clipped from: www.nytimes.com If that headache plaguing you this morning led you first to a Web search and then to the conclusion that you must have a brain tumor, you may instead be suffering from cyberchondria.
The study suggests that self-diagnosis by search engine frequently leads Web searchers to conclude the worst about what ails them.
They found that Web searches for things like headache and chest pain were just as likely or more likely to lead people to pages describing serious conditions as benign ones, even though the serious illnesses are much more rare.
About a third of the subjects “escalated” their follow-up searches to explore serious illnesses, the researchers said.