Thank God for hospital chaplains – and special thanks for those who are also smart bloggers.
See this chaplain’s blog (here and here) for how he evaluated a CNN/Health.com story, “Cholesterol jumps with menopause.”
The story included this line:
“A new study shows beyond a doubt that menopause, not the natural aging process, is responsible for a sharp increase in cholesterol levels.”
The chaplain wrote:
“So, just when, we asked one another, did menopause cease to be part of the natural aging process for all women? … In fact they determined that for several measures of cholesterol, menopause was more predictive than age, while for other risk factors age was more predictive. However, in neither case was there any implication that menopause wasn’t “natural;” only that in the natural course of things different women experienced it at different ages.”
Chaplain, pray for us that we can all learn to scrutinize health care news as well as you do.
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
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Sarah G
December 18, 2009 at 3:26 pmThat was a great catch on his part!
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