NOTE TO READERS: When this project lost substantial funding at the end of 2018, I lost the ability to continue publishing criteria-driven news story reviews and PR news release reviews - once the bread-and-butter of the site going back to 2006. The 3,200 archived reviews, while still educational, are getting old and difficult for me to technically maintain on the back end of the website. So I am announcing that I plan to remove these reviews from the site by April 1, 2021. The blog and the toolkit - two of the most popular features on the site - will remain. If you wish to peruse the reviews before they disappear, please do so by the end of March 2021. After that date you may still be able to access them via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine - https://archive.org/web/.
November 23, 2020
“Investigating Health & Medicine” – Global Investigative Journalism Network
HealthNewsReview.org made multiple contributions to an impressive new online resource, “Investigating Health and Medicine,” by Serena Tinari and Catherine Riva via the Global Investigative Journalism Network. The preface to the guide states:
This guide deals extensively with how to independently assess research claims and frequently cites the work of HealthNewsReview.org, which has experience in appraising health and medical claims as they are published by the media. HealthNewsReview.org is doing outstanding work during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Q: Misinformation surrounding the coronavirus seems to be rampant, what can be done to counter misinformation?
A: I have always believed that a strong grassroots movement to help the general public to improve their critical thinking about health care is required in order to counter misinformation. That is what I have tried to do on HealthNewsReview.org for the past 14 years. But no one project, no one organization, can address all of the myriad misinformation that washes over the public every day like a tsunami. So I believe we need to start from the bottom up to give people the tools to improve their own analytical skills, their own ability to weigh the veracity of claims, their own pathways for finding accurate, balanced and complete information.
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
We welcome comments, which users can leave at the end of any of our systematic story reviews or at the end of any of our blog posts.
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.
“Shed light, not just heat. Facts, challenges, disagreements, corrections — those are all fine. Attacking the person, instead of the idea or the interpretation, is neither acceptable nor helpful.”
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.
Our 3,222 reviews of health care journalism & PR will be gone soon. The rest of the website will remain. Read details. https://www.healthnewsreview.org/2021/01/our-3222-systematic-reviews-of-journalism-pr-will-be-gone-soon/
Year-ender: links to all 44 articles I published in 2020 - a year of too-frequent distortion, deceit and misinformation, worst I’ve seen in my 47-year career. https://www.healthnewsreview.org/2020/12/reflections-on-2020-you-cant-mask-this-reality/
“The distinction between what we do know and what we do not yet understand should be explained more often and more clearly in our coverage,” said @garyschwitzer. Journalists need to get past press releases from drug companies, but also debunk conspiracies. https://buff.ly/2LX9MVo
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.
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