{"id":8308,"date":"2011-01-21T18:00:06","date_gmt":"2011-01-21T22:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pmedicine.org\/epatients\/?p=8308"},"modified":"2011-01-22T23:14:02","modified_gmt":"2011-01-23T03:14:02","slug":"tips-for-understanding-studies-health-news-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/participatorymedicine.org\/epatients\/2011\/01\/tips-for-understanding-studies-health-news-review.html","title":{"rendered":"Tips for understanding studies (Health News Review)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><sup><em>Update 1\/22: this was originally in our &#8220;Found on the Net&#8221; sidebar, but it&#8217;s attracted enough comments that it belongs in the mainstream.<\/em><\/sup><\/p>\n<p>I was researching the coverage of statins on Health News Review, the great e-patient resource <a href=\"https:\/\/participatorymedicine.org\/epatients\/index.php?s=%22Health+News+Review%22\">we&#8217;ve often covered<\/a>, and I stumbled on their page <a href=\"http:\/\/healthnewsreview.org\/tips-for-understanding-studies.php\" target=\"_blank\">Tips for understanding studies<\/a>. Good: &#8220;does the language fit the evidence?&#8221;, &#8220;absolute versus relative risk,&#8221; &#8220;number needed to treat,&#8221; etc.<\/p>\n<p>I was amazed to learn recently that many (most?) physicians get no advanced training in med school on how to critically evaluate whether the correct statistic was used in a paper, nor how to even understand what they mean. That would explain why Gigerenzer et al found that <em>most <\/em>doctors got it wrong (we <a href=\"https:\/\/participatorymedicine.org\/epatients\/archives\/2008\/11\/making-sense-of-health-statistics.html\" target=\"_blank\">reported<\/a> on their great 2008 paper). Turns out the same is often true for\u00a0journal editors and peer reviewers!<\/p>\n<p>Lesson: e-patient, fend for thyself.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Update 1\/22: this was originally in our &#8220;Found on the Net&#8221; sidebar, but it&#8217;s attracted enough comments that it belongs in the mainstream. I was researching the coverage of statins [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_tribe_ticket_capacity":"0","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[21,4236,226],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-8308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-e-ptsresources","category-shared-decision-making","category-understanding-statistics"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Tips for understanding studies (Health News Review) - SPM Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/participatorymedicine.org\/epatients\/2011\/01\/tips-for-understanding-studies-health-news-review.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Tips for understanding studies (Health News Review) - SPM Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Update 1\/22: this was originally in our &#8220;Found on the Net&#8221; sidebar, but it&#8217;s attracted enough comments that it belongs in the mainstream. 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