Better Doctors, Better Patients, Better Decisions: Envisioning Health Care 2020

10. Statistical Illiteracy in Journalism: Are Its Days Numbered?

10 Statistical Illiteracy in Journalism Are Its Days Numbered? Bruce Bower Abstract At a time when financial pressures and a digital revolution threaten the survival of many media outlets, a focus on statistical literacy can improve health and medical reporting and perhaps foster survival-enhancing changes in how the media cover these topics. Journalists often lack knowledge about statistical thinking. First reports of scientific findings, advances in “hot” research fields, and results that contradict previous assumptions draw special attention from the media, but underlying statistical problems and uncertainties in such studies are rarely mentioned in news stories. Clinical trials, signi ficance testing, and meta-analyses create particular confusion for journalists. Possible ways to remedy this problem include early statistical education, professional development courses, online assistance sites, and efforts to use personal stories to illuminate the predictive value of medical tests. Introduction Journalists have been thrust into an uncertain world over the past decade. Like antelope crossing a dry stretch of savanna, herds of news gatherers nervously crane their necks and sniff the wind, checking to see who succumbs next to the pitiless lions of the Computer Age. Newspaper reporters, magazine writers, television news producers, and a gaggle of assorted media types just want to reach the next water hole in one piece. It is especially ironic that journalists trying to navigate through this hazardous habitat understand so little about statistical risks. Media reports routinely misrepresent and sensationalize the implications of health and medical findings that hinge on statistical analyses. 154 B. Bower Even more troubling, it’s often not clear whether anyone in the journalistic chain of command cares about accurately deciphering what health studies really mean. Media stories that make bold, frightening claims about medical treatments regularly trump sober analysis. The satisfaction of ensuring a wellinformed public pales in comparison to a desperate need for more paid subscriptions , higher advertising revenue, and a greater number of web-site hits. A chaotic, perilous situation such as this can, however, set the stage for a dramatic change which otherwise would not have been taken. Of course, daring exploits can fall flat. But if properly thought out and executed, a new emphasis on statistical thinking could help harried news gatherers fend off the hungry lions. A focus on statistical literacy would alter not only how journalists evaluate scientific studies but what they opt to cover in the first place. The rules of competition in the media world—from science writers and general assignment reporters to bloggers and podcasters—just might shift. Journalists would have at least one incentive to get the scoop on the pros and cons of each new research paper and press release. Reporters determined to demonstrate their statistical competence would lead the way, racing to debunk sensationalized health and medical claims made by rival news outlets. Health and medical reporting would still be far from perfect, especially given tight deadlines and pressures to attract a wide audience. But a competition could develop between media sources which do and don’t present the statistical implications of new studies in accurate and understandable formats. Risk Aversion My introduction to newspaper reporting came in 1979 when I entered a graduate program in journalism at a university in the United States. As a reporter on a newspaper published by the journalism school, I covered the university’s medical center. My first big break involved a story about a psychiatrist who had conducted a study suggesting that hallucinations and other symptoms of schizophrenia could be eased by hooking patients up to dialysis machines. Dialysis removes impurities from the blood and is typically used to treat people with kidney failure. The newspaper’s editor, who had formerly run a big-city daily newspaper, wanted to put the story on the front page. He wasn’t interested in the study’s sample size or the nature of any control groups. He didn’t want to see if any other evidence had been published indicating that dialysis could effectively treat such a severe psychiatric disorder. He certainly didn’t want to be bothered with statistics about the proportion of patients who showed improvement on dialysis and the extent to which various symptoms diminished over a relatively short treatment period. Statistical Illiteracy in Journalism 155 It was good enough, for the editor and for me, that the local psychiatrist regarded his findings as “encouraging” and that they were about to be published in a...