Doctor/blogger: Can’t depend on science reporting
Val Jones, M.D., a blogger at Science-Based Medicine and president and CEO of a health education company, tees off on media coverage of science in a post titled “Why You Can’t Depend On The Press For Science Reporting.”
Jones writes about a recent encounter with a reporter writing about holistic treatments. The reporter interviewed Jones about energy healing and alternative medicine because a local hospital is offering therapeutic touch and Reiki healing treatments.
Jones, who documented the interview – or at least the “essence” of the interview – on the blog, says the final article didn’t include “a single word” of what she said and that the piece is:
full of the usual pseudoscientific arguments: anecdotal evidence, mistrust of scientific methods, a call to “open-mindedness,” an emphasis on “natural” as being synonymous with “safe and effective,” and an “everybody’s doing it, even academic medical centers” rationale for adoption. There was no dissenting opinion – just an unquestioning acceptance of energy medicine.
Jones’ skepticism about journalists’ ability to cover science in a fact- and evidence-based way is clear: “Thank goodness we’re no longer beholden to mainstream media for all our health news and commentary.”
She calls for scientists and health care professionals to “step up to the plate” and contribute to “unedited” outlets such as Science-Based Medicine because “Waiting for reporters to include us in the discourse could take a very long time…”
The comments on the post – now up to 30 – are interesting, with many reinforcing Jones’ view that journalists in general do a poor job. But there are some, such as one from “Fifi” that points out this particular reporter was probably not a science or health writer and was probably writing a “fluff” piece for a lifestyles section. Other commenters point out that it really does depend on who the reporter is.
So, Covering Health readers, what would you tell Jones about how you report science and health news? Do you see the same problems she does or is her generalization unfair?
Reading lists for health care journalists
In her column for Generations Beat Online, AHCJ member Eileen Beal offers a reading list for health journalists and focuses on two books in particular that she believes will help prepare reporters for the first wave of baby boomers, which will hit Medicare next year (scroll down to item 4, “Beal’s Beat”).
Photo by Beverly & Pack via Flickr.The subjects these books cover, doctors’ decisions and statistics, are broad enough to be useful to even those journalists not focused on aging coverage.
Her suggestions include “How Doctors Think,” by Harvard professor and oncologist Jerome Groopman, and “Know Your Chances: Understanding Health Statistics.
In an e-mail separate from her column, Beal pointed out that Covering Health readers also might be interested in an edited, ranked and extensive list of health resource books compiled by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality that includes general and specific offerings.
Group’s tours highlight pollution in West Oakland
California Watch’s Ali Winston writes that to increase awareness of both legacy and ongoing sources of toxins in their venerable neighborhood, the West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project is offering “toxic tours” of the area’s most polluted locations.
Crane unloading shipping containers in West Oakland. Photo by oso via Flickr.The tour focuses on the neighborhood’s industrial legacy and includes West Oakland’s own federal Superfund site, where a chemical company “left a deposit of cancer-causing vinyl chloride in the soil and groundwater” as well as the largest recycling smelter west of the Mississippi and the docks where lines of cargo ships and big rigs sit idling every weekday as they wait for containers to be loaded and unloaded.
Related
In their series “Shortened Lives,” Suzanne Bohan and Sandy Kleffman profiled people from different (though nearby) ZIP codes, finding wide disparities in their expected life spans, based on where they live, their social status and the toll of chronic stress. The series explains the effect these disparities have on health care costs, as well as how they are caused and how they might be addressed. Bohan and Kleffman wrote about the project in a piece for AHCJ members and we have included additional resources for those interested in exploring disparities in health care in their own communities.
Coincidence leads to remarkable transplant story
Last month, Salt Lake Tribune reporter Heather May was following a family as they waited for the liver donation that would ensure their 13-month-old daughter’s survival. The infant’s mother, Liz Badger, struggled with the unavoidable fact that the donor her daughter so desperately needed would likely be somebody else’s dead child.
At the same time her co-worker, Erin Alberty, was reporting on a 12-year-old girl, Ashley Maynard, on life support. That child’s mother hoped she would slip away in such a manner that her organs could go on to save as many other children as possible.
That’s when, as the reporters watched from the sidelines, the two stories came together. It’s a deep look at transplants, donors and ethics made possible by luck and thorough reporting. For an inside-the-newsroom look at how it all came together, I e-mailed May. Here’s her response:
After reading Liz Badger’s blog, I wanted to write a story about one family’s experience waiting for a transplant, never imagining the story we would get.
I started following the Badger family Jan. 5 — which happened to be the day that Ashley was struck by a car, though of course we didn’t know that until later. So I was with Liz as she spoke about waiting for another child to die as Ashley was in the hospital.
I was with the Badgers during their weekly doctor’s appointment while Ashley was literally down the hall on the same floor in the hospital, again, unknown to us.
On Jan. 14: Liz called me to say they were headed to the hospital for the transplant. Hours later, Ashley’s father called our newsroom to tell Erin Alberty that his daughter was going to be taken off life support and would become an organ donor. Erin had not been following the family, but the paper had written a brief about Ashley having been hit a week earlier while waiting for the bus. Her father called to update the paper about her condition.
At that point, the paper figured that Ashley was going to be LuLu’s donor, but we couldn’t ethically link the two families. I considered attending the funeral with Liz and James with their permission. But after consulting with an ethicist at Poynter, the paper decided I shouldn’t go: We couldn’t tell Ashley’s family that the reason we wanted to attend was because we thought Ashley was likely LuLu’s donor and that we wanted to watch as the families met.
Later, I got permission from Camie to talk to Ashley’s doctors about Ashley’s care. I recreated the hospital and funeral scenes from interviews. I was there when Camie met LuLu for the first time.
Health care summit streaming live
President Barack Obama is hosting a bipartisan meeting to discuss health care reform. The meeting, from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m. is being streamed live.
- Obama’s proposal
- Republican ideas included in Obama’s proposal
- Solutions to health care from the GOP
- Bipartisan meeting
Selden Ring finalists explored nurses, caregivers
Two stories about caregivers were finalists for the 2010 Selden Ring Award for Investigative Reporting:
- “When Caregivers Harm,” a collaboration between Maloy Moore of the Los Angeles Times and Charles Ornstein and Tracy Weber of ProPublica, exposed significant flaws in the oversight of California nurses with disciplinary problems.
- “Trust Betrayed,” a series produced by Sally Kestin, Peter Franceschina and John Maines of the South Florida Sun Sentinel, revealed inadequate screening of caregivers with criminal histories.
The award, with a $35,000 prize, recognizes published investigative reporting that has brought results.
Analysis reveals who hired health care lobbyists
Filed under: Government, Health care reform, Public records
The Center for Public Integrity has put together an interesting analysis and graph of what interests were lobbying on health care reform in Congress in 2009.
Information to create the chart is drawn from an analysis of Senate lobbying disclosure forms. The analysis found that “more than 1,750 companies and organizations hired about 4,525 lobbyists — eight for each member of Congress — to influence health reform bills in 2009.”
Trade, advocacy and professional organizations led the lobbying push, with hospitals, insurance companies and manufacturers behind them.
Some interesting tidbits:
- AARP deployed 56 in-house lobbyists and two from outside firms
- The U.S. Chamber of Commerce had 47 lobbyists, all but eight from outside firms
- The American Medical Association had 33, 11 from outside firms.
- Some unexpected organizations, including Americans for the Arts and the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions, also had lobbyists trying to influence health care legislation.
Majority of journalists are using social media
A survey by a George Washington University researcher and a public relations metrics firm found that reporters and editors rely heavily on social media. In case you haven’t seen any of the recent coverage, here are a few interesting numbers (pulled along with some accompanying text from the press release).
For research:
- 89 percent use blogs
- 65 percent use social media sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn
- 52 percent use microblogging services such as Twitter
- 61 percent use Wikipedia
- 84 percent said social media sources were “slightly less” or “much less” reliable than traditional media
- 49 percent said social media suffers from “lack of fact checking, verification and reporting standards”
Reasons journalists use PR professionals
- 44 percent use them for “interviews and access to sources and experts”
- 23 percent use them for “answers to questions and targeted information”
- 17 percent use them for “perspective, information in context, and background information”
Keeping up with AHCJ members
The latest compilation of news about AHCJ members is now available. Be sure to see who changed jobs, won awards, received fellowships, published books and more.
Are you an AHCJ member with news you’d like to share? Send it to christy@healthjournalism.org.
See previous posts about about AHCJ members.
Policy lets many see study but restricts reporting
On his new blog, Embargo Watch, Ivan Oransky, M.D., writes about an embargo policy that restricts journalists from writing about papers even when they are widely available to doctors, medical schools and hospitals.
Oransky, who is treasurer of AHCJ’s board and executive editor of Reuters Health, has written about embargoes before for Covering Health and TheScientist.com, questioning whether embargoes are serving the public, the scientific journals or journalists.
In this case, The American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine placed an embargo on a study it made available “through HighWire, a Stanford University service that many publishers use to make electronic versions of their journals available.”
This was a new one for me. Embargoed papers not being available to anyone but the press, sure. But available to many doctors — and anyone doctors showed them to — for two weeks before we could write about them?
Oransky discussed the policy with the director of communications and marketing at the American Thoracic Society, which publishes AJRCCM, and reports on the response from him as well as from other public relations professionals and reporters.
One particularly interesting comment points out that investors are likely seeing studies release on HighWire, perhaps giving some an unfair advantage financially.
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Spend a week at the CDC studying public health, meeting sources. Apply for the AHCJ-CDC Health Journalism Fellowships today!
- Reporting on the intersection of health, environment
- Tip sheet: Covering cuts to Medicare reimbursements
- Briefing: Reporting on health reform between now and 2014
- Covering high-risk insurance pools: Tips for reporters
- Health care reform has passed: What's next?
- Health and education: Covering these intersecting beats
- Reporting on the business of health care
- Health reporting resources for journalists on state and local government beats
