miércoles, 4 de mayo de 2016

MercatorNet: Sensational headlines about dementia ‘breakthroughs’ are damaging to patients and their families

MercatorNet: Sensational headlines about dementia ‘breakthroughs’ are damaging to patients and their families



Sensational headlines about dementia ‘breakthroughs’ are damaging to patients and their families

It is irresponsible to exaggerate the power of unproven remedies
June Andrews | May 4 2016 | comment 
People with dementia and their families are frequently misled by headlines that imply a cure is imminent.
Overblown reporting of medical progress is not unusual, and it causes distress to patients and families. It is particularly cruel in dementia and Alzheimer’s disease because there is no cure. False hopes raised through mass media are crushed when the patient discovers that scientists have not found what the headline called “a new treatment for dementia”, but only an interesting neurological finding in some middle-aged rats that didn’t have dementia.
Misleading headlines are shared on social media and gain the status of common knowledge. Sometimes they are relatively harmless, such as the idea that drinking coffee might help. Tales of miracle cures in two named individual cases from drinking coconut oil support the idea that this oil reverses the disease, without any reference to the risk of the unproven remedy. Taken in excess coconut oil will damage the brain’s vascular health. The headline “Drug to Cure Alzheimer’s” leads a story about a finding in mouse brain anatomy and not behaviour, no way close to a medicine for humans.
Coconut oil … NOT a cure for dementia. www.shutterstock.com   
The misrepresentation is not only about cures. The headline in the Times “Alzheimers could be passed on by humans” is false, because there is no evidence that it can in the story. It was over dramatic and muddled, using a metaphor about “seeds” for Alzheimer’s that is itself frankly misleading.
How it happens   
The ceaseless torrent of unreliable medical communication from researchers to newsstands seems impossible to withstand. Researchers and communication professionals caught in this current feel as powerless as the deceived public. Even if journalists or editors sense it is unkind to torment patients, they feel unable to stop for reasons beyond their control. News often feeds off itself, with the journalist’s success depending, to an extent, on the “pick up” of a story. It is more likely that news will be picked up if it looks like a significant development or is a dramatic story.
Social media requires brief rapid responses to developments, and the time for reflection is stripped out of the system. Search engine optimisation fails with bland words, and seemingly demands exaggeration. Owners of media need high impact and that may mean superficiality. Sometimes simplification itself can hide the truth.
Even if the writer knows something is not a cure, the subeditor can make it a “cure” in the headline. The scare quotes alert the initiated to the fact that the word should not be taken at face value. Those unaware of this editorial sophistry are victims of deliberate misrepresentation, as much as they would be without the punctuation.
Commentators without expertise are given a voice to support stories. Sceptical voices are placed at the very end of the piece, offering scant balance. Articles are read from top to bottom and an impression is unquestionably established long before the words of caution are reached in the last line.
But don’t blame it all on journalists     
Journalists don’t invent reports from researchers. Well resourced public relations departments have more time to work up a release about research than a front line reporter has to analyse it. Journalists have huge workloads and specialism is in decline, reducing the reporter’s capacity to critically examine complex issues, or develop authoritative contacts with whom to check stories. They try to resist being used as tools by higher education PR staff, but it is a war of attrition.
Universities have an overwhelming need to demonstrate that their research has impact in order to attract funding. This increasing requirement has given rise to greater influence for university communications departments. The professional communicators are under pressure to claim impact even when the researcher is diffident about the results. They will harvest “impact” across their campus by any means, fair or foul, and use sensational language implying things are available that are not.
Subversive social media sites powered by researchers mock the process where their work is used to promote the institution (“Please modify your Twitter user name so it conforms to the Uni’s brand strategy”), and presented in ways that they themselves don’t recognise (“Dr Brown doesn’t recognise her own research in the media coverage of it”). They make fun of those who manage the university’s public image, and believe they have no power to stop it.
Even so, they actively contribute to the phenomenon. There are suspicions that even scientists will fall in line under pressure. The compulsion from funders or management to get publicity means that they conform to the pattern of putting their reservations about the research outcome deep in the body of the text, rather than in the abstract – the part of the paper beyond which few people read.
Because dementia impairs cognitive function, those affected deserve even higher standards of communication than people with other diseases. What they get is often the opposite.
The ConversationJune Andrews is Professor emeritus at the University of Stirling  in the UK. This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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MercatorNet

Well, the people of Indiana have spoken. Donald Trump is the presumptive Republican nominee for the Presidency and will face the (nearly) presumptive Democrat nominee Hillary Clinton in November's election. After months of campaigning the greatest horse race in the world is entering the final straight. The pundits are placing their bets; the crowd is roaring; the jockeys are thrashing their mounts. It will be the most interesting election in decades.
Except that an election is not a horse race. It's a deeply ethical decision for each and every one of the voters. And they have been presented with a cruel choice this year. On the one hand they have Clinton, a millionaire from the big end of town pretending to be a champion of the disadvantaged, under a cloud for dishonesty, a polished politician who has built her career on supporting abortion and gay rights. On the other hand, they have Trump, a billionaire who has never been elected to anything, a man full of vulgar narcissistic bombast, a man who supports torture, who wants to treat migrants like felons, who admires the toughness of gangsters like Vladimir Putin. He says that he is pro-life, but can he be believed? 
Is it possible for an American voter who believes in human dignity to support either of them? Or is it better to vote for an obscure third-party candidate? Or to boycott the election altogether? Whatever the answer is, voters have to examine the issues and the candidates deeply. 


Michael Cook
Editor
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