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
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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