• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • Home
  • Store
  • ION Awards
  • Podcasts
  • Full Measure
    • Full Measure Cover Stories
  • Donate
  • Bestseller "Slanted"

Sharyl Attkisson

Untouchable Subjects. Fearless, Nonpartisan Reporting.

  • US
  • World
  • Business
  • Health
    • Vaccine, Medical links
    • Omicron Lab Origin
    • Covid-19 Origins
    • Covid-19 Natural Immunity
    • Covid-19 Vaccine Concerns Summary
    • Covid-19 Vaccine: 80 Common Adverse Events
  • The Censored
  • Special Investigations
    • Attkisson v. DOJ
    • Media Mistakes, Biden Era
    • Media Mistakes on Trump
    • Other investigations
      • Benghazi
      • "Collusion v. Trump" TL
      • Election 2020
      • Fake News
      • Fast & Furious
      • Obamacare
      • Obama Surveillance TL
      • Other investigations
      • Ukraine 'Sabotage' of Trump TL

Former editor-in-chief of medical journal: 'Cut the hype and spin in published studies'

Dated: October 26, 2022 by Sharyl Attkisson 2 Comments

      

The following is an excerpt from MedPage Today.

Science communication starts with investigators, who should take great care to ensure they report their work accurately and without embellishment, according to a former editor-in-chief of JAMA.

That means avoiding hype and spin, acknowledging limitations, and being circumspect about their findings, said Howard Bauchner, MD, of Boston University School of Medicine, and Frederick Rivara, MD, MPH, of the University of Washington in Seattle, in a commentary in The Lancet.

"Most investigators want the results of their studies to be communicated accurately, but they too have their biases," they noted.

"I think it's really up to the scientific community to do a better job about the transparency of how we report information," Bauchner said in an interview with MedPage Today.

Bauchner resigned from JAMA and the JAMA Network in June 2021, following controversy around a podcast on structural racism in medicine.

He honed his expertise in clinical trials and academic publishing at the helm of the publication for about a decade. Rivara is currently the editor-in-chief of JAMA Network Open.

A key concept that authors should use more frequently is the number needed to treat (NNT), he said, for both randomized controlled trials and for some types of observational studies.

"When we say to the public a study is significant, I think most people think that everyone is going to benefit from the drug, and that couldn't be further from the truth," Bauchner explained.

Many studies can have NNTs of 10 to 40, he said, but even the low end of that spectrum doesn't translate to stellar clinical performance.

"That actually means that nine people will not benefit from the drug," he said of a study with an NNT of 10.

"I think if I stayed at JAMA a little longer," he added, "I would have just insisted that every randomized clinical trial comes with a number needed to treat."

One of the changes he did push for while at JAMA was aimed at mitigating "spin," by listing the total number of secondary outcomes that a trial set out to explore.

More frequently, trialists have been registering more than 10 secondary outcomes, but typically only reporting two or three of them, he noted.

"One of the concerns is that the investigators are choosing the secondary outcomes that they're most interested in or were statistically significantly different, so that that could be an element of spin," he added.

Investigators also have an obligation to look at press releases that their institutions issue about their work, he noted. They should focus on absolute differences rather than just relative differences, and be sure that causal language isn't used inappropriately.

Researchers asked to comment on such press releases should be "incredibly careful" about doing so, he stressed.

Just as the media is careful to report that meeting abstracts or preprints haven't been peer reviewed, researchers may want to make it clear that their comments are preliminary and based only on the information or data that are available, he advised.

In the age of misinformation and disinformation, it's on researchers to help ensure their work is interpreted accurately and truthfully, he said.

Read complete article here.

The Lemonade Mermaid Store

Unique gifts for Land or Sea Mermaids, Mer-pets and Little Mermaids!

Left: Our signature Blue Fins Earrings

SHOP NOW


      
[the_ad id="17661"]

About Sharyl Attkisson

Emmy-Award Winning Investigative Journalist, New York Times Best Selling Author, Host of Sinclair's Full Measure

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Billy says

    October 26, 2022 at 8:14 pm

    Thank you for your honest opinion and remarks! I very much appreciate them.

    Reply
  2. Phil says

    October 27, 2022 at 4:00 pm

    Good luck with that occurring. There are too many lost souls, Fauci's and Birx's.

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Coming Soon

The Bad Shirts: High-Quality, Wearable Humor

The Sharyl Attkisson Store

Buy Great, Original Products & Support Independent Journalism

Subscribe

Get the Latest Stories Straight to Your Inbox

SUBSCRIBE TO SHARYL’S RUMBLE CHANNEL


Follow Sharyl Attkisson

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • YouTube



Footer

Pages

  • Home
  • About
  • Podcast
  • Support
  • Contact

Sitemap

2ndary Pages

  • Full Measure Stations
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of Use
  • Newsletter
  • Returns & Refunds Policy

SPECIAL INVESTIGATIONS

  • Attkisson v. DOJ/FBI
  • Benghazi
  • Election 2020
  • Fake News
  • Fast & Furious
  • Obamacare

Copyright © 2023 ยท Log in