We live in skeptical times. Who wouldn’t be dubious when confronted daily with confusing, contradictory news on medical research?
For years, people were told breast self-examination could help nip cancer in the bud. Yet, a major study of 266,000 factory workers in Shanghai, reported Wednesday in The Star, concludes it’s a waste of time.
After more than a decade, researchers found women who were trained to examine their breasts had the same chance of dying from breast cancer as women with no training.
The findings backed an earlier decision by Ontario’s cancer authority to stop routinely teaching women to examine their breasts for lumps.
The debate likely isn’t over. The Canadian Cancer Society, for example, has continued to say breast self-examination can save lives.
This corner has long contended that The Star and other media outlets need to be more rigorous in the reporting of research studies.
Not only is journalistic credibility at stake, readers deserve more than skimpy stories that parrot findings, without scrutinizing them much.
For example, was the work independent and free of commercial taint? Did a ketchup-maker fund the study “proving” tomatoes have properties that might forestall cancer?
Was it good science? Were enough people studied? Were people studied at all? As U.S. medical ethicist Arthur Caplan has noted: “We are actually very good at curing cancer in rats.”
Was the research properly peer-reviewed before it was published in an academic journal and scooped up by mainstream media?
(Even peer-review has limitations, as two prestigious journals Science and Nature learned when reviewers didn’t catch a Bell Labs researcher’s fakery in time to stop the presses and avert what The New York Times has called “a bleak day for science.”)
Another question. Once the research was published in a scientific journal, did mainstream reporters seek out independent assessments?
Those are all elements for editors and readers alike to insist upon in stories about science and medicine.
A few weeks ago, a wire story in The Star waded into a bitter controversy over the safety of deferiprone, an oral drug developed by Apotex, a Canadian maker, to treat a rare genetic blood disorder, thalassemia.
The story chronicled a new study, led by Dr. Ian Wanless, a U of T pathologist, that appeared days later in Blood, the American Society of Hematology journal.
But as printed in The Star, the story didn’t say the study, concluding deferiprone is safe, was done at arm’s length from Apotex and funded by two international thalassemia groups. Nor did it say the findings were peer-reviewed, as officials at Blood readily confirmed.
Those were useful snippets that belong in such stories. The National Post’s news coverage included both.
The study in Blood contradicted earlier findings of researcher Dr. Nancy Olivieri, who reported in 1998 that the drug could cause irreversible liver scarring.
This isn’t to say The Star’s version was a disaster. Among other things, it reported fairly that Olivieri rejected the findings.
Specifically, she disputed the methodology, noting liver biopsies from only 56 patients were evaluated, out of 187 enrolled in an earlier trial in Italy. Asked about that, Dr. Michael Spino, Apotex senior vice-president of scientific affairs, said the new study covered four times the 14 patients that Olivieri’s did.
News ombuds don’t pronounce on a drug’s safety. But please, when reporting on science especially when debate is so hot let’s give readers more information, not less.
