All of us rely on the media (TV, radio, newspapers, magazines) to remain updated with the latest news. While making sense of the share prices in the financial section is straightforward, how does one interpret or understand the medical stories?
We are now awash in a flood of health information, and barely a day goes by without a report of a spectacular new cure for a formerly incurable illness. However, A lot of people find themselves increasingly frustrated in the face of the media barrage of confusing and contradictory health advice. One day, drinking alcohol is bad for your health; the next day it is reported to help prevent heart disease. One day, margarine is healthier than butter; the next day it is not. One day fish prevents heart disease, then it doesn't! You may be exasperated enough to ask: Why can't researchers get their facts right the first time? And how are you supposed to make sense of what you read, if the experts themselves can't make up their minds?
In order to maintain a balanced perspective, it is important to remember that news, by its very definition, implies something new and unusual. This is why medical stories in the media often seem to be at loggerheads with what common sense tells us. After all, the hundredth study showing a relationship between high cholesterol and heart disease is hardly news, but the one study that shows that eating fat helps prevent heart disease is likely to become a headline — no matter how flawed it may be! The media is often guilty of oversimplifying or exaggerating results. Moreover, headline writers may focus on an angle that gives a distorted impression, which often means that facts are sacrificed at the altar of readability or circulation figures.
A lot of reasons can be attributed to the somewhat shoddy standard of reporting in the lay press with respect to medical matters. Editors crave for stuff which is ‘new’ and doctors and hospitals are only to happy to tom-tom their latest gadgets and gizmos. Reporters are often not specialized enough to understand the medical technical background. Often, they do not do their homework properly, which results in misreporting, which is, unfortunately, a common occurrence in India. It is a sad fact that although most newspapers and magazines have a battery of expert financial reporters, few have full-time knowledgeable health medical reporters.
The outcome of the foregoing drawbacks is that patients are often confused and are not sure how the latest advances apply to them. They often flood their doctor’s clinics with ‘false alarms’. consequently, the media loses credibility, so that they often end up performing a disservice to patients and their doctors. Because the public is eager, for any scrap of medical news, the media often reports individual studies out of context, as if each study could stand alone. However, single studies rarely yield a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer to a medical question. One ought to realize that scientific discovery is a process that often takes years to unfold. In a sense, medical researchers are weaving a large tapestry that will eventually tell a complex story when one stands back to look at the whole picture. An individual medical study can only contribute a small strand to the overall fabric. While the findings of individual studies may even seem to contradict one another, evidence accumulates gradually from scores of such studies. A coherent picture emerges slowly over time, and only then can we make definitive recommendations. One way of solving the problem arising because of misleading, inaccurate or piecemeal reporting on the medical front would be for newspapers or magazines to appoint medical doctors as consultants on their editorial panel, who can be used as a sounding board to assess the reliability and validity of a medical story. Also, as the media realizes the importance of health stories, hopefully, we will soon have full-time reporters who specialize in covering health stories exclusively. Till then, what can you do to separate the wheat from the chaff ?
First of all, identify the source. Does the information come from a reputed publication (such as The Lancet) or a leading medical professional organisation (such as the American Heart Association)? Not that such identification can guarantee its reliability or trustworthiness either, but it helps to know that the information is coming from a respected and respectable source. At the other extreme of unreliability is information from a commercial source, or from an Internet newsgroup!
Second, look beyond the statistics. When reports hurl at you statistics like ‘a 30 per cent increase’ or phrases such as ‘a 50 per cent higher risk ,’ take a closer look at the exact numbers. A lot of of us get ‘turned off’ by numbers, but this attitude can prove dangerous: you need to ask yourself what the numbers really mean and how they apply to you? Benjamin Disraeli once remarked that there are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics. Remember that statistical methods are simply tools, and they can produce blatantly wrong conclusions unless sensibly used. One common way in which statistics can be misleading pertains to reporting of relative and absolute risk. A headline that screams ‘X Doubles the Risk of Y’ is way off target if your chance of contracting ‘Y’ is one in a million to begin with. Doubling the risk of ‘Y’ only makes it two in a million! The relative risk (doubled) is nothing to worry about if the absolute risk (an increase from one to two in a million) is tiny.
Third, scrutinize the results. Does this information reveal a direct cause-and-effect relation between two factors? Or is it merely an association? For example, someone could argue there’s an association between matches and lung cancer because matches light the tobacco that causes lung cancer. But common sense would tell you that lighted matches don’t cause lung cancer. Typically, years of consecutive studies are required to prove a cause-and-effect relation and the results of one study usually don’t provide enough proof. If just one medical study has documented an unusual or peculiar finding, and if the results have never been replicated by any other study, then this situation suggests that the study is not reliable!
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