The HealthBehaviorBlog takes a poke at the most recent USA Today Weekend edition, which offers "13 scientific breakthroughs that could change everything" in medical care.

The blog post reads:

"Although the newspaper offers a blithe caveat that "there's no guarantee, of course," nine of the 13 magic bullets in the article were basically ads for drug or device manufacturers. Two of the remaining four were about advances in genetic engineering and only two were about improving health through behavior: the value of breastfeeding to prevent obesity in children as they grow, and surviving breast cancer through exercise.

The others deal with new drugs or machinery that may or may not do more good than harm, that are not yet fully proven and that are designed to help people recover from or repair ailments they might have prevented in the first place if more money were spent -- or made -- on researching human behavior. The design of these "breakthroughs" is quite simple: $."

NBC news correspondent Mike Taibbi says he quit smoking after ABC's Peter Jennings died of lung cancer. Now Taibbi is telling his story on the air. Included in that story is Taibbi having a CT scan.

His main source is Dr. Claudia Henschke, who recently promoted the benefits of lung CT scanning with a new study. In the story last night, Henschke told Taibbi after his scan:

"Your lungs really look quite good. You're completely fine."

That misleads viewers about the certainty of these tests. For balance, Taibbi did include the comment of Dr. Peter Bach of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center who said it was "outrageous" that Dr. Henschke estimated that 80 percent of lung cancer deaths could be prevented, and who suggested Taibbi was reading too much into his own clean scan.

Dr. Bach says it was simply too soon to rely too much on the scans as a basis for treatment. The story continued:

"If they're being told it will help them, they're being misled," he says.

That was my reason for getting tested, and it's why I feel good about the results. It's also why I know I won't smoke again, and why I'm committed to future scans as my best chance to know what next steps, if any, might be needed.

So despite the split opinions, and despite the argument against the evidence, Taibbi tugged on heart strings and editorialized and put himself into the story. He and NBC are wrong for failing to conduct an evidence-based discussion. That's not reporting. That's crusading.

We’re making a new effort to compare coverage by different news organizations on the same story. For journalists and for consumers, we think this comparison will be interesting and insightful.

For example, we’ve posted reviews of six stories by six different news organizations (three print, three broadcast) on a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine about CAT scan screening for lung cancer in smokers. On average, stories were rated satisfactory on 6 out of 10 criteria. Newspaper stories, as usual, were more accurate, balanced and complete than TV stories. Where did stories fall short?

• 4 of 6 failed to adequately discuss potential harms of such screening, which can include radiation exposure, needless anxiety after receiving a potentially false positive result and significant medical complications associated with biopsies.
• 4 of 6 stories failed to adequately address the availability of CAT scan machines that can be used for the lung cancer screening described.
• 3 of 6 stories failed to discuss the costs of such screening, which were discussed in the journal article upon which the stories were based. Estimates range from $200 to $1,000 per scan, so this is a significant issue that half the stories ignored.
• 3 of 6 stories relied on a single source and/or failed to get an independent perspective, relying only on authors of the published study.

1. Miami Herald, “Early screening for lung cancer gets mixed reviews", 5-star score.
2. Washington Post, “Cancer study finds promise in CAT scans for smokers", 4-star score.
   
3. Houston Chronicle, “Newer lung-cancer scans may save lives, a study suggests", 3-star score. (Please note: this Houston story is a shorter version of a story originally published by the Chicago Tribune. The Houston version, at 572 words, left out much material that was in the original 1,244-word Chicago story. See a related Publisher’s Note on this practice.)
4. NBC Nightly News, 3-star score.
5. ABC World News Tonight, 3-star score.
6. CBS Evening News, 2- star score.
   

We’ve also published reviews of two broadcast stories by two different networks on the same night on so-called bioidentical hormones for menopause. In the eyes of three independent reviewers, neither story did a satisfactory job addressing costs, the quality of the evidence, explaining potential benefits, or in explaining the potential conflicts of interest in the sources used.

1. CBS Evening News, 3-star score
2. NBC Nightly News, 2 -star score
   

Last week in Atlanta, at The Tenth Annual Healthcare Internet Conference,
HealthNewsReview.org won an eHealthcare Leadership Award for "best community benefit."