Category: Your Health Matters

(3 stars)
70 percent of the stories we’ve reviewed fail to adequately discuss benefits, harms and costs. This was one of them.

(3 stars)
Quotes from two sources – both defending ginkgo bliloba – were apparently taken from news releases. With the evidence stacking up against this product, why depend on canned responses to continue to breathe life into these product claims?

(4 stars)
The story summed it up succinctly –

(2 stars)
This story suffers from a lack of balance. And the story included no quotes from any evidence-based critic of increased use of EKGs in young athletes.

Well done story on an important topic. Important discussion about the wide range of doses of radiation exposure among different hospitals.

How nice to see a newspaper that still devotes more than 1,500 words to a story about research that could have an impact on many. Overall, a strong story.

Overall, a good wrapup of progress on cardiac stem cell research.

If a news organization is going to cover lab/animal research on the important problem of RSV, it should do so more completely than what was published in this story in a consumer health section that is labeled,

A pretty good breakdown of potential harms and benefits of zinc supplementation. With just a few additions this could have been a five-star story.

Sarah Vowell’s book, In this pro/con story, two cardiology experts articulate their different beliefs. We don’t think readers will find this a helpful format for evaluating the quality of the evidence or the true value of the test in question.

(3 stars)
This story only skimmed the surface of questions we think should have been raised for any claims made about trial results presented in this way for a drug promoted as a sexual desire booster.

(4 stars)

This story did some things that longer stories didn’t.  But it didn’t include viewpoints from any independent sources. So it distilled the new guidelines on the readers’ behalf. But not much more.