Improving the public dialogue about health care
Anchorman Brian Williams doesn't present the only journalism ethics issue for the NBC Nightly News.  
It's another in a long history of TV networks placing their MD-journalists-contributors on the air in a conflict-of-interest situation. Recent Harvard Med School grad and aspiring journalist Shara Yurkiewicz wrote on social media that "Physician-journalist conflict of interest is food for thought I'd never chewed on before...Had some spirited debate on this topic in the MedPage Today newsroom...Thanks for raising the temperature a few degrees."  We can lower the temperature, but these issues deserve deeper discussion. I plan to write more about it this week.  

Other blog posts: 

Different conflict of interest questions were raised in a guest post by Jeanne Lenzer: "CDC, conflicting (conflicted?) info, Tamiflu and unquestioning news reporting." 

The intense criticism of a Toronto Star story on HPV vaccine Gardasil's "dark side," followed by the newspaper's admission - "We failed in this case." 

Guest blogger Trudy Lieberman saw a familiar pattern with a journal paper on surveys showing doctors' support for medical imaging.  But she asks why neither the journal nor the industry news release disclosed the funding for the work.  She got results, too, with a promise of future disclosure. 

An important academic science journalism project was published in
JAMA Internal Medicine - "Research Misconduct Identified by the US Food and Drug Administration:  Out of Sight, Out of Mind, Out of the Peer-Reviewed Literature."

And a week can't go by without more botched reporting of observational study results. This time, endometrial cancer joins the "coffee club" in which association

≠ causation.  

Read who got it wrong and how HealthDay eventually got it right. 


 

In our systematic, criteria-driven news story reviews: 

 

Best of the week of those we reviewed - 4 star scores for: 

  • A Vox.com story (the first of theirs we've reviewed) - on the debate over removal of 10 million wisdom teeth a year.  

Other reviews: 


 

A CBS online story asked if elderberry can help treat colds & flu. Our review called it "a mishmash of evidence and anecdotes presented in a way that undercuts the science and is likely to confuse readers."  3-star score.  


 

All others received sub-par 2-star scores: 

 

Video of the week:  By now, many of you may have seen John Oliver's piece on drug company marketing to physicians.  If not, it's well worth your time.  

 

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Marketing to Doctors (HBO)
Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Marketing to Doctors (HBO)
Gary Schwitzer 
Publisher, HealthNewsReview.org
Adjunct Associate Professor
University of Minnesota School of Public Health

This project is now supported by a generous grant from the Laura and John Arnold Foundation.     

 

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