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Xarelto controversy highlights need for more transparency at NEJM
The following is a guest blog post from one of our contributors, Susan Molchan, MD, a psychiatrist in the Washington, DC, area. She’s been closely following, and criticizing, NEJM’s stance on...
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A single paragraph published nearly 40 years ago contributed to the opioid...
“Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it; so that when Men come to be undeceiv’d, it is too late; the Jest is over, and the Tale has had its Effect…” Jonathan Swift, The Examiner,...
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A tale of two (BMJ) studies: one gets attention, the other gets neglected. Why?
Within the past couple of months the BMJ published two separate observational studies looking at how two very different lifestyle factors might impact memory and dementia. Both studies draw from the...
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Podcast: Rare disease foundation says medical journal misled patients
This is the second in an unplanned, occasional series about real people who are harmed by inaccurate, imbalanced, incomplete, misleading media messages. The first was about a man with glioblastoma...
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Why we should care that many editors of top medical journals get healthcare...
About half the editors at the most prestigious medical journals in the U.S. receive payments from the pharmaceutical or medical device industries. But only 30 percent of these journals make it clear...
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Uncovering new peer review problems – this time at The BMJ
A study published recently in The BMJ addressed a question with surefire media appeal: Does the political affiliation of doctors affect the quality of care that they provide to patients at the end of...
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News outlets focus on one dramatic outcome. But did researchers omit data...
Last week we reported on ‘One cancer patient’s dramatic response to immunotherapy…’ and highlighted what we thought was a lack of healthy skepticism in the extensive (and mostly fawning) news coverage....
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Feeling the drip, drip, drip of credulous first-person reporting about...
Houston Chronicle reporter Craig Hlavaty opens a vein. Houston Chronicle reporter Craig Hlavaty recently treated readers to a first-person account of getting an intravenous (IV) vitamin infusion inside...
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Journal case reports can’t ‘explode myths’— but they can encourage shoddy...
Take a guess where these headlines come from: Parkinsonism can be cured Therapeutic use of intermittent fasting for people with Type2 diabetes as an alternative to insulin Although the language...
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5-Star Friday: Simplicity
Health care is complex, but so much of its excellence and effectiveness comes from simplicity. Our 5-star selections this week are good examples of this. Our first story features a world leader in...
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