Reporting medicine in the media
Helen Jaques
Friday, 13 June 2008 23:19 UTC
Four daily cups of tea ‘prevents heart attacks’?
Alcohol can cut risk of arthritis?
Hmm, far-fetched sounding stories on medical research pop up in the news all the time.
However, the other day I stumbled across the fantastic NHS website Behind the headlines.
The site aims to:
“explain the facts behind the headlines and give a better understanding of the science that makes the news”
i.e. spot a hysterical story about medical research in the news and boil down the respective journal paper to cut through the hype and provide a take home message on what the findings mean for personal health.
As someone who reads clinical papers all the time, I’m pretty aware of how findings are inflated in the media. Ergo, I think this website is a great idea and does a brilliant job of explaining the science behind the stories in a matter-of-fact way.
But do the general public appreciate how much medical findings tend to get trumped up in the media? And if they do, are they really likely to look at a website like Behind the Headlines, regardless of how engaging it is?
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Replies
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No, they don’t, and no, I don’t think they will. But I’m glad this site exists, if only to potentially rank just a bit higher than some crank’s site in a web search.
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It seems to be geared up to addressing specific newspaper articles. For example, keying in “autism” does not bring up any returns; keying in “autism” and “vaccination” brings up a list, none of which are to an article about the misconceptions (widely held) about a link. The one article in the list that seemed most relevant, an information article on immuization, was a bad link.
I think the site is a very good idea, but it needs to be better, and to have some general articles about common, topical misunderstandings.
It took the NIH a while to do this for HIV and AIDS, for example, but when they finally did it, they did it very well indeed, and it is with relief that one can refer enquiries to it.
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I personally like how focused the Behind the Headlines website is, and the authors do seem to respond very quickly to current news articles so it is very timely. The site is promising to provide analysis articles that will cover recurring health issues in the news, so an article on the MMR/autism issue could soon be on the way…
I reckon something like the NHS Direct website or one of the various sections of the NHS Choices site would be best for patients looking up general information about diseases and treatments. For example, the Live Well section of the NHS Choices website includes a page on Perception, Facts and Myths about autism, although it doesn’t mention anything about the media reports of the whole MMR issue.
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Relevant to this thread is Chewing over the Churnalism: PLoS Medicine in NHS Choices from the PLoS blog.
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