A paper in the current American Journal of Infection Control looks at how quickly – and erroneously – health information can spread via Twitter. ABC reports that one of the authors “said that even a single inaccurate tweet is broadcast on average to tens of thousands of people.”
Please allow us to issue that same reminder to ABC – with its much broader reach.
We stopped reviewing health news on ABC, CBS and NBC last fall because we had seen enough incomplete information after 228 stories reviewed in 3.5 years.
Besides ABC, it’s interesting that at this moment the only other major news organization I could find that reported on the Twitter health misinformation study was the New York Daily News. We don’t review them anymore either. Of 9 stories of theirs that we did review, 7 got scores of 0, 1 or 2 stars out of 5. One ran under the headline, “Latest anti-aging craze ‘Dracula Therapy’ involves injecting your face with your own blood.” Our review said, “Sensational, non-evidence-based – not much else to say about this one.”
People who live in glass houses…..
Opinions on other issues in news, journals, PR, advertising, marketing
Come on, NY Times; you must do better than this. Important research doesn’t need hype and the “breaking news” BS doesn’t help readers or patients. https://www.healthnewsreview.org/2022/03/nyt-proclaims-breaking-news/
Our editorial team was blessed to have Sharon as a contributor during our best years. As this obit states, she was “kind, patient, wise, thoughtful and generous.” Thank you, Sharon; now rest in peace. https://journalism.wisc.edu/news/in-memoriam-sharon-dunwoody-1947-2022/
We’ve written about the hype of liquid biopsies for years (see link in comment below). And now this…. https://www.statnews.com/2022/01/12/medicare-shouldnt-cover-liquid-biopsies-early-cancer-detection/
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