Search Results for "baldness"
3-part series on disease-mongering
William Heisel, one of our ace story reviewers on HealthNewsReview.org, has published three pieces on disease-mongering on the Reporting on Health site. Does Baldness Really Need a Cure? Steer Clear of Disease-Mongering Quicksand Avoid Extremes to Avoid Disease Mongering
2 3/22/2012Either incredibly poor judgment or unfortunate inadvertent juxtaposition on LA Times health blog
Under the headline, “Big science zooms in on a new cure for baldness” – which was about male-pattern baldness, the Los Angeles Times Health blog published a local TV station’s video segment about a “Go Bald shave-a-thon” fundraiser with a little boy who had neuroblastoma. Did someone actually think the two totally unrelated types of […]
A New Approach to Treating Hair Loss
It’s difficult to see how this story passed the New York Times’ “fit to print” test – even on its blog. The report is observational with a sample of two patients, it misses nearly all of our measures and allows the author of the study to provide readers with a 777 word advertisement.
A New Approach to Treating Hair Loss
People can live 1,000 years…and other sensational science news on NBC, MSNBC
“Scientists say they’re close to unlocking the secrets of immortality,” blares the NBC online headline. “There’s nothing that would stop people from living thousands of years,” is the subhead. The Today Show piece, upon which the web story is based, spins a fascinating, futuristic, but not evidence-based yarn. Sprinkled in with legitimate research news about […]
Criterion #5 Does the story commit disease-mongering?
Sometimes “new” conditions or diseases aren’t really health problems at all — they’re actually just opportunities for those who stand to gain by medicalizing (and monetizing) normal states of health, known as disease-mongering. Readers aren’t well-served by stories that exaggerate or oversell conditions. There are different forms of “mongering,” including: turning risk factors into diseases, with […]
2 9/1/2009It doesn’t make sense for us to review TV health news anymore
You won”t be seeing network TV health news stories show up in the reviews on this site any more – at least not in the way they”ve appeared in the past. Reasons: This is just one part of an overall change we’ll be announcing soon – a change in the entire scope of which […]
Throwing in the towel on network TV health news reviews
Announcement on HealthNewsReview.org today: You won’t be seeing network TV health news stories show up in the reviews on HealthNewsReview.org any more – at least not in the way they’ve appeared in the past. Reasons: This is just one part of an overall change we’ll be announcing soon – a change in the entire […]
2/5/2008Nothing but miracles, breakthroughs, rainbows & unicorns for TODAY Show
Last week the NBC Today Show presented a series it called “Mini Medical Miracles.” Were you waiting for news on cancer? Heart disease? Diabetes? Infectious diseases? Sorry. What you got was baldness, insomnia, dandruff and wrinkles. But NBC called the approaches “miracles” and “breakthroughs.” Man, that’s what we need is a good miracle for dandruff […]
2/17/2007More NBC News cheerleading rather than reporting health news
Last week it was NBC’s hype of a drug for restless leg syndrome. This week it was NBC using some of its airtime to promote a new “laser hair comb” for baldness. You figure a network newscast has about 22 minutes for real news. It chose to give a chunk of that time to this. […]
