Catching up with a good buddy yesterday, he mentioned he had recently published an article! Now in my biz, most of you would not find that at all unusual, not even in a peer reviewed journal, since you know I often speak with clinical researchers!
But what if I reveal this friend is not a doctor, nor a researcher, a scientist or even a patient; he’s a journalist, albeit a health one, and the research paper is in BMC Medicine … ‘BMC’ stands for BioMedical Central. And the paper looks at whether patients and caregivers are influenced by ‘spin’ when medical research is reported.
Needless to say, the answer is very much so. This randomized trial of 900 patients and caregivers sourced from the Inspire forums was split into 3 groups each considering a different story. Half of each group were given a published ‘spun’ story, and the other half were given the ‘denuded’ rewrite. Both groups were asked the same question – would the reported treatment be beneficial to patients? The ‘spun’ versions were considered 30%more valuable for early research trials; and for later stage research the spun stories were thought to be 47% more helpful..
You have heard me say all too often, don’t believe all you read …. process this information with a grain of salt, and consider the source. Now that advice is no longer anecdotal!!