Did it come from a study? Or straight out of the Wall Street Journal? Last week the CBS early show brought on another physician-correspondent to talk about the benefits of coffee drinking. Anchor Harry Smith referred to “this new study.” What new study? None was referenced.
What the segment was apparently based on was a Wall Street Journal story that same day that had ALL of the same information. No attribution was given.
Smith laughed in talking about “the study” showing that 6 cups a day of coffee lowered a man’s risk of advanced prostate cancer. He chuckled, “I don’t know how you get a control group for that or how this works…” Clearly he doesn’t know. Because “the study” in question didn’t have a control group and wasn’t a true experiment. It was an observational study.
When I was a kid, there was a Sunday morning TV show in which the host read the comics straight from the newspaper.
Maybe the CBS Early Show should just read us the health news straight out of the paper.
It could only be an improvement.
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
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