I Can Die When Someone Hires A Real Science Reporter (So I Expect I'll Live Forever)

I really hate it when the news media gets a hold of trial results well in advance of when I get my copy of the journal in the mail. For one thing, I'm actually paying for the most important journals, so I feel I should get first shot at the data. For another thing, when the news media starts reporting on these studies, and I don't know anything more than what I (and my patients) have just heard on the TV, it makes me look bad, stupid, or at least ill-informed; after all, I'm supposed to be the medical expert. And for the worst thing, I need to be pre-warned and fully prepared when my patients come in with questions, because the news media ALMOST UNIVERSALLY GETS THINGS COMPLETELY, TOTALLY, HORRIBLY WRONG!!

Excuse me for shouting. Do recall I am postally mad (as in the original sense of the word 'mad' which is 'insane'). You see, I have been dealing with questions from my patients regarding the Zetia/Vytorin issue for about the last two weeks now, ever since the information regarding the so-called ENHANCE trial was "leaked" to the media. And only today have I received my copy of the New England Journal of Medicine and have read the actual study with the actual data and the actual conclusions of the actual authors.

Why is this important? Because media reports of medical studies are virtually without exception reported incorrectly. Usually, as with the ENHANCE trial, reporters reach conclusions from these studies that were not reached by the actual researchers. And they weren't reached by the researchers because the media's conclusions cannot be made on the basis of the data presented by the study. Another classic example of this was the media's handling of the Womens' Health Initiative report from a few years back. You know, the study that killed PremPro/Premarin and likely Wyeth Pharmaceuticals along with them? I could melt your monitor with complaints about how abysmally I think that was handled. Of course, I have more complaints with the actual study itself; I don't think it should have ever been published it was such a bad study. But that's another issue for another time. When your monitor melts, don't blame me; you've been warned.

Why does the media almost always do this? Because "science" reporters have, without notable exception, no apparent knowledge of the scientific process or the area of science they are assigned to cover. It seems as if the journalistic world has fallen into the same trap as the education industry. Where teachers are supposed to be able to teach any subject as long as they know enough about education theory and how to teach, reporters apparently are supposed to be able to report on any topic as long as they know enough journalism theory. Neither of these suppositions is true. If you don't know algebra backwards and forwards, how do you expect to teach it? If you don't know enough science to understand or properly read a scientific paper, how can you write a newspaper article about it and make any sense?

I will to a certain extent even fault the actual doctors that the media hires to cover medical issues. I'm talking about the real doctors they've hired, not the weirdos like Dr. Weil or Dr. Oz, who are just trying to sell their next book. Check out the network medical reporters on ABC,CBS, CNN, NBC and what they are -- gynecologists, neurosurgeons, psychiatrists, you name it -- but never internists. And 99% of the issues they cover are internal medicine based. Among the doctors I know and have met, it has been my experience that, for the most part, gynecologists know gynecology, surgeons know surgery, psychiatrists know psychiatry, cardiologists know cardiology, and they know their fields well. But ask them a good internal medicine question, and they haven't got a clue. So why should the ones on TV be any different?

I don't expect this situation to change anytime soon or ever. But I can die if and when a major media outlet actually hires a scientist to cover a scientific issue. Therefore I expect that I'll be able to live forever, since that event has less chance of occurring than I have of winning the Texas Lottery. And that's assuming I would actually buy tickets regularly, which I don't.

Next time I'll get into the details of the ENHANCE trial and show where the reporters went wrong. I'll point out some interesting data that the reporters missed, probably because they didn't recognize its significance. And I'll tell you what we actually did learn from this study. (PS: It isn't very much.)

And by the way -- if you are currently taking either Zetia or Vytorin on the advice of your physician, please talk to your doctor about it and follow his or her advice. Don't just stop taking it. I'm sure your doctor knows a bit more about what he or she is doing than the reporter from the Associated Press does about that medical paper he just listened to a press conference about and couldn't spell half the words from.