More Sloppy Headlines on Parkinson's Disease

What's wrong with these headlines--one from HealthDay News and the other from ABC News Radio?First Gene Therapy Trial Effective Against Parkinson's and New Parkinson's TreatmentA reasonable person would conclude that there's a new treatment involving gene therapy for Parkinson's disease. In fact, the study in question, which was just published in the research journal Lancet, was not even designed

Ethanol or Gasoline: Which is Better for People?

What's good for the planet may not be so great for people, according to a Stanford University comparison of the health effects of gasoline and ethanol. Atmospheric Scientist Mark Jacobson performed a complex computer simulation that determined that if more cars ran on ethanol--which is supposed to reduce the number of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere--there would be a small but significant

How Doctors Think

And now for a bit of shameless self-promotion. My review of "How Doctors Think," a new book by Dr. Jerome Groopman of Harvard Medical School, is in the current issue of TIME Magazine (the one with a photo-shopped image of Ronald Reagan crying).I don't recommend many books but this one is definitely worth your time. It looks at the kinds of mental traps or cognitive errors that can lead a

Why 68 Vitamin Studies Are Better than None

Not all scientific studies are created equal--a fact that most reporters don't make note of in their stories. The recent study from Europe that concludes that taking vitamins may be harmful to your health is a perfect case in point.It's not really a new study--in the way most of us think of studies. The investigators, lead by Dr. Goran Bjelakovic of Denmark, did not recruit thousands or hundreds

How Money Affects Results in Breast Cancer Studies

Breast cancer studies funded by pharmaceutical companies are more likely to report positive, or beneficial, results than those funded by government or non-profit organizations, according to a new report in the Journal Cancer. That doesn't necessarily mean that the results are wrong, as Amanda Gardner points out in the Washington Post. You would expect drug companies to have a better track record

Premature Babies and Happy Endings

Readers sometimes wonder whether journalists allow their politics or their advertisers to influence how the news is covered. But I've noticed a different bias over the years in coverage about extremely premature infants. Call it the bias in favor of a happy ending.Take, for example, the opening sentences from Monday's article by Erika Beras in the Miami Herald under the headline "Miracle Baby