| How to Spot Bogus Health News There are numerous reasons for shoddy health care reporting. • Journalists have to meet publishing deadlines despite the time needed to do in-depth research. • Increasingly articles are valued by publishers for their click bait appeal over their content value. • A fuzzy line between the interest of the advertizing departments and editorial oversight. The result is an increasing number of articles posing as critical articles that are little more than advertisements in disguise. Perhaps you read one of the headlines below and wondered, “Is it true?” • “Drinking wine is better than exercise” • “Coffee and Cheesecake Cure Cancer” • “Eating Right and Exercising Solves 90% of Health Problems” Would you know how to identify the misleading news report? It’s not that hard if you know what to look for. Here are a few pointers. First ask, was this a human Study? If the research was conducted on animals or in a laboratory culture, the findings may be interesting but can't yet be known to apply to humans. Discovering how a dozen mice respond is only a first step in testing a new idea. Often chemicals, drugs, foods, etc. have different effects on people. Complicating factors are numerous. Because something works in a lab doesn't mean that it'll work in real world situations. And, just because something works in a lab doesn't mean that it'll work in the same way outside of a lab. Know that correlation is not causation With modern day computers, it’s possible to find thousands of things that are statistically related. While these correlations are interesting that doesn't mean that one thing caused the other. It just means there is a possible association, which could be worth further investigation. A strong correlation could mean any one of several things • Maybe one thing did cause the other • Maybe something else caused both • Maybe a combination of events were responsible • Maybe they only appear related but are in fact not related. • Or, maybe another reason • Or, maybe it means nothing. Examples of intriguing claims for correlation abound and serve as a warning when this is the best claim a news report can offer. For an abundance of humorous correlations visit the Spurious Correlations web site. Is the story one-sided? Rarely do advances in medicine happen without tradeoffs between the positive and negative effects of a treatment. In short, a news report that extols only the positive is suspicious. For example, a story that talks about the accuracy of a medical test, should also talk about the rate of false-positives. Few tests work 100% of the time. It’s important to know how often a test indicates a person has a disease when they don't actually have it. A story that only reports on accuracy but says nothing about false positives (specificity) is most likely not giving you the information needed to make an informed judgment about how useful the test is in real life. In general, if it sounds too good to be true it probably is. Is the New Finding Affordable? Few treatments are cost free or risk free. Without a price tag, many treatments sound amazing. You may have noticed that few health care stories about new innovations mention cost. Often, new high cost treatments aren’t covered by insurance. Usually there is a span of several years between when a treatment is announced and when insurance companies deem them covered as non- experimental. Are the sources credible? A red flag is an article based on findings by one person. Even more suspicious is an article promoting the sale of a product based on one expert’ s testimony. The more trustworthy health articles will have multiple sources that aren’t connected to the articles author or product promoted. In general, single-source stories are suspect. Of course, the person quoted should be a person qualified to speak about the nuances of practical treatments. An academic researcher is often far more optimistic than a practicing physician. Similarly, a quote from a person in a related field might be accurate or just an opinion. For an entertaining and educational critic of medical news visit the Health News Review where a recent article titled “7 Reasons That Beer is Good for You” is debunked.” You get the idea - if it sounds too good, beware. Who Were the Subjects? Many researchers are associated with colleges and use college students for their studies. This is often the case in psychology research. How college students respond may be quite different than people in their 30s, 40, 50s and 60s. Complicating these limited studies is lack of data across population in terms of age, race, socioeconomic status, etc. Granted, many of these studies are interesting. Whether useful or not in the real world is typically a work in progress. To Learn More Care to learn more about spotting accuracy issues in healthcare news? Learn more from “Health News Review's 10 Criteria” and Vox’s article, “Why So Many of the Health Articles You Read Are Junk.’ In the age of Dr. Google with trillions of health facts on-line you have reason to be confused. One article may suggest you have nothing to be concerned about and the next gives you six months to live. Sorting out the myths from the evidence based knowledge can be challenging. Fortunately, that’s what doctors are trained to do. If your heads spinning from Googling a medical question then maybe you need a walk to settle your mind. Join me Saturday morning and we’ll talk about it. Nancy Neighbors, MD Huntsville, Alabama Medical Headlines We Wish Were True We are bombarded daily with fake news and negative headlines touting advances in healthcare. What positive health headline would you like to see? Below are a few we would like to see. • Consumption of Chocolate Grants Eternal Youth • Lawyers Repent for Frivolous Healthcare Litigation • Dr. Oz Admits He Was Wrong About Everything • Illegal Drug Industry Apologizes For Mess Created • New Drug Reverses All Causes of Dementia • More Patients Take Responsibility for Their Health • Vascular and Thoracic Surgery Patients Quit Smoking • More Losing Weight, Stopping Smoking, and Walking • Congress Will Follow Same Ethics as Doctors • Coffee and Cheesecake Cure Cancer • Malpractice Attorneys Converted to Useful Members Of Society • Liability Insurance Industry Disbanded For Lack Of Need • Top Brass in Hospitals Help Patients Instead of Bottom Line • New Pill Helps Politicians Work for Common Good • Politeness Pill Helps DMV Employees • Drinking Wine is Better Than Exercise • Millions Responding to Medical Lifestyle Advice For the record, all of these headlines are unlikely in the near future and for sure a glass of wine is not a substitute for exercise nor is coffee and cheesecake a cure for cancer. “More patients walking with the Doc” would make a good headline. You could make it happen! Just join me Saturday mornings. Perhaps you have a humorous imaginary headline to share or a real one you’ve recently noticed? Bring it along. Humor is good medicine. |