Stories like today’s about naproxen causing “a 50 percent greater risk of heart attacks and stroke than placebo” can be meaningless if they don’t provide the ABSOLUTE risk. The 50% figure is the relative risk — naproxen’s rate relative to placebo. But we’re not told the ABSOLUTE rate: how many people actually had heart attacks and strokes in each group. The difference could be very small if the ABSOLUTE numbers are small.
But it’s not just journalists who fail to give the absolute risk figures. The New York Times reports that those making the naproxen announcement yesterday would only say that 70 people out of 2,500 in the study experienced heart attacks and strokes. They would not give the numbers for each group. You can do the math to figure it out, but consumers shouldn’t have to do the math. Government officials and journalists should help.
Mea Culpa Disclosure: I violated the absolute risk tenet myself in my Dec. 17 entry when I wrote, “Pfizer has stopped a clinical trial for its blockbuster drug Celebrex because it was shown to cause 2.5 times more heart attacks than did placebos.”
Opinions on other issues in news, journals, PR, advertising, marketing
The @nytimeswell effort is shown to be unwell once again.
There's pervasive media bias toward hyping treatment benefits while neglecting negative results & harms.
Big part of this is reliance on experts with financial &/or intellectual conflicts of interest.
Att'n journalists: Use this list 100 independent experts to correct imbalance https://twitter.com/garyschwitzer/status/1177189641218330625
Comments
Please note, comments are no longer published through this website. All previously made comments are still archived and available for viewing through select posts.
Yvette
January 3, 2005 at 10:57 amDo you think that placebo drug trials have a place in medical research–especially in Western nations where the “standard of care” is generally NOT “no care” (i.e., placebo), but some previous type of care? I am not a public health or medical person, but was introduced to this issue in a bioethics class and have continued to be fascinated by it.
Our Comments Policy
But before leaving a comment, please review these notes about our policy.
You are responsible for any comments you leave on this site.
This site is primarily a forum for discussion about the quality (or lack thereof) in journalism or other media messages (advertising, marketing, public relations, medical journals, etc.) It is not intended to be a forum for definitive discussions about medicine or science.
We will delete comments that include personal attacks, unfounded allegations, unverified claims, product pitches, profanity or any from anyone who does not list a full name and a functioning email address. We will also end any thread of repetitive comments. We don”t give medical advice so we won”t respond to questions asking for it.
We don”t have sufficient staffing to contact each commenter who left such a message. If you have a question about why your comment was edited or removed, you can email us at feedback@healthnewsreview.org.
There has been a recent burst of attention to troubles with many comments left on science and science news/communication websites. Read “Online science comments: trolls, trash and treasure.”
The authors of the Retraction Watch comments policy urge commenters:
We”re also concerned about anonymous comments. We ask that all commenters leave their full name and provide an actual email address in case we feel we need to contact them. We may delete any comment left by someone who does not leave their name and a legitimate email address.
And, as noted, product pitches of any sort – pushing treatments, tests, products, procedures, physicians, medical centers, books, websites – are likely to be deleted. We don”t accept advertising on this site and are not going to give it away free.
The ability to leave comments expires after a certain period of time. So you may find that you’re unable to leave a comment on an article that is more than a few months old.
You might also like