More migraine news hype

What started off as a longer piece in the The Daily Telegraph of the UK ended up being shortened as it traveled across the ocean. The Montreal Gazette, for example, gutted it in half, from more than 600 words down to fewer than 300 words, but leaving in extravagant claims like:

• could allow scientists to create a new generation of drugs

• a once-in-a-generation find
• could potentially lead to a treatment for pain in general

All pretty sensational – for a finding that has not yet had the chance to impact even one human yet due to the nature of the research.

We recently gave the Los Angeles Times blog a lowly one-star score for a story on electrical stimulation of the brain for migraine pain.

We said in that review what we’d say about the hype of the latest finding:

“Migraine is not a topic to fool around with. People who have this problem may gravitate toward any news of progress. We think they deserved more scrutiny of claims and more context than they got in this piece.”