What can ivermectin teach us about health misinformation?
Dannell Boatman, assistant professor of cancer prevention and control at West Virginia University, takes a look.
Faculty Bio:
Dannell Boatman, EdD, MS, is an Assistant Professor and health communication researcher in the Department of Cancer Prevention and Control at the West Virginia University (WVU) School of Medicine. She conducts her research through the Communicating for Health in Appalachia by Translating Science (CHATS) Lab and is the founding Director of the CHATS Core at the WVU Cancer Institute. Raised in Appalachia, her early work in community and rural public health inspired a research program focused on improving how scientific evidence is communicated and used to support health decisions.
Her research combines communication and behavioral sciences to understand how people navigate cancer information and to develop evidence-based strategies that improve communication across clinical, community, and digital settings. Her work spans community-engaged research, rural and Appalachian health, and cancer misinformation, with a focus on translating scientific evidence into practical communication strategies.
Through the CHATS Core, Dr. Boatman partners with researchers, healthcare organizations, and communities to move evidence into practice through knowledge translation, dissemination science, audience-centered communication, and creative strategies that increase the impact of research.
Her work has been recognized by the Academy of Communication in Healthcare as a Putnam Scholar and by the West Virginia Clinical and Translational Science Institute as a Research Scholar. She serves on the American Cancer Society National Lung Cancer Roundtable Stigma and Nihilism Task Group, the World Health Organization’s Health Information Integrity Alliance, and the editorial board of PEC Innovation.
Transcript:
Why do some medical claims gain traction despite a lack of scientific evidence?
When a recent observational study suggested that ivermectin, an antiparasitic drug, might help treat cancer, the claim spread rapidly online. Although ivermectin has not been shown to be safe or effective for treating cancer, many people shared the study as proof that it worked, even as scientists raised serious concerns about the study’s findings.
It may seem like the story began there. My research shows it was actually just the latest chapter.
To understand how these claims gain momentum, I use social listening to monitor online cancer misinformation. By tracking conversations across social media and other digital spaces, I examine how health claims emerge, spread, and resurface over time.
My research has followed multiple periods of heightened online attention surrounding ivermectin and cancer. One came in January 2025, when a high-profile podcast promoted antiparasitic drugs as alternative cancer treatments. I watched public interest surge in real time. While this spike in attention was new, the conversation was not. My research found that claims linking antiparasitic drugs like ivermectin to cancer had been circulating for years, driven by powerful personal stories, influential voices, and active online communities. By the time the observational study was published recently, many people had already encountered multiple versions of the same narrative, shaping how they made sense of its findings.
What I discovered about ivermectin reflects a broader pattern. New scientific findings do not enter a vacuum. They become part of conversations that have often been unfolding for years. Those ongoing discussions shape how people interpret new findings, even while scientists are still evaluating the evidence.
By revealing how health misinformation develops and spreads, this work can guide earlier and more effective responses, helping people make better-informed decisions about their health.
Read More:
[The Conversation] - Ivermectin isn’t a cancer miracle drug, but influencers claim otherwise – here’s how to avoid sprinting past scientific evidence
