The JAMA Internal Medicine article included the following abstract “From April 16, 2006, through May 30, 2013, a team of reviewers from HealthNewsReview.org, many of whom were physicians, evaluated the reporting by US news organizations on new medical treatments, tests, products, and procedures. After reviewing 1889 stories … the reviewers graded most stories unsatisfactory on 5 of 10 review criteria: costs, benefits, harms, quality of the evidence, and comparison of the new approach with alternatives. Drugs, medical devices, and other interventions were usually portrayed positively; potential harms were minimized, and costs were ignored. Our findings can help journalists improve their news stories and help physicians and the public better understand the strengths and weaknesses of news media coverage of medical and health topics.”
And “Vested interests, marketing, politics and media hype often have more influence on how new medical advances get used than the best scientific evidence.”
“Ten review criteria were used to assess each news story reviewed. The review criteria addressed whether the story (1) adequately discussed the costs of the intervention; (2) adequately quantified the benefits of the intervention; (3) adequately quantified the harms of the intervention; (4) evaluated the quality of the evidence; (5) widened the diagnostic boundaries of illness and promoted public awareness of these widened boundaries, which may expand the market for treatments, a practice that has been termed disease mongering; (6) quoted independent sources and identified the conflicts of interest of sources; (7) compared the new approach with existing alternatives; (8) established the availability of the intervention; (9) established whether the approach was truly novel; and (10) appeared to rely solely or largely on a news release as the source of information.”
“Rarely do news stories about observational studies explain their limitations. Often, the stories fail to differentiate association from causation. From May 6, 2010, through August 20, 2013, more than a dozen flawed stories about observational studies involving coffee appeared (by ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox, MSNBC, NBC, The New York Times, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and WebMD). Each story used language suggesting cause and effect had been established, although it had not. Examples of such language are as follows: ‘coffee can kill you,’ ‘2 cups of coffee lowers uterine cancer risk,’ ‘one or more cups a day reduces stroke risk,’ coffee ‘radically reduces the risk of colon and rectal cancer,’ and ‘coffee fights skin cancer.’”
Click here to the full JAMA IT article “A Guide to Reading Health Care News Stories” by Gary Schwitzer.
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Doctor, Did You Wash Your Hands? ™ provides information to consumers on understanding, managing and navigating health care options.
Jonathan M. Metsch, Dr.P.H., is Clinical Professor, Preventive Medicine, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai; and Adjunct Professor, Baruch College ( C.U.N.Y.), Rutgers School of Public Health, and Rutgers School of Public Affairs and Administration.
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