Posted by Gary Schwitzer in Health care journalism
MSNBC.com posts a lot of videos on its website. I wish they’d exercise a little more editorial rigor about this video bazaar. This story on a minimally-invasive back procedure is vague about what it’s used for, cites no evidence, doesn’t mention cost, and lets conflicted physicians get away with their promotion of the approach.
“Quick fix” is what the story calls it. Show me the data.
Are we educating the public about the need for comparative effectiveness research with advertorials like this?
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Overall, this was an easy-to-follow summary. But there was a clear difference between this and a competing Boston Globe story, which did a better job offering context and analysis.
This Boston Globe blog post gave its audience a more thorough understanding of an emerging approach to virtual colonoscopy than the Wall Street Journal.
Longer, but overall not any better, than the coverage from the competing LA Times story. Not thorough enough to explain what this preliminary research actually means for readers–which is not much at this point.
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kirkland chiropractor posted on September 6, 2010 at 3:28 pm
What a dangerous video? Could this be confused by the average american and think if they have back pain they need the quick fix. Horrifically dangerous video.