“Short people have higher heart risk” screams the headline on CNN.com, treating it as a statement of fact. “Shortness Boosts Heart Disease, Death Risk” is the headline in a HealthDay story seen on BusinessWeek.com.
Wrong.
Such a study as the one being described can only establish association — it CANNOT prove causation. So it’s wrong to say short people have higher risk. It is wrong to say shortness boosts risk.
Blogger and cardiac electrophysiologist Dr. Wes Fisher beat me to the punch by blogging about the continued journalistic confusion between association and causation. He wrote:
“About the only thing that can be concluded from this so-called “analysis” is nothing more than maybe we should consider studying if this association actually exists.”
Tell ’em, Dr. Wes. And tell ’em, Randy: “Short people got no reason” to worry — at least not yet — from this study.
The worst-kept secret in journalism circles recently was that the New York Times was planning an article critical of the Dartmouth Atlas. Among the main points in the article:
• “The mistaken belief that the Dartmouth research proves that cheaper care is better care is widespread.”
• “The atlas’s hospital rankings do not take into account care that prolongs or improves lives.”
• “Even Dartmouth’s claims about which hospitals and regions are cheapest may be suspect.”
• “Failing to make basic data adjustments undermines the geographic variations the atlas purports to show.”
The Times has also published the correspondence it had with the Dartmouth team about methodology questions.
The Dartmouth team challenges each of these criticisms. The team says the Times made at least five factual errors and several misrepresentations. They write:
“What is truly unfortunate is that the Times missed an opportunity to help educate the American public about what our research actually shows — or about the breadth of agreement about what our findings mean for health care reform.”Read more »
This video has been available for months, but I just saw it for the first time. I suspect many women would get a chuckle from seeing the always buffed, ripped, and jacked comedian Jack Black partially disrobe to put his breast in a mammography machine — or as he calls it, the “Boob Saver 5K.”
A couple of health journalism gems you shouldn’t miss just because they were published over the holiday weekend:
Natasha Singer of the New York Times had an important piece, “When Patients Meet Online, Are There Side Effects?,” about privacy concerns when social networking sites like CureTogether.com and PatientsLikeMe.com offer online communities for patients and collect members’ health data for research purposes.
John Fauber of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinelpublished another in his “Side Effects” series on conflicts of interest in healthcare. This one was about doctors vouching for the drug Multaq for treating atrial fibrillation without ever having seen all of the data.
The Minneapolis Star Tribune began a “Too Much Medicine” series. Health editor Dave Hage informs that they’ve been working on this project for nearly a year with plans for a few more installments in coming months, each covering different ailments and procedures that are over-used or under-proven. (Unfortunately, I think the series is only available in the print editions.)
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