January 11, 2015
Sunday summary of other noteworthy health care news
Tags
Alzheimer's disease,
bad luck and cancer,
David Gorski,
Dr. Angelo Volandes,
Dr. Chris Del Mar,
Dr. Steve Miles,
Dr. Tammy Hoffman,
independent perspectives,
JAMA Internal Medicine,
journalism ethics,
Linda Searing,
Minneapolis Star Tribune,
NBC News,
ProPublica,
Quick Study column,
Washington Post
This blog took a back-seat this week to the re-launch of our systematic, criteria-driven news story reviews. But here’s come catch-up:
- While I’m mentioning the Post, I just want to remind readers of a periodic column by Linda Searing called “Quick Study.” This week, the column addressed what many other journalists jumped on – a study about electronic devices interfering with sleep – like “Don’t read your iPad in bed.” There’s a lot to like about the Quick Study approach:
- They’re short and succinct. This one was written with fewer than 400 words.
- But the template used to review study news hits some important high points:
- What’s the question?
- Who may be affected?
- Caveats
- Where to find this study
- Where to learn more about this topic
Now that’s a user-friendly outline. Unfortunately, for online visitors, finding Quick Study may not be a quick study. I can’t find it on the online Health & Science page. If you search online for “Washington Post Quick Study,” you’re likely to get old results from 2005. One tip: If you go to the Post’s website and search for “Linda Searing Quick Study” in the Post’s own search box at the top, you’ll come up with reasonable results. Such a good column shouldn’t be so hard to find.
- ProPublica continues to rip it up its investigative work.
- When I was in Australia last year, I met Drs. Tammy Hoffman and Chris Del Mar (and other colleagues at Bond University). Now they have an important paper published in JAMA Internal Medicine, entitled, “Patients’ Expectations of the Benefits and Harms of Treatments, Screening, and Tests.” Excerpt: “The majority of participants overestimated intervention benefit and underestimated harm. Clinicians should discuss accurate and balanced information about intervention benefits and harms with patients, providing the opportunity to develop realistic expectations and make informed decisions.”
- When we reviewed/compared 4 different stories on a study about avocados and cholesterol/heart health by Bloomberg, NBCNews.com, NPR.org, and Medical News Today ….. one thing that stood about all 4 was that none turned to an independent perspective. We only heard from one of the researchers. One of the stories apparently didn’t even interview the researcher, but lifted quotes from her from a news release. That is not the best way to report on health/medicine/science.
- This often happens with health business stories, and a blatant example appeared in the Star Tribune newspaper in Minneapolis. “A new device scopes out cancer in the lungs” was the headline of a business piece about a local company’s product. There was no truly conflict-free independent perspective in the story, but there were three paragraphs of quotes from company execs.
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