If you heard that Girl Scout cookies are toxic, that mRNA vaccines can harm you, or that immigrants are spreading tuberculosis in the US, maybe you should put down your phone.

You’ve been exposed to a dangerous and contagious epidemic: health misinformation. But don’t worry, there are ways to protect yourself. Many of us have a built-in trust of the media. As Mat Stevens puts it, “If something is published, surely people have verified it — why would they lie?” Stevens is with Health Literacy Media, an organization that helps health care professionals communicate in plain language.

A couple of decades ago that was surely true. But the huge growth in new media — fast, sensational, and unreliable — has changed the landscape. It’s harmless for cooking and golf tips, but not for your health. These days health advice is everywhere you look, and a discovery often spreads moments after it’s announced. As a careful study rolls from press release to headline to Instagram post to podcast, its findings can be misinterpreted or misrepresented. If you sense that something is off, go with your skeptical gut. And don’t be surprised if you can’t tell where a sketchy claim originated — that’s a telltale sign of misinformation. “At no point in history did we have to evaluate hundreds of stories every day,” Stevens said. “Now we’re scrolling through so much information, it’s impossible to verify everything you see.”

The scientific method is the step-by-step way to investigate a theory, a slow process with lots of questioning and evaluation by peers. It can take decades for a theory to become accepted — and there’s always a chance that later research will change our understanding.

But this methodical approach is at odds with our fast-paced media environment, where clicks equal cash. “Science is about patterns, not individual studies,” said Monica Wang, ScD, an expert in health misinformation at Boston University School of Public Health. “If multiple, independent, large-scale studies indicate a risk, that’s when we should be concerned.”

For media companies to stay in business, headlines must be fast out of the gate, eye-catching, and blunt, which leaves little room for nuance. Taking time to make sure what a new study really says might mean missing the news cycle.