77% of Antibiotic Lies to Doctors Worked, Study Finds

More than one in four adults who want antibiotics lie to their doctor to get them, according to two linked studies published Oct. 30, 2026, in JAMA Network Open, led by University of Utah researcher Alistair Thorpe, as reported by Ars Technica. The surprising part is not the dishonesty. It is that the fabricated symptoms rarely describe the kind of infection antibiotics are built to treat.

How many patients misrepresent symptoms to get antibiotics?

Thorpe's team analyzed online survey responses from 1,371 adults and kept 959 complete, valid entries, per JAMA Network Open, Oct. 30, 2026. Of those, 268 respondents — 28 percent — said they had misrepresented symptoms at least once to get an antibiotic prescription for themselves. A second group of 263 self-identified caregivers answered a parallel survey about prescriptions for children in their care; 63 of them, or 27 percent, admitted doing the same on a child's behalf, according to the same dataset.

Among the 268 adult patients who lied, the method split three ways: 108 exaggerated existing symptoms, 19 invented symptoms outright, and 141 did both, the study authors reported. In other words, more than half of the deceptive group combined fabrication with exaggeration rather than relying on one tactic alone.

What symptoms do patients fake, and why don't they justify antibiotics?

The most frequently reported fake or exaggerated symptoms were fever, cough, and sore throat — the signature complaints of the common cold, according to the JAMA Network Open studies. Colds are caused by viruses, and antibiotics work against bacteria, not viruses. That mismatch is the core finding Ars Technica's Beth Mole highlighted: patients are not inventing convincing bacterial-infection stories. They are reaching for the most familiar illness script available, even when it undercuts the medical case for the drug they want.

Why do patients lie instead of just asking?

Thorpe and colleagues identified four recurring motivations behind the deception, drawn directly from survey responses: patients believed their illness, or a child's illness, was unusually severe; they believed antibiotics were the only treatment that would help; they wanted to return to work or school faster; and some cited personal autonomy, saying they felt entitled to decide their own treatment or believed they understood their condition better than the clinician did.

The researchers also found a demographic pattern. People who misrepresented symptoms tended to be younger and more likely to feel their symptoms had not been taken seriously by a clinician in the past, according to the study. A subset also believed antibiotic resistance is a hoax — either a government scare tactic or a pretext drug companies use to justify higher prices, the authors reported.

Do the lies actually work?

Most of the time, yes. Seventy-seven percent of adult patients who misrepresented symptoms said the tactic succeeded in getting them an antibiotic prescription, and 87 percent of caregivers said the same for a child, per JAMA Network Open, Oct. 30, 2026. That success rate is the number driving the authors' concern: clinicians are prescribing antibiotics based on self-reported symptoms that, even when true, often would not warrant the drug — and a meaningful share of those reports are not true.

"These findings signal a significant issue for health professionals making antibiotic prescribing decisions and for the fields of antimicrobial stewardship and public health," Thorpe and colleagues wrote, as quoted by Ars Technica.

What should patients and clinicians watch for next?

• Antimicrobial stewardship programs are likely to cite the 77 percent and 87 percent success rates when revising prescribing guidance, since the data suggests current symptom-reporting checks are easy to pass with a cold story.
• Clinicians treating younger patients and those who feel dismissed may need sharper follow-up questions, given that both groups were overrepresented among people who admitted lying, according to the study.
• Public-health messaging aimed at the subset who view antibiotic resistance as a "hoax" could become a specific target, since the authors flagged that belief as a distinct driver of the behavior.
• Future research will likely test whether the same self-reported pattern holds in clinical settings rather than online surveys, since this dataset relies on patients' own retrospective accounts rather than observed doctor visits.

The studies do not name the clinics or doctors involved, and the survey data reflects self-reported behavior rather than audited medical records — a limitation the authors acknowledge in describing the scope of the erosion of trust between patients and prescribers.

Artiglio is A coming-soon iPhone chief of staff for briefings and drafts. Not on the App Store yet.