Here's what can happen when a reporter decides to be completely honest about the limitations and problems inherent in good medical writing.
Larry Husten, a respected medical writer who specializes in coverage of cardiology,...
Category: cardiology
Here's what can happen when a reporter decides to be completely honest about the limitations and problems inherent in good medical writing.
Larry Husten, a respected medical writer who specializes in coverage of cardiology, wrote a post for Forbes yesterday that began like this:
Last week I wrote twice about exercise. Strictly speaking, both stories were complete lies.
That took my breath away. Should we lock this guy up? What exactly is he talking about?
Actually, Husten is making a strong pitch for better coverage of studies that don't quite say what they seem to say.
The first case in point: A study that found that certain drugs and exercise "are independently associated with low mortality" in individuals with abnormal cholesterol. The researchers concluded...
4May 2012
The cover of the current issue of The New York Review of Books leads with a headline describing a piece by Jerome Groopman: When Doctors Go Wrong (paywall).
I turned to it with anticipation....
The cover of the current issue of The New York Review of Books leads with a headline describing a piece by Jerome Groopman: When Doctors Go Wrong (paywall).
I turned to it with anticipation. Groopman, most often found in the pages of The New Yorker, is a guy you want to follow. He's done some good work.
Sadly, in this case, it's not only the doctors who go wrong: It's Groopman.
The piece (entitled The Lost Boy) is a disappointment. Groopman begins by filling more than a column with reminiscences of his medical school days, and how difficult it was for him to cope with sick children in the pediatrics ward. Those unsurprising grafs could have easily been clipped off, because once he gets that out of the way, he gives a fair account of a gripping book by Doron Weber,...
Larry Husten, author of the cardiology blog Cardiobrief.org, called...
Larry Husten, author of the cardiology blog Cardiobrief.org, called our attention to a recent story involving the tricky subject of primary endpoints.
Here's the lede of a press release from McMaster University, released at the European Cardiology Society meeting in Barcelona on Aug. 30th:
"A landmark international study led by McMaster University researchers found high doses of the blood thinner clopidogrel (Plavix) significantly reduce complications in heart patients undergoing angioplasty to clear blocked arteries."
Impressive, right? Landmark! I'm thinking if I ever need...
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