London-based BuzzFeed reporter Jamie Ross writes, “The NHS Is Calling Out Journalists On Twitter For Getting Their Facts Wrong.”
The NHS is the British National Health Service.
The NHS contracts with a company called Bazian to look “Behind the Headlines” on health news stories.
We’ve written several times about the project. For example:
The project has apparently kicked it up a notch in its social media efforts, using Twitter ads to announce their latest reviews – as shown in the BuzzFeed story. Example:
Media heralds the discovery of ‘infidelity gene’ – see the #BehindTheHeadlines report here: http://t.co/q9PuJGGyny pic.twitter.com/orLxUmWIX8
— NHS Choices (@NHSChoices) February 17, 2015
Back in December, A US-based BuzzFeed reporter published, “11 Ways to Spot Bogus Headlines About Your Health,” and touched on some of our history: over 9 years we’ve posted nearly 2,000 systematic reviews of US health care news stories and another 2,000 blog posts about health care news, PR, advertising, marketing, and medical journal practices.
And, in fact, as of the start of this year, we’ve now begun looking at BuzzFeed stories. The first such review gave a score of 3 stars out of a possible 5. That’s 6 criteria graded satisfactory out of 10. We operate a bit differently than Behind the Headlines. They generally mention a news story as their “hook” at the top, then delve into the quality of the underlying science. We spend more time addressing point-by-point critiques of the journalism, in an attempt to help both journalists, and the public they serve, to better analyze the evidence.
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Opinions on other issues in news, journals, PR, advertising, marketing
The tale of two “negative” studies. Or, how spin is applied to make research findings look more impressive. A must read. https://johnmandrola.substack.com/p/the-tale-of-two-negative-studies
The @nytimes chose to interview one of the editors of the @AnnalsofIM (publisher of this paper) who "gushed with extraordinary glee: It’s huge! There are very few things that reduce your mortality by 30%."
Turns out coffee is not one of those few things despite all that glee. https://twitter.com/garyschwitzer/status/1533202075928215558
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