On October 5, 2012 a CBC News article written by Kelly Crowe reported a French study that concluded that the news media report initial biomedical findings that more often than not turn out to be wrong. The study also concluded that the news media generally ignore any follow-up information that refutes the initial claims.
Are we surprised? I don't think so. And it's not just the news media. Many internet websites and blogsites are loaded with the latest health claims, new health product information and diet information or claims. Nobody seems to ever retract anything. It seems that it is all about grabbing readers' attention, increasing volume and making money; not about spreading truth.
Obviously we have to read these reports and claims with several grains of salt. The items I find the most disturbing are the ones that want to make people believe that more pharmaceutical drugs are needed. The French study made a specific reference to a number of studies on attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) that in most most cases were never proven to be true over time but were never revisited by the media.I found this reference to ADHD interesting because of the large increase in ADHD medicine prescritions in BC over the last decade. On November 3 I wrote about this issue. I am not suggesting that report was incorrect. It was based on information the Vancouver Sun obtained from the BC Ministry of Health. However the increase in prescriptions for ADHD would at least in part reflect the reports in the news media about ADHD. As reported in the Vancouver Sun a lot of the information about ADHD in Canada is funded by the pharmaceutical industry.
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