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How data interpretation can be distorted by its presentation

Gary Schwitzer, Publisher of HealthNewsReview.org

 

The other day my reading of Three common mistakes in medical journalism brought me to the original blog article How the News Media May Hurt – Not Help – Health Literacy Efforts. The author Gary Schwitzer discusses nicely three issues of data presentation in public media that may lead to distortion of interpretation of the findings from medical research.

  1. Absolute versus relative risk/benefit data
  2. Association does not equal causation
  3. How we discuss screening tests

This is a good reminder of how to present our data and draw conclusions from the analysis fairly in scientific publications.