How to read articles about health and healthcare (PDF)

[dracodraconis]

HowToReadANewsStory_vers03_26Nov08 (PDF document)

Dr. Alice White offers some advice about how to read health-related news articles with an open (but skeptical) mind. Her number one rule: "Don't automatically believe the headline." She lists a few key questions: Are the claims supported, is the story based on a conference paper, was the research performed on humans and, if so, how many, was there a control group, who paid for the study, and does the headline jive with the actual focus of the research.

Comments

[nightprincess]

So many so-called "fitness" bloggers very desperately need to read this. There are a few things I'd like to add too, like correlation is not the same as causation and the idea of "third factors". Doing statistical analysis over time (such as the stuff done in Freakonomics) brings in too many "third factors".

[dracodraconis]

All quite true, but the article is a good start to get people thinking critically instead of taking headlines as truth rather than the advertising they really are. I have enough trouble getting engineers to understand statistics (being both an engineer and previously a statistician), let alone trying to get some of the concepts across to non-scientists so I welcome any reasonable good (if incomplete) attempt to educate people.