The reviews are in, but can we trust them? Why you should be skeptical of online reviews

Tim Caulfield encourages consumers to be skeptical of online reviews and to seek out more reliable sources of information, such as expert opinions.

The vast majority of people look at reviews online before making a purchase or a decision. University of Alberta Health Law Professor Tim Caulfield joined CTV Morning Live’s Kent Morrison to talk about why people should be skeptical of those reviews.

This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

Kent Morrison: Why should we be skeptical of these reviews on the internet?

Tim Caulfield: Reviews have a massive impact on consumers and our economy. Trillions of dollars are probably influenced by online reviews, because everyone checks them. Some studies say as many as 90 percent of consumers won’t buy anything without checking reviews. There’s another study that found that 88 percent of people trust online reviews more than personal recommendations from friends and family. So online reviews have a massive impact. A huge number of them are manipulated and a huge number of them are fake, outright fake. Even the ones that are authentic, written by a real customer, are manipulated by all the cognitive biases that impact all of us, you write a review if you hate it, or if you love it. There was a really interesting study, a big study, that found that reviews that are written when it’s raining outside are worse than reviews that are written when it’s sunny. There’s a whole bunch of reasons why they’re just not reliable, but despite that, we all use them.

Kent: Do we know why people still go to that star rating system, or look at the first couple of good reviews, just to make sure, even though we are skeptical of the whole system?

Tim: I’m absolutely fascinated by this because I’ve written on this for both a book and some articles and I’ve talked to experts. Researchers who have spent their entire career studying online reviews, they know they’re fake, they know they’re manipulated, but they still use them because the pull is so great. I think they’re perceived as being authentic, they’re often stories, and stories always have an impact on us. I think the biggest reason is that they’re just so convenient. The world is so chaotic, and our information environment is just so messy and loud. Research also tells us they don’t predict the quality of the product. It’s hard to do that for everything, but studies have shown that online reviews are not strongly correlated with actual objective quality. That’s also true with health care and professionals generally, so yeah, they can do real harm.

Kent: Now let’s talk about that. Because in one way, if you’re online shopping for a simple product, an online review can only hurt you so much. But there are people who use this to judge medical professionals or medical treatments too, right?

Tim: That’s right. This is an area where our team has done some research on this. There was a very recent study that came out in the United States that said that 75 percent of people won’t go to a doctor unless they have good online reviews. There is no correlation between online reviews and quality care or healthcare outcomes. In fact, online reviews can hurt the healthcare system because it incentivizes focusing on superficial things. They incentivize where we’re going to put our resources, our money, as opposed to putting it into things that will really make a difference. Physicians also hate them because it messes with their head and their patient interactions. There’s no relationship between outcomes and the reviews.

Kent: What do we do instead?

Tim: First of all, you cannot see the fake reviews. You can’t pull quality reviews out. Studies say that you should go to reviewers that you trust. Consumer reports and things like that are more likely to be accurate. Same in the context of healthcare providers, where you actually talk to other healthcare providers. You can also go totally old school, talk to friends and family who have experienced these things or tried them. But the expert reviews and expert opinions seem to be more reliable than online reviews.