Why you can’t believe all the health articles that you read

I have recently become a card-carrying member of the Association of Health Care Journalists.  Lofty title for a lowly blogger, but I’ll take it.  There are two main advantages to this membership, at least that I can see so far.  The first is access to the full text of online journals, key to actually discussing research intelligently.  The second is the discussion groups, where journalists of all stripes can ask questions about reporting on health issues or point out recent discoveries.  I recently found out just how important both of these perks are, and how they relate. The British Medical Journal (BMJ) recently released an article entitled, “The association between exaggeration in health related science news and academic press releases.” It is pretty well known that mainstream media, and not-so-mainstream media, tend to seize on major research with potentially far-ranging implications and emphasize or exaggerate significant findings.  Not only that, but news articles often use a single study to advise people on health-related decisions.  What the researchers of this BMJ paper wanted to know is where does the misinformation found in the media coverage of some health-related research come from?  Is it from the academics, the press releases, the journalists, or some combination? The researchers looked at 462 press releases on biomedical and health-related research issued from universities, and compared them to the corresponding news stories and peer-reviewed jo...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - Category: Journals (General) Authors: Tags: Physician Mainstream media Source Type: blogs