Don't Swallow Everything!
Even in a Web-smitten age, a poll just last summer showed that Americans still rely heavily on newspapers, radio, and TV for health news. Trouble is, it's hard to know whether you're getting the whole story about that startling new study. For that matter, how good is the study itself? A few tips will help clear a path through the journal jungle in the year ahead.
Time is precious on radio and TV, and pressure to produce snappier stories has risen. "The average length of a TV report is decreasing, especially on local news--like the 60-second 'medical minute,' " says Tom Linden, a physician who spent years as an on-air medical correspondent and now runs the University of North Carolina's medical journalism program.
Linden considers 90 seconds the absolute minimum that will permit respectful treatment of a medical topic, so something's got to give. Even with more time, he says, "for broadcast you have to take one angle and stick with it." His advice to viewers: "Look at local health stories as a headline service, and then use the Internet and reputable publications to get the details."
Print reporters, too, are being pushed to write tight. Rarely do newspapers devote ample space to dissect a new study, as the Washington Post did in November to scrutinize long-awaited findings from a trial of supplemental glucosamine-chondroitin for relief of arthritic knee pain. The story built a case that the overall findings were disappointing. A long sidebar supplied concrete guidance for anyone using or considering the supplement.
Bogus. As for the worth of medical studies, "most claimed research findings are false," argued John Ioannidis, chairman of the department of hygiene and epidemiology at the University of Ioannina School of Medicine in Greece, last August in a paper in the online journal PLoS Medicine. Many studies, he observed, are small, biased, or badly designed.
And the hotter the field, he said, the less likely that results will hold up. Researchers in a pulsating, competitive new area stress positive findings, Ioannidis stated. In fact, the more breathtaking the claim, the sooner other studies will shower it with brickbats. People should be wary, Ioannidis wrote in an E-mail interview, if they see results "that claim to be the 'first ever' without any replication by independent teams of scientists. They should wait for the dust to settle."
Help should soon arrive--a website that judges coverage by top U.S. newspapers, TV networks, and weekly newsmagazines of major treatment-oriented studies and evaluates the studies themselves. Gary Schwitzer, director of the health journalism graduate program at the University of Minnesota and the project's head, is aiming for a February 1 launch. The site will be modeled after Australia's "Media Doctor" (box, Page 56).
Key questions to keep in mind when reading about a medical study are printed on cards that researchers at the Center for the Evaluative Clinical Sciences at Dartmouth like to hand out. For example: Is it the right study population? Is the effect big? Might the effect be due to chance? If media coverage doesn't supply answers, don your skeptic's hat.
WHEN IN DOUBT--GO ONLINE
These study aids will help sort out truth from sort-of truth.
Media Doctor. Rates recent studies (one to five stars) and identifies strengths and weaknesses (mediadoctor.org.au) .
Hitting the Headlines. Judges newspaper coverage of a study and evaluates the study (www.nelh.nhs.uk/hth/archive.asp) .
Center for the Evaluative Clinical Sciences at Dartmouth. An E-mail to cecsweb@dartmouth.edu will get you a card in the mail with a list of skeptical questions to consider.
This story appears in the December 26, 2005 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.
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