Sandbox

Even more fuel!

This is the way the Swedish mammography study could/should have been analyzed
by Gary Schwitzer, HealthNewsReview Blog, 4 October 2010

Schwitzer's blog, (which we first mentioned in Chance News 59) discusses news reports on public health issues, rating the stories according to a set rubric.

His present post concerns the Swedish mammogram study. He reviews the New York Times article described above, as well as reports from the Los Angeles Times, the Associated Press and Health Day. The last is singled out as the only one of the four that fails to make any mention of methodological concerns. However, Schwitzer goes on to explain why of the articles does an adequate job explaining the methodological issues or their implications for the conclusions of the study. Read the full post for an interesting extended discussion on this.

Question

The discussion in the post notwithstanding, the individual HealthNewsReview ratings cited there give the NYT, the LA Times and AP stories 4 stars, 5 stars, and 5 stars (out of 5) respectively. What do you make of this?

Submitted by Bill Peterson