Prime example – ABC’s story this week on red yeast rice to lower cholesterol.
HealthNewsReview.org reviewers said:
“Like so many news reports, this one treats elevated cholesterol as a disease, not just a marker of coronary artery disease risk. Indeed, nowhere does the story even mention coronary artery disease or heart disease of any kind; lowering measurements of blood cholesterol levels are treated as the ultimate goal. This confusion of a lab test result with an actual health outcome then leads the story to proclaim that red yeast rice “just might be the answer,” without ever making clear that this study was neither long enough nor large enough to provide any answers about whether people taking red yeast rice live longer or healthier. …
In the journal article abstract, the authors caution that, “The study was small, was single-site, was of short duration, and focused on laboratory measures.” Then in the discussion they write, “A larger, multicenter trial with longer follow-up is needed to determine whether red yeast rice offers a safe and effective solution for this unmet medical need and to evaluate its effects on cardiovascular outcomes.” Viewers heard neither of these important caveats.”
There was also no mention of an editorial accompanying the published study that read, in part, “The U.S. Food and Drug Administration continues to warn against inconsistent and possibly toxic formulations of red yeast rice, and we should not prescribe it until it has been standardized and tested further.”
Why weren’t these caveats included?
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.
Comments are closed.
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