This is one time the Healthy Skeptic wasn’t skeptical enough. Whom you choose to interview, and what personal choices you let them describe, can overwhelm the rest of the story’s message.
In contrast with the last LA Times piece we reviewed, this Healthy Skeptic column addressed all of our criteria.
The Healthy Skeptic column does its usual fine job evaluating claims – this time about probiotic products.
The Healthy Skeptic column can usually be counted on to drive home to consumers the need for evidence to back up health care product claims. It succeeded in that once again this time.
Although the overall tone of the column displayed appropriate healthy skepticism, we feel it dropped the ball in a number of key areas. If you’re going to delve into these anti-aging claims, we look for more.
We almost always applaud the LA Times’ Healthy Skeptic column, although sometimes it just pushes us to push the paper to do more with it. We give it a 5-star score but it could have easily been even better.
The LA Times’ Healthy Skeptic column clears up some fuzzy claims about an approach to dyslexia.
The column attempted to evaluate the quality of the evidence but relied on a dueling quotes approach that did not actually provide readers with much analysis. Because so much of the story is spent on the herbal remedy makers’ claims, the story needed to either present the actual evidence used to make these claims or use other evidence to knock these claims down.
Another entry in the solid “Healthy Skeptic” series in the LA Times. Good job exploring the claims about an allergy product called Allergen Block – stating that there is no evidence it works.
This story laid out the evidence in a more clear and compelling way than its competition on the Los Angeles Times blog.
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