It is good to be skeptical

When reading medical news, did you ever feel attracted to the title just to find out later that the details show something quite different (or far too short) than what you expected? . Here we are not talking about effective research whose results can change permanently, but about the information we often find in magazines and newspapers that are not sufficiently documented and simply can not prove alongside an article what . Cases of skepticism: • Designing the clinical trial. Positive results studies are more likely to be published than those with negative outcomes (and often disappointing). That is why many studies are designed in a way that increases the chances of success for the new drug; . • Authors.

Academic promotion, better jobs, higher salary, mandate and prestige fall under the publishing status. So even if the research is preliminary, it is applied to too few people or it has an uncertain impact, the location of research in the most favorable and dramatic light is the standard operating procedure. Sometimes this becomes clear when the study generates massive generalizations about results that apply only to a few samples. • Editors. As I mentioned, there is a general tendency for magazines to favor positive results against negative findings as they accumulate more views - and magazines want readers.

Journal publishers may also have expertise to critically evaluate a study. All this conspires to encourage the publication of research that could have positive results, especially if they are expressed in drastic terms. • Press Releases. A company statement can have a huge impact, including stock price. There are regulations that place legal liability on a company that overestimates or misleads the results of research.

Thus, press releases are carefully examined by the company's lawyers. Even so, there are many examples of overestimation, selective disclosure of results and underestimation of limitations. In 2013, a biotechnology CEO was sentenced to six months home arrest for overestimating the results of his company's medicines. A more recent example is a press release that presented a company's In fact, it has been approved for dogs (not for humans) and has never been studied in people with the type of brain tumor mentioned in that press release. • Medical Reporters.

Some medical reports merely summarize or repeat what a press release says, often does not explain the limitations of the study or the overestimation of the importance of the results. With the pressure to attract the attention of a reader or viewer, there is a tendency of error on the exaggerated side. Often titles attract our attention just to be disappointed later by how badly this title describes the study. A recent example: But that's not what the studies actually meant. .

. They only suggested that Body Mass Index (BMI) was not very precise when it came to cardiovascular health (such as cholesterol, blood sugar and blood pressure). This does not mean, however, that BMI / BMI has no value in combination with other measures or other health conditions - and does not mean it should be How to read health news with a critical eye Be skeptical! . What this expert usually says is something like: It is worth mentioning that the Nobel Prize for Medicine is often awarded for work done decades before or throughout a career, and not on the basis of recent news. .