[Online Magazine] BioNews

BioNews is an online British magazine that covers genetics, assisted conception, and stem cell research. Founded in 1999 with a grant from the Baroness Mary Warnock, the site offers a mix of news and commentary on both scientific advancements and the political, legal, ethical, and social issues that arise with these advancements. Recent articles have unpacked Europe’s approval of stem cell marketing, highlighted some bad journalism on egg donors, and explored the possible medical applications of graphene. In addition to the excellent news coverage, the site offers a large glossary of terms related to genetics, assisted conception, and stem cell research. Few free, web-based magazines can compete with BioNews when it comes to coverage of biotech and related topics. [CNH]

From The Scout Report, Copyright Internet Scout 1994-2015. https://www.scout.wisc.edu

The State of Health Journalism in the U.S., March 2009 (old but still true)

“When I started, we had a stand-alone science/health section
and several people covering various aspects of the beat—health
policy/insurance, consumer health, and biosciences. Now
there’s only one person left with any medical journalism
training and that person is covering higher education.”

–15-year newspaper reporter laid off in 2008

 

“The pressure to produce from my editor blunts your ambition
because you know if you have a choice of a story you can turn
around in a week as opposed to one that may take 2- 3 times
as long, you have to juggle. You make choices based on the
stories you choose not to pursue. And that’s where readers
come out losers. That’s particularly true on health policy
and insurance. How ambitious am I going to be on this
story? Do I feel encouraged to do this kind of reporting
or” not? Those are dilemmas I face regularly.

–Major-market newspaper reporter

 

From the summary

This report provides a snapshot of the current state of health journalism in the U.S. today. It is based on a literature review of more than 100 published pieces of research on health journalism; on a survey of members of the Association of Health Care Journalists (AHCJ), conducted by the Foundation and AHCJ; and on informal one-on-one interviews conducted by the author of this report with more than 50 journalists who work (or worked) for newspapers, radio and TV stations, magazines, and Web sites in small and large markets.

Excerpts from the report

The cuts in budget and personnel that so many newsrooms are facing contribute to several troubling trends in the content of health journalism:

•  An emphasis on stories that can be produced quickly—often meaning more stories on medical studies, and sometimes sacrificing on quality.
•  Fewer in-depth or complex stories, especially about health policy, and more “hyper-local” stories along with stories variously described as lifestyle, consumer, or news-you-can-use.
• Reliance on stories produced and syndicated elsewhere, by non-traditional news sources.
• The influence of commercial interests on health news, through video news releases (VNRs), sponsored news segments, free syndicated news segments from health providers, and the influence of PR firms steering the news.

  [Janice’s note…I am thinking of local hospitals who provide articles and interviews on the latest (expensive) procedures to the local media. Yes, hospitals are commercial interests. Seldom do these articles or interviews go into details about evidence, cost, or appropriateness.]

……….

There is an undeniably widespread trend in TV news—often in health news—to label
as news some content which has been provided by industry sources who covet publicity in news programming. This practice takes several forms:

• Video news releases (VNRs) – produced and distributed by those promoting a product or cause. They are produced to look exactly like high-quality TV news packages. They are usually supplied on videotape or via satellite feed along with a script so that stations can put their own reporter’s face and voice on the story.
• Sponsored health news – usually paid for by a local medical center and featuring professionals from that medical center. The fact that these segments are paid for, and that they include only certain perspectives, is usually not disclosed.
• Free news segments from health providers – produced by medical centers, featuring only professionals from that organization.

“My biggest challenge? …Trying to figure who’s paying for what
pitch, who’s paying for what health campaign. There’s dollars
attached to everything.”

–Veteran reporter

 

What’s a reader to do? Start by reading articles thoughtfully. Look for clues for completeness, strength of evidence, conflicts of interest, and authorship.

A few good resources on how to analyze medical and health news stories.

• Tips for Understanding Studies (HealthNewsReview.org)
• Evaluating Internet Health Information (Penn State)
•  Evaluating Medical Research Findings and Clinical Trials (Family Caregiver Alliance)

Related articles

• In the era of pageview journalism, the pitch doesn’t end when the story is published (holtz.com)

 

[HealthNewsReview.Org Weekly Digest item] – Scientific Conference News Caveat

Those of you who read my posts regularly know one of my themes is to read scientific and medical news items carefully with an eye to interpreting them objectively. *

Here are some excerpts from the 12 November 2012 HealthNewsReview.org weekly update

…the cheerleaders of health care journalism often rush to publish news from scientific conferences that is not ready for prime time – at least not without caveats and context. So that explains our post this week:

• Be still, my heart, and let’s wait on medical conference abstract news

An important reminder – for journalists and for the general public – appears in the American Heart Association journal Circulation.  The paper is entitled, “The Conversion of Cardiovascular Conference Abstracts to Publications,” and it is published right about the same time as the American Heart Association’s own huge Scientific Sessions wrapped up for 2012.   We wrote earlier about some of our concerns about news coverage from this meeting.

The new journal article provides sound reasons for why our concerns about conference news coverage are sound. The researchers analyzed abstracts presented at the American Heart Association (AHA), American College of Cardiology (ACC), and European Society of Cardiology (ESC) Scientific Sessions from 2006-2008. Then they checked how many were published.

Drum roll, please….

• Less than one-third of the presented abstracts were published within two years of the conference presentation.
• After five years, the rates rose a bit to 49.7% for AHA, 42.6% for ACC, and 37.6% for ESC .

So while some journalists are glued to coverage of these meetings, publishing daily for general news audiences that may not understand the nuances of the limitations of drawing conclusions from talks presented at scientific meetings, most of this stuff isn’t even published in the medical literature for at least 5 years – if ever!

Why does this matter?

Such news coverage creates a rose-colored view of progress in research.  It may not be inaccurate but it most certainly misleads and lacks important context if it doesn’t present caveats about the limitations.

Don’t forget the important JAMA paper, “Media Coverage of Scientific Meetings: Too Much, Too Soon?” which concluded:

“Results are frequently presented to the public as scientifically sound evidence rather than as preliminary findings with still uncertain validity. With some effort on the part of meeting organizers, journalists, and scientists, it will be possible to better serve the public.”..

Related articles at HealthNewsReview.org

• Pumping out heart news from the big Heart Association conference
•  …much botched news coverage of a study showing a statistical association between statin use and fewer deaths from cancer.  The emphasis we added was deliberate and important.  That’s all it showed.  A statistical association – not a causal link. Some stories didn’t get it.
• In the face of this string of negative reviews, we were delighted to shine a light on excellence found – in all places – in a local television news story.  A five-and-a-half-minute TV news story – in a sweeps/ratings period – thatchose to do a profile of Dr. Tim Wilt, who serves on the US Preventive Services Task Force.  What some TV news directors may have viewed as a “yawner” topic was hardly that.  If more journalists got to know USPSTF members, maybe we’d have less “death panel” rhetoric about their work.***Evaluating Health Information (Health Resources for All edited by Janice Flahiff)

What the ‘limits of DNA’ story reveals about the challenges of science journalism in the ‘big data’ age

This journalist ends her post by acknowledging that the medical news readership often bases their decisions on medical and science news articles. She and others strive to report based on sound science, despite current obstacles.

Excerpts from the 6 April 2012 blog post at The Last Word on Nothing

As a science journalist, I sympathize with book reviewers who wrestle with the question of whether to write negative reviews. It seems a waste of time to write about a dog of a book when there are so many other worthy ones; but readers deserve to know if Oprah is touting a real stinker.
On 2 April, Science Translational Medicine published a study on DNA’s shortcomings in predicting disease. My editors and I had decided not to cover the study last week after we saw it in the journal’s embargoed press packet, because my sources offered heavy critiques of its methods..

…I ended up writing about the paper anyway after it made a huge media splash that prompted fury among geneticists. In a thoughtful post at the Knight Science Journalism tracker, Paul Raeburn asked yesterday why other reporters didn’t notice the problems with the study that I wrote about. Having been burned by my own share of splashy papers that go bust, I think the “limits of DNA “ story underscores a few broader issues for our work as science journalists:
1. Science consists of more and more “big data” studies whose findings depend on statistical methods that few of us reporters can understand on our own. I never would have detected the statistical problems with the Vogelstein paper by myself. We can look for certain red flags that a study might not be up to snuff, such as small sample sizes or weak clinical trial designs, but it’s a lot harder to sniff out potential problems with complicated statistical methods.

2. Challenges in the news business are ratcheting up pressure on all of us. Reporters are doing much more work in much less time than we have in the past as we compete with an expanded universe of news providers who have sped up the news cycle. Yet it still takes time and effort to make sense of the developments we cover. It took me about three days to report my piece on the Vogelstein paper while I was simultaneously working on other assignments. That’s probably longer than most reporters can spend on a piece like this…

The article goes on to point out other challenges as

4. It’s becoming more difficult to trust traditional scientific authorities.

5. Beware the deceptively simple storyline.

6. Getting the story right matters more than ever.

Related Resources

• How to Read a Research Paper (and also Understand Health News Research Items) (jflahiff.wordpress.com)
• “Summaries for Patients” and other plain language summaries help patients and others understand medical studies and guidelines (jflahiff.wordpress.com)
• HealthNewsReview.org – Independent Expert Reviews of News Stories(jflahiff.wordpress.com)
  • HealthNewsReview.org  includes reviews of health articles in the news.
    It also has a toolkit with a number of tipsheets, primers, links and other resources to help journalists and consumers do a better job of evaluating claims about health care interventions.

Related articles

• Science journalism blows it, dolphin rape edition. (behavecology.wordpress.com)

• Science and Steamrollers: How Research Stories Can Go Off the Rails(CancerResearch101)

• Do scientists understand science journalism? (whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com)
• DNA has limits, but so does study questioning its value, geneticists say (blogs.nature.com)
• Science journalists should be asking questions and deflating exaggeration (guardian.co.uk)

HealthNewsReview.org – Independent Expert Reviews of News Stories

HealthNewsReview.org – Independent Expert Reviews of News Stories

Health News Review includes reviews of health articles in the news.Their objective criteria includes these factors…

• What’s the total cost?
• How often do benefits occur?
• How often do harms occur?
• How strong is the evidence?
• Is this condition exaggerated?

• Are there alternative options?
• Is this really a new approach?
• Is it available to me?
• Who’s promoting this?
• Do they have a conflict of interest?

The Web site also includes a toolkit – “a number of tipsheets, primers, links and other resources to help journalists and consumers do a better job of evaluating claims about health care interventions”

• A list of tips for understanding studies.

• A collection of other resources for evaluating claims & analyzing news coverage

• A list of just some of the websites and blogs we like

• For journalists, we’ve posted a list of independent experts who can help them with their stories

• A HealthNewsReview.org widget – that you can display on your website – that posts headlines of the latest things published on our site

From their About Page

HealthNewsReview.org is a website dedicated to:

• Improving the accuracy of news stories about medical treatments, tests, products and procedures.
• Helping consumers evaluate the evidence for and against new ideas in health care.

We support and encourage the ABCs of health journalism.

• Accuracy
• Balance
• Completeness

Related Resources

How to Read a Research Paper (and also Understand Health News Research Items) (jflahiff.wordpress.com)

patientInform
 “The goal of patientINFORM is to allow patients, their family members and anyone interested in learning more about a specific disease or its treatment to access the most important new research articles through the web sites ofparticipating health organizations or publishers. Participating health organizations provide interpretation of research articles, in the form of summaries or news items written to be understood by nonphysician, nonscientist readers..

Understanding medical research (MedlinePlus) – links to overviews, related issues, and information from organizations

Related articles

• Misleading information on health social sites (and tips on how to evaluate health/medical information) (jflahiff.wordpress.com)
• Are Health Apps the Cure for Anything That Ails You? (jflahiff.wordpress.com)
• Health Literacy Month Is Back – Tell a Friend (engagingthepatient.com)
• Three common mistakes in medical journalism (boingboing.net)
• Looking for free, online, trustworthy health information that requires paid subscriptions? Check your local library’s home page!(jflahiff.wordpress.com)
• It is a rare medical story that gets high marks (jflahiff.wordpress.com)
• Don’t Be Fooled By Health Fraud Scams (jflahiff.wordpress.com)
• How the News Media May Hurt – Not Help – Health Literacy Efforts (engagingthepatient.com)
• Essential tips for medical journalists (kevinmd.com)
• PubMed Health – A Growing Resource for Clinical Effectiveness Information (jflahiff.wordpress.com)
• Misleading information on health social sites (and tips on how to evaluate health/medical information) (jflahiff.wordpress.com)
• Are Health Apps the Cure for Anything That Ails You? (jflahiff.wordpress.com)
• Health Literacy Month Is Back – Tell a Friend (engagingthepatient.com)
• Three common mistakes in medical journalism (boingboing.net)

 

It is a rare medical story that gets high marks

Image via Wikipedia

From a September 2011 article at KevinMD.com

Like you, I receive a whole bunch of breaking medical news every day, from television, radio, newspapers, direct mail, email alerts, press releases, and multiple websites.

Is any of it worth my time, my attention, or even a change in my knowledge, attitude, behavior, or medical practice? How can I quickly tell?

A medical journalist from Minnesota named Gary Schwitzer recognized this problem many years ago and created a service that will help all of us, in and outside of medicine and medical journalism, to spend our time and direct our attention wisely.

 

Schwitzer’s service is called Health News Review and widely publicizes a set of criteria to apply to medical stories reported in the popular media.

While his approach cannot prevent fraud, liars, and fabricators, a careful use of his criteria can help the reader filter out what is likely to be real junk, or even worse, harmful.

Medical Reporting Rules to live (or die) by:

1. How available is the treatment/test/product/procedure to the likely reader/viewer/listener at the time of the report?
2. What is the cost or charge for the test/treatment/product or procedure mentioned in the story? To the patient? The insurance company? The government?
3. Is there evidence of disease mongering in the story? Does it oversell or exaggerate a condition or create unwarranted fear?
4. Does the story seem to grasp and convey the quality of the evidence supporting the basis for the study?
5. Does the article provide appropriate balance about harms that might be caused by the treatment/test/product/procedure that constitutes the basis for the story?
6. Does the story establish the true novelty of the approach? Much that is purported to be new, really is not.
7. How does the story frame the relative quantitative value of a new treatment, test, product, or procedure and place the benefits in context with others, especially dealing with absolute and relative values?
8. Did the author and editor of the medical news story rely solely or largely on a press release or did they also seek and quote other sources?
9. Was there an independent source and were any possible conflicts of interests of sources disclosed in the article?
10. Does the story provide the context of treatment/test/product/procedure other than those that are being reported?

Related articles

• Essential tips for medical journalists (kevinmd.com)
• Comparison of good and bad reporting on leukemia gene therapy (boingboing.net)
• Health Literacy Month Is Back – Tell a Friend (engagingthepatient.com)