Monday, May 4, 2009
Outrageous medical claims promise to cure everything!
News media are often criticized for exaggerating science stories and deliberately sensationalizing the news. However, researchers argue that sensationalism may begin at the source--the press departments of academic research centers.
The accusation comes from Annals of Internal Medicine, in which researchers reviewed press releases from 20 medical centers. The centers' PR departments had issued an average of a nearly a release each week.
Among 200 randomly selected releases that were analyzed in detail, 87 (44%) promoted animal or laboratory research, of which 64 (74%) explicitly claimed relevance to human health. But the paper later points out that "Two-thirds of even highly cited animal studies fail to translate into successful human treatments."
Among 95 releases about primary human research, 22 (23%) omitted study size and 32 (34%) failed to quantify results. Among all 113 releases about human research, few (17%) promoted randomized trials or meta-analyses. 44% of releases reported on uncontrolled interventions, samples of less than 30 participants, studies with surrogate primary outcomes or unpublished data. 58% of releases lacked relevant cautions that tempered the findings.
The researchers even chastised the exaggerated quote from researchers (although it didn't clarify whether they were making the statements or if the PR staff were somehow spinning quotes.) They concluded that academic press releases often promote research with uncertain relevance to human health without acknowledging important cautions or limitations.
Acknowledged. And mainstream journalists still shoulder some of the burden of knowing all these caveats so they can unspin the press releases to better report medical news.
One solution researchers offered was to issue fewer releases about preliminary research, especially unpublished scientific meeting presentations, to reduce the chance that journalists and the public are misled. Unpublished presentations can change substantially or fail to hold up under subsequent research, and 40% of meeting abstracts and 25% of abstracts that garner media attention are never published as full reports.
The newspaper staff here at ACP can take advantage of some key resources when we choose what to cover. We have clinicians who help with the editing process. Physicians on staff shared with us the same training they give to medical students about how to interpret research and write studies. We have ACP resources on writing and reporting medical statistics at our desks.
But probably our greatest resource has been the readers, who don't hesitate to contact us when they feel our coverage is askew. It's probably the main difference between writing for doctors and writing for the lay public. We have a check and balance in our audience, and the mainstream media doesn't.
posted by Ryan DuBosar at
5:01 PM
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Send comments to ACP Internist staff at acpinternist@acponline.org.
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- Medical news of the obvious
- The goiter: the Botox lip pout of 1622?
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Blog log
Members of the American College of Physicians contribute posts from their own sites to ACP Internist and ACP Hospitalist. Contributors include:
Albert Fuchs, MD
Albert Fuchs, MD, FACP,
graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles School of
Medicine, where he also did his internal medicine training.
Certified by the American Board of Internal Medicine, Dr. Fuchs
spent three years as a full-time faculty member at UCLA School of
Medicine before opening his private practice in Beverly Hills in
2000.
David Katz, MD
David L. Katz, MD, MPH, FACP, is an internationally renowned
authority on nutrition, weight management, and the prevention of
chronic disease, and an internationally recognized leader in
integrative medicine and patient-centered care.
DrDialogue
Juliet K. Mavromatis, MD, FACP, provides a conversation about
health topics for patients and health professionals.
Dr. Mintz' Blog
Matthew Mintz, MD, FACP, has practiced internal medicine for more
than a decade and is an Associate Professor of Medicine at an
academic medical center on the East Coast. His time is split
between teaching medical students and residents, and caring for
patients.
Everything Health
Toni Brayer, MD, FACP, blogs about the rapid changes in science,
medicine, health and healing in the 21st century.
FutureDocs
Vineet Arora, MD, FACP, is Associate Program Director for the
Internal Medicine Residency and Assistant Dean of Scholarship &
Discovery at the Pritzker School of Medicine for the University of
Chicago. Her education and research focus is on resident duty
hours, patient handoffs, medical professionalism, and quality of
hospital care. She is also an academic hospitalist.
Glass
Hospital
John H. Schumann, MD, FACP, provides transparency on the workings
of medical practice and the complexities of hospital care,
illuminates the emotional and cognitive aspects of caregiving and
decision-making from the perspective of an active primary care
physician, and offers behind-the-scenes portraits of hospital
sanctums and the people who inhabit them.
Gut Check
Ryan Madanick, MD, ACP Member, is a gastroenterologist at the
University of North Carolina School of Medicine, and the Program
Director for the GI & Hepatology Fellowship Program. He
specializes in diseases of the esophagus, with a strong interest in
the diagnosis and treatment of patients who have
difficult-to-manage esophageal problems such as refractory GERD,
heartburn, and chest pain.
I'm dok
ACP Member Mike Aref, MD, PhD, ACP Member, is an academic
hospitalist with an interest in basic and clinical science and
education, with interests in noninvasive monitoring and diagnostic
testing using novel bedside imaging modalities, diagnostic
reasoning, medical informatics, new medical education modalities,
pre-code/code management, palliative care, patient-physician
communication, quality improvement, and quantitative biomedical
imaging.
Just Oncology
Richard Just, MD, ACP Member, has 36 years in clinical practice of hematology and medical oncology. His blog is a joint publication with Gregg Masters, MPH.
KevinMD
Kevin Pho, MD, ACP Member, offers one of the Web's definitive sites
for influential health commentary.
MD
Whistleblower
Michael Kirsch, MD, FACP, addresses the joys and challenges of
medical practice, including controversies in the doctor-patient
relationship, medical ethics and measuring medical quality. When
he's not writing, he's performing colonoscopies.
Medical
Lessons
Elaine Schattner, MD, ACP Member, shares her ideas on education,
ethics in medicine, health care news and culture. Her views on
medicine are informed by her past experiences in caring for
patients, as a researcher in cancer immunology, and as a patient
who's had breast cancer.
Prescriptions
David M. Sack, MD, FACP, practices general gastroenterology at a
small community hospital in Connecticut. His blog is a series of
musings on medicine, medical care, the health care system and
medical ethics, in no particular order.
Reflections
of a Grady Doctor
Kimberly Manning, MD, FACP, reflects on the personal side of being
a doctor in a community hospital in Atlanta.
Technology in (Medical) Education
Neil Mehta, MBBS, MS, FACP, is interested in use of technology in
education, social media and networking, practice management and
evidence-based medicine tools, personal information and knowledge
management.
White Coat Underground
Peter A. Lipson, MD, ACP Member, is a practicing internist and
teaching physician in Southeast Michigan. The blog, which has been
around in various forms since 2007, offers musings on the
intersection of science, medicine, and culture.
ACP Internist and ACP Hospitalist also contribute to and draw upon content from Get Better Health, a network created by Val Jones, MD, to support and promote health care professional bloggers, provide insightful and trustworthy health commentary, and help to inform health policy makers about the clinician's point of view on health care reform, science, research and patient care.
Other blogs of note:
American
Journal of Medicine
Also known as the Green Journal, the American Journal of Medicine
publishes original clinical articles of interest to physicians in
internal medicine and its subspecialities, both in academia and
community-based practice.
Clinical Correlations
A collaborative medical blog started by Neil Shapiro, MD, ACP
Member, associate program director at New York University Medical
Center's internal medicine residency program. Faculty, residents
and students contribute case studies, mystery quizzes, news,
commentary and more.
db's Medical
Rants
Robert M. Centor, MD, FACP, contributes short essays contemplating
medicine and the health care system.
Interact
MD
Michael Benjamin, MD, ACP member, doesn't accept industry money so
he can create an independent, clinician-reviewed space on the
Internet for physicians to report and comment on the medical news
of the day.
PLoS
Blog
The Public Library of Science's open access materials include a
blog.
White Coat Rants
One of the most popular anonymous blogs written by an emergency
room physician.
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