AHCJ opposes taking taxpayer-funded research out of public’s reach
Filed under: Government, Health journalism, Public records, Studies
Congress should not roll back public access to taxpayer-funded research reports, AHCJ wrote in a letter to members of Congress (PDF).
AHCJ is opposing the Research Works Act (H.R. 3699), which would remove the public’s access to medical journal articles about publicly funded research. They are currently available for free to the public no more than 12 months after their publication in a medical journal.
“Our board of directors believes strongly that more transparency, not less, is vital for the public to assess how funds are spent and to benefit from and learn about the research underwritten by the government,” board president Charles Ornstein wrote in a letter to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. “The recently introduced Research Works Act is a step in the wrong direction.”
In the letter, AHCJ rebutted medical publishers’ assertions that the current system doesn’t work.
“We understand the objections of such publishers, who contribute editorial support and fear loss of income,” Ornstein wrote. “But it’s worth noting that much of that support comes from unpaid peer reviewers. And publishers still maintain a year of exclusivity, enabling them to reap profits during the time when interest in research is highest.”
In 2010, AHCJ voiced concerns about a similar bill, which did not become law.
Obesity doctor calls journalists’ statistical knowledge into question
Yoni Freedhoff, M.D., founder of Ottawa’s Bariatric Medical Institute, writes about two studies about obesity and questions whether journalists are skilled enough in statistical analysis to accurately report on them.
Freedhoff says a new report refutes an earlier study – published in the New England Journal of Medicine and widely reported by the media – as being statistically flawed. And he is skeptical the new study will receive attention from the journalists who reported the first study.
The original study, “The Spread of Obesity in a Large Social Network over 32 Years” by Nicholas A. Christakis, M.D., Ph.D., M.P.H., and James H. Fowler, Ph.D., was widely reported with headlines proclaiming that “Obesity is socially contagious” in 2007.
A new study by Indiana University’s Russell Lyons, published in Statistics, Politics, and Policy, claims “the assumptions behind the statistical procedures used were insufficiently examined.”
As Freedhoff notes, the NEJM has an impact factor of 50, while Statistics, Politics, and Policy has an impact factor of 0.857, leading one to wonder how many reporters have even heard of the new study.
But Freedhoff – who admits he’s no statistics expert – questions whether journalists will report on the new study because they do not have the statistical knowledge to do so.
All in all, even if you’re not a statistician, Lyons’ paper is worth a sober read and reflection, and here’s something else to chew on – the journalists who were originally all over Christakis’ and Fowler’s work? I’d bet every last penny I’ve got that not a single one of them were skilled enough in statistical analysis to analyze it. Really, why should they have been? They’re journalists, not statisticians. No, instead they smelled a good story, and ran with it. Those same journalists who shouted from the rooftops that obesity’s contagious? I’m betting the vast majority of them are going to be silent on this one, yet wouldn’t re-reporting be the socially responsible, ethical, and journalistic right thing to do?
Update: Brian Reid found this paper, “Examining Dynamic Social Networks and Human Behavior,” that appears to be a response to Lyon’s research – Christakis and Fowler reference his critique specifically at least twice in the paper.
So, reporters, let’s hear what you think: Do you know enough about statistics to analyze and report on the new study? Or were you even aware of the new study?
It’s certainly worth pointing to AHCJ’s most recent slim guide here: Covering Medical Research, which helps journalists analyze and write about health and medical research studies.
It offers advice on recognizing and reporting the problems, limitations and backstory of a study, as well as publication biases in medical journals and it includes 10 questions you should answer to produce a meaningful and appropriately skeptical report. This guide, supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, is a road map to help you do a better job of explaining research results for your audience.
An earlier slim guide, “Covering Obesity: A Guide for Reporters,” also might come in handy for covering the topic.
Review: Doctors experimented on healthy people
Filed under: Government, Hot Health Headline, Member news
The Associated Press’ Mike Stobbe found more than 40 instances of doctors making patients sick for the sake of experimentation throughout U.S. history. Last fall’s government apology for doctors infecting Guatemala prisoners with syphilis 65 years ago sparked the review.
Stobbe, a member of AHCJ and a past board member, found healthy people were infected with malaria, Asian flu, gonorrhea, hepatitis and even a deadly stomach bug for the sake of broadening knowledge. Doctors violated the fundamental medical principle to “first do no harm.” Stobbe points out:
Attitudes about medical research were different then. Infectious diseases killed many more people years ago, and doctors worked urgently to invent and test cures. Many prominent researchers felt it was legitimate to experiment on people who did not have full rights in society - people like prisoners, mental patients, poor blacks. It was an attitude in some ways similar to that of Nazi doctors experimenting on Jews.
Disturbingly, some of these stories were never covered in the media.
Adding context to embargo-driven journalism
Over at the Nieman Journalism Lab, Matthew Battles latches onto John Rennie’s column about the future of science journalism, then talks to Ed Yong and AHCJ’s own treasurer, Ivan Oransky, M.D., about embargoes, timelines and cutting through the noise.
Battles focuses on the effort to pursue context in a profession that is so often at the mercy of academic journals. After all, as he writes in his introduction, “The events that science journalists publish about most frequently are themselves acts of publishing: the appearance of research papers in peer-reviewed journals.” The rest of his piece will serve as a handy primer for anyone looking to understand why that particular state of affairs is so pervasive and persistent.
For AHCJ members who want to know more about responsibly covering studies and how to recognize and report the problems, limitations and backstory of a study, as well as publication biases in medical journals, be sure to see “Covering Medical Research.”
Holtz prescribes behavior modification for ‘White Coat Myopia’
Every year end brings a flood of stories about the “Top Medical Breakthroughs.” Over the rest of the year there is no shortage of front page headlines announcing new drugs, devices and clinical trial results.
But independent journalist Andrew Holtz, a member of AHCJ’s board of directors, thinks the intensive cultivation of medical news reports leaves fertile acreage of health stories untilled.
If you expand your perspective from a narrow focus on medical interventions, you will find studies, policies and events that relate to health in ways that connect directly to the daily lives of many more people.
In this article, he suggests fresh stories and approaches to health coverage for the new year, with plenty of resources to help you stick to a resolution of powerful, relevant health coverage. (Note: This article is one of the many resources and benefits available exclusively to AHCJ members.)
Scary secrets about ghostwriting in journals
Just in time for Halloween, an anonymous medical ghostwriter spoke to Phil Davis over at the Scholarly Kitchen about the scary world of ghostwriting.
He reveals how much ghostwriters are paid, how the process works, where his work has been published, how to detect ghostwritten material and more.
The Scholarly Kitchen is a blog from the Society for Scholarly Publishing.
(Hat tip to Scott Hensley.)
New guide focuses on covering medical studies
Filed under: Health data, Health journalism, Studies, Tools
Reporters are inundated with lures to cover the latest medical study or scientific conference paper. And there are some significant milestones being reached in medical research.
But, more often, the information reaching the public is way too preliminary or even misleading, say those producing a new AHCJ reporting guide on covering health studies.
This guide will help journalists analyze and write about health and medical research studies. It offers advice on recognizing and reporting the problems, limitations and backstory of a study, as well as publication biases in medical journals, and it includes 10 questions reporters should answer to produce a meaningful and appropriately skeptical report.
The guide was written by longtime AHCJ member and HealthNewsReview.org publisher Gary Schwitzer with contributions from Ivan Oransky, M.D., executive editor of Reuters Health and AHCJ’s treasurer.
AHCJ hopes this guide, supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, will be a road map to help reporters do a better job of explaining research results for their audiences.
It is the fifth slim guide published in this series. Also available:
- Covering the Health of Local Nursing Homes
- Navigating the CDC: A Journalist’s Guide to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Web Site
- Covering Obesity: A Guide for Reporters
- Covering Hospitals: Using Tools on the Web
Society ‘snookered’ by research that isn’t new
Peggy Peck of MedPage Today found that research presented as new at the European Society of Cardiology’s annual meeting this weekend was actually published in July, despite the society’s requirement that information submitted for presentation must be new, unpublished data.
When asked by MedPage Today to point out the “news” in the Hot Line presentation, STAR lead investigator Bodo-Eckehard Strauer, MD, of the Heinrich Heine University of Düsseldorf, Germany, said the news was that bone marrow cell therapy significantly improved survival in patients with chronic cardiomyopathy, which he illustrated with a slide showing a Kaplan-Meier curve – the same graph that was published in the July issue of the European Journal of Heart Failure. Moreover, every data slide in Strauer’s presentation matched the tables in the published paper.
Following questions from MedPage Today, the organization acknowledged its error and has announced the researcher will not be allowed to present at its meetings for two years. Roberto Ferrari, M.D., president of the society, said the research had been accepted for presentation because they thought it had new data but that “We were snookered.”
Hearing on public access to research will be online
Filed under: Health data, Health journalism, Public records, Studies
Representatives of a number of medical- and publishing-related organizations will testify today at a hearing on “Public access to federally funded research” before the Information Policy, Census and National Archives Subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
You can catch the webcast of the hearing at 2 p.m. EDT. Update: It appears the hearing is not being webcast.
(Hat tip to the Electronic Frontier Foundation for the webcast link.)
Earlier
- Bill would require public access to research
- AHCJ: Proposal would be blow to public access
- Progress on open access issue not what it seems
Study authors don’t always have access to raw data
Filed under: Conflicts of interest, Hot Health Headline, Pharmaceuticals, Studies
John Fauber of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports on outside authors of drug company-funded studies who do not have access to the raw data behind the study.
In the latest installment of Side Effects, a series examining doctors, drug companies and conflicts of interest, Fauber reports that a researcher who co-authored a study of Multaq that led to the drug’s FDA approval “vouched for the accuracy and completeness of the study despite not seeing the raw data.”
The researcher, Richard Page, chairman of the department of medicine at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, says he trusts the Sanofi-Aventis, the drug’s manufacturer.
Fauber delves into the differing editorial policies of the Journal of the American Medical Association and the New England Journal of Medicine when it comes to studies in which drug company employees perform the data analysis.
In the case of the Multaq trial, published by the New England Journal of Medicine, the FDA got unanalyzed raw data and did its own analysis. Fauber reports that “one FDA panel member questioned differences between the information included in the published February 2009 study and what was submitted to the FDA.”
Related
-
Join us in Atlanta
for Health Journalism 2012
Fellowship applications
due Feb. 27
New at HealthJournalism.org
- Data gives depth to investigation of patient safety
- What reporters should know about Alzheimer’s and related dementias
- Apply for fellowships to attend Health Journalism 2012
- AHCJ asks Supreme Court to permit broadcast of arguments in health reform case
- Tips for print, online journalists to embrace broadcast opportunities
- Numbers reveal how often, or how rarely, states check doctors’ disciplinary records
- How I did it: Falsified charts in nursing homes linked to patient care
- Access Denied: Looking at a lack of health care availability
- Transparency & medical errors: Public reporting of patient harm is a potent force
