New name for the old “Gary Schwitzer’s HealthNewsReview blog”
This is the publisher‘s blog (perspective, opinion) – different than the systematic story reviews, in which multiple reviewers use standardized criteria to critique stories.
In December of 2011 I wrote about about New Jersey’s Saint Barnabas medical center promoting its robotic surgery system to holiday shoppers at a New Jersey shopping mall. Then, in December of 2012, I wrote about the mall marketing trend spreading to places around the country. Now, the New Jersey medical center gets more publicity by [...]
Novartis and Hooters Is it a kickback to get doctors to prescribe certain drugs? Or is it truly an educational meeting for doctors – that happens to be held at places like Hooters across the country? Read the Wall Street Journal’s story from last week, “U.S. Accuses Novartis of Kickbacks.” It’s about a civil fraud [...]
Fact: the US spends a far greater percentage of the Gross Domestic Product on health care than any other country on earth. Suggestion: trends like the following, and news stories about these trends, may be a big reason why. Caution: You need to sit through a 15-second commercial before seeing the news video, which, itself [...]
The New York Times Sunday magazine piece, “Our Feel-Good War on Breast Cancer,” is by Peggy Orenstein who begins: “I used to believe that a mammogram saved my life. I even wrote that in the pages of this magazine. It was 1996, and I had just turned 35 when my doctor sent me for an [...]
I’m honored to be invited to present the 16th Annual Mates David and Hinna Stahl Memorial Lecture at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, University of Medicine & Dentistry of New Jersey tomorrow (April 23). My topic: “Addressing the Ethical Morass at the Intersection of Media, Medicine and Public Health.” (Addendum on April 25: now [...]
It’s disappointing to learn from the NIH website this weekend: The 2013 Medicine in the Media course has been cancelled due to sequestration. For journalists interested in learning how to evaluate evidence and improve their reporting on studies, this is the finest workshop I’ve attended. Disclosure: I have appeared as an instructor at this workshop [...]
We often write about incomplete, imbalanced stories we see about screening tests. My local paper, the Star Tribune, published a doozie this weekend. The online story headline was: Baby boomers embracing colonoscopies In print, it was: Look At The Upside The subhead was the same in either format: “From highway billboards to celebrities, everyone is [...]
The story: A company, Exact Sciences, announces (but doesn’t publish) results of a study of its experimental Colo-guard colon cancer screening test that looks for changes in DNA in stool samples. The New York Times splashes: “Noninvasive Cancer Test Is Effective, Study Finds.” But the 2nd sentence reads: “Still, the results fell short of investor [...]
Former CBS and CNN journalist Deborah Potter writes on her NewsLab site: “Let’s start with the syndicated stories TV networks pump out to their affiliates, a service they’ve provided for decades. One of my first jobs in television many years ago was to log the video offerings from ABC on the cutely named DEF or [...]
I’m late on this because I was traveling when the latest events in question occurred, but Paul Raeburn on the Knight Science Journalism Tracker has a nice wrapup – “British newspaper gives disgraced vaccine critic forum to attack government for measles epidemic” – with background and links. The British paper, The Independent, published a statement [...]
Better than a competing piece by Reuters but still a little short on some details about this asthma drug study.
An adequate summary of this asthma drug trial’s design doesn’t make up for the overly optimistic tone about the drug’s future. A New York Times story was better.
This story focuses on a family that may have a rare genetic mutation that increases their risk of heart disease. Unfortunately, the “rare” part wasn’t mentioned until 1,600 words into this 2,100 word story.
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