The media's role in creating false hope

"Cancer cured" headlines

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How often does a new medical treatment actually make it to clinical use? Almost never, Julia Belluz writes in an indictment of "breakthrough" journalism: "We don't wait for scientific consensus; we report a little too early, and we lead patients and policymakers down wasteful, harmful, or redundant paths that end in dashed hope and failed medicine. This tendency could be minimized if we could only remember that the overwhelming majority of studies in medicine fail."

March 27, 2015

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