Influencers Call These Medical Tests Lifesaving. Here’s What You May Not Know.

The post looked simple enough: Kim Kardashian, hair pulled back in a ponytail, posed in front of an M.R.I. wearing scrubs branded with the logo of the medical imaging company Prenuvo.

“I recently did this @prenuvo scan and had to tell you all about this life saving machine,” she wrote. The M.R.I. could pick up on traces of cancer or other diseases, she said.

But the post was too simple, the University of Sydney public health researcher Brooke Nickel thought when she saw it in August 2023. What about the possible harms, she wondered? The test might find an extremely early stage cancer that would lead to a patient receiving invasive treatment, even though it may never have progressed to something more serious. Ms. Kardashian’s post made it seem like there were only upsides.