Covering Medical Research: 10 Questions Journalists Should Ask
It's always good to get a statistics refresher if you cover any kind of health research. Erika Franklin Fowler, an assistant professor of government at Wesleyan University, offered some tips on Saturday to California Endowment Health Journalism Fellows gathered for a seminar in Los Angeles. (Click here for her complete presentation.)
Here are some basic questions Fowler suggests journalists should ask before diving in to cover a medical study:
1. Has the study been peer reviewed? That ensures a check that these findings have been vetted by other professionals.
2. Does that study appear in a top journal in the field? In medicine, those journals include the Journal of the American Medical Association, the New England Journal of Medicine, and the British Medical Journal.
3. What type of study is it? Case control? Cross-sectional? Randomized controlled doubled blind study – the gold standard?
4. Who funded the study? You want to be wary of a "chocolate is good for your heart" study if it's funded by a candy manufacturer.
5. Is the study statistically significant? Know your p-values and confidence intervals.
6. What is the absolute vs. relative risk? Be wary of only including relative risks in your coverage.
7. What was the size of the study sample? Smaller studies are typically less powerful than larger ones.
8. What was the sample population, and how much like the general public is that sample? For example, phone surveys that don't include cell phone users tend to skew older.
9. How do the study results fit in the context of previous studies in this area? Do they contradict or confirm?
10. If a medical treatment is found to be effective, when will it be available to the public and how much will it cost? If it's not effective, will it be taken off the market or otherwise regulated?
Reporting Resources:
Here are some more resources on how to interpret medical research and evaluate its newsworthiness.
Tricks of the Trade: Finding Nuggets in the River of Medical Studies
Health News Review: Criteria for Evaluating Media Coverage of Health