John Crewdson in The Atlantic:
“The current controversy over the task force’s report owes much to the media’s confusing coverage, some of which has been misinformed, including by TV doctors who ought to know better.
The confusion has been abetted by the American Cancer Society, whose position appeared to have softened, then hardened again, in recent weeks.
There are multiple reasons women are ill-informed about breast cancer. The fault lies primarily with their physicians, the cancer establishment, and the news media–especially the news media. Until coverage of breast cancer rises above the level of scary warnings mixed with heartwarming stories of cancer survivors, women are likely to go on being perplexed.”
Opinions on other issues in news, journals, PR, advertising, marketing
The tale of two “negative” studies. Or, how spin is applied to make research findings look more impressive. A must read. https://johnmandrola.substack.com/p/the-tale-of-two-negative-studies
The @nytimes chose to interview one of the editors of the @AnnalsofIM (publisher of this paper) who "gushed with extraordinary glee: It’s huge! There are very few things that reduce your mortality by 30%."
Turns out coffee is not one of those few things despite all that glee. https://twitter.com/garyschwitzer/status/1533202075928215558
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.
Bruce Halford
November 21, 2009 at 10:20 amWomen have every right to wonder what to believe, and most journalists aren’t up to the task of clarifying what the early-detection study actually says. The challenge for journalists is that the study expresses statistical probabilities: it takes nearly two thousand early screenings of forty-something women to prevent one death from breast cancer. And because those same early screenings produce a lot of false-positive results, too many women are subjected to unnecessary procedures and treatments. Seems like a no-brainer: if you’re a woman in your forties, with no obvious risk factors, save yourself a ton of trouble; don’t get a mammogram. But how many journalists are prepared to try to explain those dry statistics to their readers/viewers in the face of the resulting confusion, even outrage, over the upending of decades’ worth of public policy? And what to do with the fact that most women know someone who they believe is alive today only because she had an early mammogram, or found a lump during a routine self-exam? In today’s news environment, it’s no surprise that most reporters will opt for the emotional “what if I hadn’t gotten that exam?” story. The statistics-based story – if you get an early mammogram, there’s a good chance it could scare you into unnecessary treatments – is a very tough sell to women who ask, But what if I’m that one-in-two-thousand?
A Carroll
November 22, 2009 at 12:39 pmThe reaction by Congress and the public is not new and therefore it was predictable. In 1997 an NIH Consensus Panel issued a statement with the same recommendations: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9267441?ordinalpos=1&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_SingleItemSupl.Pubmed_Discovery_RA&linkpos=1&log$=relatedreviews&logdbfrom=pubmed
NIH Consens Statement. 1997 Jan 21-23;15(1):1-35.
NIH Consensus Statement. Breast cancer screening for women ages 40-49.
Congress had the same backwards and anti-science reaction as it did this time, and people were as ready to bring out the pitchforks and torches as they are now, especially in the context of this summer’s circuses around “health care reform” (which the media were equally happy to mischaracterize).
We need a national teach-in on epidemiology. John Crewdson took a good first stab at 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