The internet has spawned a deluge of medical “news” and opinions on health risks and conditions. Self-styled health gurus proliferate wildly in web sites, blogs and Facebook feeds spewing out fake “cures” for diseases. This fragmentation of health information is made worse when the mainstream media does a poor job covering medical stories.
Cancer
epidemiologist at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine Geoffrey C. Kabat, in
his book Getting Risk Right:
Understanding The Science of Elusive Health Risks, writes:
“The staples
of media reporting are stories that have the appearance of being relevant to
our lives. Thus a scientific finding that suggests an association between an
exposure alleged to affect the general population and a disease is more likely
to gain news coverage than findings from a negative study. Many players in the
media see it as their mission, as well as a business necessity, to awaken
interest in ‘new developments’. They
can’t afford to devote resources to putting a research finding in context or
reporting on the long slog of research on obscure topics, because this does not
attract most readers or viewers. Thus
much media reporting is the antithesis of a critical assessment of what the
reported findings may actually mean. The implicit justification for these news
items is that they provide information that will be of interest and of use to
the public. But many, if not most, of these reports are simply misleading or
wrong and convey ‘information’ that is of no conceivable use.
“It is not
that there is no high quality reporting in the area of health and health risks.
On the contrary, there are many outstanding sources of informed and critical
reporting on these issues. However, there are two problems. First, this more solid and more thoughtful
journalism exists on a different plane from the much more salient reports that
make the headlines, and it cannot compete with the latter. Second, those
who avail themselves of these more informed sources of information do so
because they are looking for reliable information on complex and difficult
questions. Thus, this type of journalism is, to a large extent, preaching to
the converted.”
(Geoffrey C.
Kabat, Getting Risk Right: Understanding
The Science of Elusive Health Risks, Columbia University Press, 2017)
Health care
journalist Susan Dentzer, who is also the editor of the peer-reviewed journal Health Affairs, writes in The New England Journal of Medicine:
“In my view,
we in the news media have a responsibility to hold ourselves to higher
standards if there is any chance that doctors and patients will act on the
basis of our reporting. We are not
clinicians, but we must be more than carnival barkers; we must be credible
health communicators more interested in conveying clear, actionable health
information to the public than carrying out our other agendas. There is
strong evidence that many journalists agree — and in particular, consider
themselves poorly trained to understand medical studies and statistics. But not
only should our profession demand better training of health journalists, it
should also require that health stories, rather than being rendered in black
and white, use all the grays on the palette to paint a comprehensive picture of
inevitably complex realities. Journalists could start by imposing on their work
a ‘prudent reader or viewer’ test: On the basis of my news account, what would
a prudent person do or assume about a given medical intervention, and did I
therefore succeed in delivering the best public health message possible?”
Just one example of this type of shoddy journalism
was committed by USA Today, Newsweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
and the Philadelphia Inquirer. The
Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University sent out a press release to
journalists with the headline: “Temple study: Extra-virgin olive oil preserves
memory & protects brain against Alzheimer’s.” Health
News Review put the claims in perspective:
“That’s a
headline that surely got journalists’ attention. It’s not until after two very
long opening paragraphs extolling the virtues of the nearly magical powers of
extra virgin olive oil that we find out who, exactly this was tested on. Mice.
“‘Brain
cells from mice fed diets enriched with extra-virgin olive oil had higher
levels of autophagy and reduced levels of amyloid plaques and phosphorylated
tau,’ a researcher is quoted as saying in the release.
“So, first
off, this is rodent research. It’s never mentioned in the news release, but
this hypothesis was tested on only 22 mice, just 10 of which got the olive oil
rich diet, and 12 of which got a standard diet. As in: The sample size here is
so small that we can’t be very sure what the results are telling us.”
One of the most useful and reliable
sites for
scrutinizing medical news in the popular media is the above referenced Health News Review. Their page “What we
review and how” lists the following:
Each day we
will review the websites of the following papers that are among the leaders in
daily circulation: Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, New York Times,
Philadelphia Inquirer, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, The
Guardian
Also checked
daily: National Public Radio health & science page
The websites
of the following TV networks: ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox, NBC
Wire or news
services: Associated Press health news, Bloomberg News, HealthDay, Reuters
Health
Checked
regularly: Websites of news magazines TIME, Newsweek, U.S. News & World
Report as well as Vox.com, Slate.com, FiveThirtyEight.com and BuzzFeed.com
Related Posts
How To Avoid
Bad Medical Advice: A Basic Guideline http://www.mybestbuddymedia.com/2016/05/how-to-avoid-bad-medical-advice-basic.html
Caffeine &
Aspirin: Science’s Contradictory Claims http://www.mybestbuddymedia.com/2013/03/caffeine-aspirin-and-red-wine-sciences.html
7 Medical
News Guidelines http://www.mybestbuddymedia.com/2012/08/7medical-news-guidelines-weve-allheard.html
Photo: https://www.unityinlynnwood.org/sites/unityinlynnwood.org/files/pictures/media.jpg
Jerry De Luca is a Christian freelance writer who loves perusing dozens of interesting and informative publications. When he finds any useful info he summarizes it, taking the main points, and creates a (hopefully) helpful blog post.
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