About 70% of more than 1,500 stories reviewed were graded as unsatisfactory by our reviewers for:
failing to adequately discuss costs
failing to adequately quantify benefits (often exaggerating benefits)
failing to adequately quantify harms (often minimizing or ignoring harms)
Yet – after our team of reviewers has worked on these reviews every day for more than 5 years – I’m optimistic because the flaws that have been identified are not that difficult to fix. A growing number of training opportunities – such as the NIH Medicine in the Media event – can help journalists struggling with how to evaluate evidence and how to scrutinize the myriad claims made about health care interventions.
In part 3 of this series tomorrow, I’ll remind journalists of the help that’s available to them in most communities to evaluate evidence and to scrutinize claims.
Opinions on other issues in news, journals, PR, advertising, marketing
Monday at #ADA2021, an infectious disease epidemiologist, a journalist, and a researcher shared perspectives on communication of risk in the era of COVID-19: http://ow.ly/ROfR30rMeE7 @AstleyCM @garyschwitzer @berthahidalgo @ADA_DiabetesPro
Shoutouts to @susan_bewley @drkevinknopf @MichaelBaum11 in this call for more than fawning coverage from press releases for these kinds of stories.
Also, linked history inside goes back 5 years just on Grail apparently trying to become Holy Grail. https://twitter.com/garyschwitzer/status/1408849696416841731
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