Social media is a wonderful medium, that allows us to stay in touch with loved ones and make new friends; it provides a means to voice one's opinions and findings and also a platform to debate and discuss views. It however has its share of negatives, in the form of trolls, abusive people and the most insidious of them all, people who create and put forth articles with misleading and often-times totally untrue claims. The contents of these posts are actually well crafted, with a few scientific sounding words, and at times, even bits and pieces of real facts thrown in, to convince the reader that the whole post is true. The motives behind these posts are not always clear;  while some directly attempt to sell some quack remedy or magic pill or potion,  others are written to gain acceptance or recall value, or to attract attention from more people.  Some of these posts generate actual income for the content creators while the download/share counts of other posts simply simply serve to flatter the egos of their creators. Innocent social media users who come across these posts often accept them at face value, and even go on to propagate it further, by sharing it amongst their friends. One of the eleven fundamental duties which are assigned to each and every citizen of India, is this: "to develop the scientific temper, humanism and the spirit of inquiry and reform;" What this means, is to question and research any manner of information placed before us, before accepting it as a fact and consuming it or propagating it, and I take this duty seriously.  Let's consider a few classes of misinformation that abound our social media.1. Catering to false pride/sentiments: From political supporters claiming achievements where none have been made, to posts that rely on the sentiments/patriotism of people to not probe claims further, this class has it all. eg: Unesco has named 'Jana Gana Mana' as the best national anthem in the world, India had supersonic aircraft during vedic times: every person in the world, even the most cynical ones, would love to hear positive references to their own country. Why let facts get in the way of a nice story? Many people routinely forward such reports, without doing any independent enquiry. Read the article from the perspective of a skeptic; does the article provide credible references, or does it simply state that all evidence for the claims exist in some ancient texts, without giving proper references? Does it require you to suspend disbelief, to be able to believe it? If something is too good to be true, or too perfect, it probably isn't true. Sites such as hoax-slayer.com and snopes.com are good resources to check for most commonly forwarded internet hoaxes.

1. Selling 'magical remedies, pills, potions, woo, snake oil: Content creators who try to sell magical cures try to mask their posts with a lot of scientific sounding jargon, in an attempt to convince or confuse the audience into believing they are right. These charlatans also often share a lot of content which is both interesting and factually correct, to entice more people to subscribing to their pages and sharing their content often. David Avocado Wolfe is one of the best examples in this category; his page shares hundreds and thousands of posts which are factually correct and plagiarized from other sources on the internet, only in an attempt to draw more subscribers. His other posts peddle everything from 'nutrition classes' to 'nutrition extractors' which are nothing but plain blenders which are given fancy names and big sticker prices.  When you share a harmless and interesting looking post from David Wolfe, what you are unwittingly doing is popularizing his page.  Before you know it, other people who follow your posts would be exposed to more content from this page, including many with highly questionable and scientifically unsound content. Foodbabe is another example, in this genre. Please don't share content from pseudo-science and woo peddlers and practitioners, even if the actual post you are forwarding/sharing is scientifically accurate, interesting, or useful. Anything useful shared by these individuals is almost always plagiarized and a simple internet search will give you alternate links, possibly from the actual creators of the content. If you see these pages sharing youtube links etc, share the links directly, instead of sharing the content as if it came from these pages.

2. Fear mongering: The motivation for these posts are hard to pin down, but there are a lot of these posts that do the rounds on the internet. From stories of kids being given drug-laced candy on Halloween to mysterious internet viruses  that erase entire hard-drives, from stories of AIDS infected needles stuck in cinema hall seats to soft drinks containing infected blood of a disgruntled employee, all manners of fear mongering posts are routinely shared on the internet.  Most of these posts have been doing the roads for years and have already been referenced by sites such as hoax-slayer.com and snopes.com. Before you forward posts that are alarmist in nature, please do a quick fact check. You'd be surprised how often you find hoaxes.

3. Alternative cures for 'incurable' diseases: These are posts which have liberal helpings of scientific jargon, and go on to promise cures for everything from diabetes, to cancer and AIDS.  They are often propagated by quacks and depend on well meaning but ignorant users to pass on the misinformation.  They often come with calls for action such as 'Please share this information; it costs you nothing and it could save lives!' etc. Please do not pass along information pertaining to healthcare and medicine, if you are not a medical professional; you can do more harm than good.

Some useful pointers: a. When in doubt, do a fact check. b. Always doubt. See 'a'. c. Don't share poorly referenced content, or content with references which are random blogs/websites without established credibility. d. Don't assume that something is correct just because it's on the internet. Here's a snopes.com article that states that the nursery song 'Sing a song of sixpence' is a song originally written by the pirate Blackbeard, to recruit pirates. Read it fully: http://www.snopes.com/lost/sixpence.asp e. Did you read the link in 'd'? Is it really true? Is the nursery song really written by pirates? Read this; it might be an eye opener! http://www.snopes.com/lost/false.asp</span>