I have published the following commentary on the HealthNewsReview.org website. TIME magazine, like many publications, loves year-end lists. Its “Top Ten Medical Breakthroughs of 2007″ list offers brief capsules on developments that someone at TIME decided were in the top ten and also that someone decided qualified as breakthroughs. The list: Circumcision can prevent HIV [...]
Mark Zweig and Emily DeVoto authored a thoughtful piece on how journalists may imply cause-and-effect in reporting on research, when the study design didn’t really establish cause-and-effect. Examples: Eating fish may help preserve eyesight in older people. The authors calculated that participants who did 75 minutes a day of activities… lowered their risk of dying [...]
The following is a guest column by Mark Zweig and Emily DeVoto, two people who have thought a lot about how reporters cover medical research. A health writer’s first attempt at expressing results from a new observational study read, “Frequent fish consumption was associated with a 50% reduction in the relative risk of dying [...]
Nothing new here at all – just the latest episode of a local community discovering that its glorified local health news is often just paid-for advertising. The Other Paper of Columbus, Ohio unveils how Ohio State University Medical Center pays one station almost $100,000 a year to air “Breakthroughs in Medicine” segments in the newscast, [...]
We look for more critical analysis of FDA expedited approval of a new drug like this.
Five-star story on small study that tries to counter large body of evidence on soy supplements for hot flashes.
Our reviewers, including a leading women’s health clinician-researcher, felt this piece would have been benefited from more data and context.
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