Understanding Health Research: how science media stories work

Format: Websites

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Language/s: English

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Resource Link: Visit the Website

Target Audience: Self-directed learning

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Short Description:

Understanding Health Research, a tool for making sense of health studies: how science media stories work.

Key Concepts addressed:

• 1-12 Dramatic treatment effects are rare
• 2-9 Reviews of fair comparisons should be systematic
• 2-13 Relative measures of effects can be misleading

Details

Good science reporting should be accurate and should put research conclusions in context. Unfortunately, this is not always the case. Sometimes news stories about science are reported in such a way as to grab attention, rather than reflect science accurately. This can lead to people losing trust in science because it may appear to ‘say one thing one day and another the next’.

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