I’ve seen the very clever journalism warning labels pictured and offered on TomScott.com. Many good friends and contacts wrote me about this, some urging HealthNewsReview.org to produce its own — and we may. Of the many great labels offered, this one is perhaps my favorite:
*This blog post was originally published at Gary Schwitzer's HealthNewsReview Blog*
This was one time when the headline was okay, but the story that followed had our heads spinning. “Study Says Brain Trauma Can Mimic Lou Gehrig’s Disease” is a story that was troubling on a number of fronts. It reported on a study which at the time had not yet been published suggesting that some “athletes and soldiers given a diagnosis of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis…might have been catalyzed by injuries only now becoming understood: concussions and other brain trauma.”
To be clear — and please don’t anyone miss or miscontrue this point — this is an important and fascinating area of research. But the story did not exhibit the best of health/medical/science journalism:
1. It was based on a study of 3 people. (The ALS Association says there are up to 30,000 people in the U.S. living with ALS.)
2. It stated, “Lou Gehrig might not have had Lou Gehrig’s disease.” (No evidence for this was provided. He also may not have been a great left-handed hitter. That may have been an optical illusion.)
3. It said this could “perhaps lead toward new pathways for a cure.” (After a suggestive finding in just three people?)
4. The story later says, “The finding’s relevance to Gehrig is less clear.” (Hedging already after a bold earlier statement in the story.)
5. But just a few paragraphs later, the story says, “The new finding…suggests that Gehrig might not have had (ALS).” (Head spinning yet?) Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Gary Schwitzer's HealthNewsReview Blog*
EDITOR’S NOTE: Following Gary Schwitzer’s HealthNewsReview.org August 11th blog post below entitled “American Cancer Society: ‘Only’ A Fundraising Ad, Right?”, the American Cancer Society pulled its “Screening Is Seeing” ad the next day.
See Schwitzer’s follow-up post “Screening Is Seeing” Ad By American Cancer Society-Cancer Action Network (ACS-CAN) Is Pulled” and a related article by Mary Carmichael of Newsweek: “The American Cancer Society’s Misleading New Ads.”
Also see “Common Themes In The Alzheimer’s Test Stories And The Cancer Society Screening Ad” by Schwitzer.
(ORIGINAL POST)
American Cancer Society: “Only” A Fundraising Ad, Right?
A well-intentioned ad campaign run by the American Cancer Society is too vague, and therefore may leave impressions that are imbalanced, incomplete and unsubstantiated — the kind of common tactic seen in many drug company ads. That’s my opinion based on my analysis of the ad and based on my reading of the text.
An American Cancer Society news release states:
The American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network (ACS CAN) is launching a new print and online advertising campaign in congressional districts across the country this week, urging lawmakers to fully fund a lifesaving cancer prevention, early detection and diagnostic program that is celebrating 20 years of screening low income, uninsured, and medically underserved women for breast and cervical cancer. The ads also send the message that when it comes to increasing your odds of surviving cancer, access to evidence-based early detection tools is critical.
The ads reference the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) National Breast and Cervical Cancer Early Detection Program (NBCCEDP), which has a track record of reducing deaths from breast and cervical cancer. The program has provided more than 9 million screening exams to more than 3 million women and diagnosed more than 40,000 cases of breast cancer and more than 2,000 cases of cervical cancer since it launched in 1990. But with limited funding, the program is able to serve fewer than 1 in 5 eligible women.
The accomplishments of the CDC NBCCEDP are noteworthy. So this blog entry is no knock on that program. It’s a criticism of the ad. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Gary Schwitzer's HealthNewsReview Blog*
Ivan Oransky, M.D., executive editor of Reuters Health, somehow found time a few months ago to launch his first blog, Embargo Watch — with the tagline: “Keeping an eye on how scientific information embargoes affect news coverage.”
Now, as evidence he either doesn’t sleep or has roots in Transylvania, Oransky the Impaler launches a new blog, Retraction Watch along with partner Adam Marcus. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Gary Schwitzer's HealthNewsReview Blog*
In an unusual move, a journal has actually gone in and changed a previously-stated conclusion of a previously-published paper. This follows a Reuters Health story that raised questions about the study. Reuters reports:
“A journal editor has scrubbed a line supporting the use of a L’Oreal-Nestle tanning pill from the conclusion of a company-sponsored study.
The edits come days after a Reuters Health story about serious shortcomings in the report.
Dr. Tanya Bleiker, editor of the British Journal of Dermatology, which published the study, told Reuters Health this week by e-mail she had changed the conclusion of the report, with the permission of the authors, and added the researchers’ financial conflicts.
Half of them were employees of Laboratoires Inneov, a joint venture between L’Oreal and Nestle that makes the tanning pill, called Inneov Sun Sensitivity. However, the original version of the study did not include a conflict of interest statement, Bleiker said last week, because “the authors stated very clearly that there was no conflict of interest.”
…
On the first page of the report, the researchers concluded that their “results support the use of this nutritional supplement.”That sentence has now been removed. But the new version of the report now available online still says the tanning pill increases the threshold for sunburns and “represents a complementary strategy to sun avoidance and sunscreen use for a global approach to photoprotection.”
An independent dermatologist who reviewed the results for Reuters Health disputed those claims last week.
Referring to whether the pill would protect women against the sun’s harmful UV rays, Dr. Peter Schalock, a dermatologist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, said he had “hard time seeing that statistically or scientifically (the researchers) have proven it.”
Journalists and the general public can learn from this example. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Gary Schwitzer's HealthNewsReview Blog*
It’s no secret that doctors are disappointed with the way that the U.S. healthcare system is evolving. Most feel helpless about improving their work conditions or solving technical problems in patient care. Fortunately one young medical student was undeterred by the mountain of disappointment carried by his senior clinician mentors…
I am proud to be a part of the American Resident Project an initiative that promotes the writing of medical students residents and new physicians as they explore ideas for transforming American health care delivery. I recently had the opportunity to interview three of the writing fellows about how to…
Book Review: Is Empathy Learned By Faking It Till It’s Real?
I m often asked to do book reviews on my blog and I rarely agree to them. This is because it takes me a long time to read a book and then if I don t enjoy it I figure the author would rather me remain silent than publish my…
The Spirit Of The Place: Samuel Shem’s New Book May Depress You
When I was in medical school I read Samuel Shem s House Of God as a right of passage. At the time I found it to be a cynical yet eerily accurate portrayal of the underbelly of academic medicine. I gained comfort from its gallows humor and it made me…
Eat To Save Your Life: Another Half-True Diet Book
I am hesitant to review diet books because they are so often a tangled mess of fact and fiction. Teasing out their truth from falsehood is about as exhausting as delousing a long-haired elementary school student. However after being approached by the authors’ PR agency with the promise of a…
