On Jan. 8, I dissected a long article in the Columbia Journalism Review by David H. Freedman which argued, essentially, that accurate and timely coverage of medical news was...
Category: medical reporting
On Jan. 8, I dissected a long article in the Columbia Journalism Review by David H. Freedman which argued, essentially, that accurate and timely coverage of medical news was impossible. Published medical findings are more often wrong than right, he argues, and so a good reporter who conveys those findings accurately is spreading the wrong findings. Better to chat with friends (as we will see below) than to rely on studies.
CJR, in a very unusual move, has now asked a science writer to write a rebuttal to Freedman's piece. (Kudos to the editors for continuing this important conversation.) The new piece, by Gary Taubes, who has done extensive reporting on obesity (and who holds controversial views on the subject), consists of a very smart analysis of the...
I was going to write a post on three of the most common and important errors in medical reporting,...
I was going to write a post on three of the most common and important errors in medical reporting, but Gary Schwitzer of Health News Review has saved me the trouble. Schwitzer, as you know if you've been reading the Tracker, runs HealthNewsReview.org, which enlists a panel of experts to review medical stories based on accuracy, balance, and completeness. And he blogs on that and other topics related to medical reporting at his HealthNewsReview blog.
In a post last week, Schwitzer outlined what he sees as three recurring...
Those of us who live in New York and read the papers can easily be overwhelmed by the science and medical...
Those of us who live in New York and read the papers can easily be overwhelmed by the science and medical coverage of the New York Times. But the Times not only floods us with copy, it limits what we see, too. It rarely publishes medical or science reporting done by anyone else. So New Yorkers--who are, as any of us will readily tell you, the most sophisticated consumers of news in the world--are missing news that's read by the other 300 million or so Americans who don't happen to live on this island.
Among the pleasures enjoyed by Americans, and rarely by New Yorkers, are the stories published by The Associated Press (my former employer, I should add). And some of the best medical reporting at the AP is done by Marilynn Marchione. So it's a delight to...
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