeries available were:PRKCost: INR 45,000 for both eyes.LASIKCost: INR 80,000 for both eyes.SMILECost: INR 1,00,000 for both eyes.All the above surgeries were laser assisted.The doctor confirmed that my eyes were best suitable for laser assisted PRK surgery. I asked the doctor once again if I was definitely suited for the LASER surgery as I was told laser surgery wasn't my choice. The doctor reassured me for multiple times that my eyes were best suitable for Photorefractive Keratectomy (PRK) after I told him about my experience at the previous hospital. He simply told that Phakic IOL surgery was “absolutely not necessary as it had complications and very costly”. These were his exact words. I was the happiest person. Sorry! Happiest patient. :)I did some research about it. After being sure that it was absolutely safe, I opted to go for the surgery. I was soon scheduled for the surgery.And now, after six months of my surgery, I'm sitting here writing this answer without my spectacles. My eyes are absolutely fine. I had some really minor side effects in the first two weeks after surgery. I still use eye drops for having ‘dry eyes' which is an expected side effect. My eyes are almost reaching that perfect sight. And yeah, I can't even describe how joyous it is for me to see this same world with my own eyes and not assisted by my spectacles.But today when I think about that hospital M and the doctor over there, I still can't believe that such a reputed hospital was making me go for a complicated surgery just for the sake of money when it was absolutely not necessary for me. What if I was desperate to get rid off my Myopia, and opted for the same surgery. Sure they would get their money, but what about MY EYES!?? What about the complications I would have to face in the future because of some stupid scam the hospital opted for for the sake of money!?! I thought the doctors were to make a patient's life easier. I, being a would-be-doctor never believed that a doctor would scam for money before I personally experienced it. Let me tell you, This Isn't Fair. Because you are a doctor, and the patient keeps his/her utmost trust in you after God, you just can't take advantage of it for the sake of money. Make sure you keep that trust, and help the patient for his/her betterment of health and not for the betterment of your own luxurious life or your hospital's fund raise. DO NOT BE THAT DOCTOR. DON'T PLAY WITH TRUST OF YOUR PATIENTS. DON'T PLAY WITH YOUR PATIENT'S LIFE. DON'T LET THE PATIENT THINK THAT DOCTORS ARE INTO THE BUSINESS OF PEOPLE'S LIVES. Because, I know and have seen many doctors out there who work really hard for their whole life and serve their patients selflessly. And I also have seen patients who look up to doctors next to the God. Medical profession is the noblest profession. I'm telling this because, I have been a patient to a doctor and a doctor to a patient as well. I have been on both the sides of the coin.So, this was the biggest scam I have faced till date. And I hope it to be the last one because this is about my field- health profession. I respect my profession and I want people to have that respect for the same.Thankyou for reading. Happy reading.PS: Any edits are welcome.EDIT 1: I guess it is better to mention the hospital names.M stands for Maxivision Eye hospitals.L stands for L V Prasad Eye hospitals.And also I would highly recommend L V Prasad eye hospitals for all your sight needs as it has excellent patient care and genuine doctors.