I was challenged by a fellow health care journalist to address a story by TIME.com, with this headline, “There Could Soon Be a Pill to Make Us More Compassionate.”
The story reports that, in “a new study, published in the journal Current Biology…A group led by researchers at University of California Berkeley and University of California San Francisco shows that by manipulating a brain chemical, people can become more compassionate and act in prosocial ways to equalize differences.”
But it also reports that the study was in just 35 people seen only twice each.
You don’t even need to know any more of the details of the study to know that this is a tiny sample…an inconclusive finding…and nowhere near anything that could be defined as “soon.”
The story admits that “The results certainly aren’t the answer to promoting more compassion in society,” but then allows a researcher to call this “an important step.” And that quote did not come from a direct interview with the researcher, but from a news release from UC-Berkeley, home of the research.
There is no independent perspective in the TIME story.
Framing compassion or social interaction as behaviors that need to be boosted with a pill is, in effect, disease-mongering.
Manipulating a brain chemical like dopamine – as this research did – carries the potential for harm. There was no discussion of potential harm in the story.
As you see, the piece was labeled as a Health/Medicine piece by TIME, not a Science story. Health/Medicine implies that this is something that has immediate human implications. Just as “There could soon be a pill…” makes that statement.
TIME needs to take more time to explain what “soon” means and doesn’t mean.
————————–
Follow us on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/garyschwitzer
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
Comments (2)
Please note, comments are no longer published through this website. All previously made comments are still archived and available for viewing through select posts.
Roland B. Stark
March 30, 2015 at 9:41 amThe fact that the study used “35 people seen only twice each” does not in itself make the results inconclusive. Random assignment to the “treatment” or placebo group can help a researcher glean a lot of information from such a sample. But degree of conclusiveness has a lot to do with the size of the effect, and all the article tells us is that the dopamine group was “more likely to share.” We can probably assume that the difference was statistically significant according to *someone*’s criteria, but it’s necessary to report that level of significance–and, more importantly, the likelihood difference itself. A very common and very insidious sort of mistake.
Roland B. Stark
March 30, 2015 at 9:54 amI’ve made more detailed commentary on how widespread and insidious this sort of mistake is: http://www.integrativestatistics.com/insidious.htm
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