Autism and Vaccinations: Does Google side with Science?

Abstract Background/Aims:  Genetic and environmental factors are thought to play a role in the etiology of autism spectrum disorder. Studies on vaccination from environmental factors strongly suggest that there is no relationship between vaccine and autism development. However, a part of society still believes that vaccines lead to autism. In this study, it is aimed to investigate the distribution and reliability of the articles on the internet which is the first place that families apply to be informed about this subject. In this study, we searched "autism vaccine" phrase in Google’s version for Turkey. Methods:  In this study, we searched "autism vaccine" phrase in Google’s version for Turkey. The information on each web site was grouped as true, false and contradictory. We used the JAMA score, a standard indicator of health information quality, to assess the basic reliability index of the article. The JAMA score takes into account whether a website declares an author, the date of writing, financial ownership and whether the information is supported by references. Results:  A total of 124 websites were listed as a result of this search. When irrelevant and inaccessible sites were removed, 102 web pages were evaluated. 76 (74.5%) of the results were correct, 20 (19.6%) were wrong and 6 (5.9%) were contradictory. No significant difference was found between the total JAMA scores of the websites with true-false information. However, the JAMA score of the correct information was higher. No significant relationship was found between the accuracy of the information and the ranking of the sites. However, six of the top ten results were true, three were false, and one contained contradictory information. Conclusions:  These results show that the correct information is not listed primarily in the top positions and the information about autism and vaccination is in a similar distribution. It is important that the internet environment is closely monitored by scientists because of the information affecting the vaccination.