While I’m working on a grant proposal to keep this project alive, my publishing efforts have fallen off a bit. But it’s comforting to know that somebody else is doing some watchdog work – somebody like Paul Raeburn at the Knight Science Journalism Tracker.
This week he wrote, “Cystic fibrosis breakthrough, or Wall Street coup?”
The gist: a drug company releasing study results via news release…and via a restrictive agreement between a reporter and the company, restricting whom the reporter could talk with in order to get the data. The news drove the company’s stock up 40% on the NASDAQ. Raeburn estimates that the drugs in question could cost $250,000 per patient. He concludes:
“It’s clear that this research was a huge success for the company’s shareholders. What’s less clear, partly because of the restrictions on the reporting, is exactly how helpful it might one day be to the multimillionaire cystic fibrosis families who can afford it, or whose insurance companies pay for it.”
Recently, Raeburn also wrote – ” ‘Potentially offering the first new class of drugs…’ How often have we written that?”
In that piece, he questioned an approach that Gina Kolata of the New York Times took in a story, and reflected on the fact that he’d done the same earlier in his reporting career.
Kolata wrote about new findings “potentially offering the first new class of drugs to combat heart disease in decades, experts say.” He continued:
“Care to hazard a guess at where that prediction will be in 15 years?
She included the usual escape clause, writing that “experts caution that drug development takes years and that there are no guarantees that new treatments will work as hoped,” which I did in my story, too. That story ended with, “Of course, whether the success in mice will be repeated in human beings is an unanswered question.”
Both stories were accurate, at least with regard to their forecasts. We said the research might lead to new drugs, and we cautioned that it might not.
But is this good enough? What Gina and I did in these stories–and what many of us have done in countless other stories–is to promise and then immediately renege on those promises. …
I think we need to step away from the boilerplate promise-and-unpromise paragraph that we’ve written so often, and query researchers more carefully about exactly how and when their research might lead to new treatments. What problems remain to be solved? What are the potential side effects? How much might it cost? Would the FDA be likely to approve it? Does it raise ethical questions?
We have to report the news, of course, but we might spend a few paragraphs raising and attempting to answer these questions, with the aim of making a more meaningful prognostication than simply “might lead to new treatments.”
We owe our readers that.”
The suggestions he makes are some of the same we’ve made over the past 8 years of reviewing thousands of health care news stories. It’s nice to hear another voice regularly trying to improve the public dialogue.
———————
Follow us on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/garyschwitzer
https://twitter.com/healthnewsrevu
Comments
Please note, comments are no longer published through this website. All previously made comments are still archived and available for viewing through select posts.
Comments are closed.
Our Comments Policy
But before leaving a comment, please review these notes about our policy.
You are responsible for any comments you leave on this site.
This site is primarily a forum for discussion about the quality (or lack thereof) in journalism or other media messages (advertising, marketing, public relations, medical journals, etc.) It is not intended to be a forum for definitive discussions about medicine or science.
We will delete comments that include personal attacks, unfounded allegations, unverified claims, product pitches, profanity or any from anyone who does not list a full name and a functioning email address. We will also end any thread of repetitive comments. We don”t give medical advice so we won”t respond to questions asking for it.
We don”t have sufficient staffing to contact each commenter who left such a message. If you have a question about why your comment was edited or removed, you can email us at feedback@healthnewsreview.org.
There has been a recent burst of attention to troubles with many comments left on science and science news/communication websites. Read “Online science comments: trolls, trash and treasure.”
The authors of the Retraction Watch comments policy urge commenters:
We”re also concerned about anonymous comments. We ask that all commenters leave their full name and provide an actual email address in case we feel we need to contact them. We may delete any comment left by someone who does not leave their name and a legitimate email address.
And, as noted, product pitches of any sort – pushing treatments, tests, products, procedures, physicians, medical centers, books, websites – are likely to be deleted. We don”t accept advertising on this site and are not going to give it away free.
The ability to leave comments expires after a certain period of time. So you may find that you’re unable to leave a comment on an article that is more than a few months old.
You might also like