Gary Schwitzer makes a living critiquing health coverage on the Health News Review web site. In a post on the Engaging the Patient site, Schwitzer expounds on the three most common errors he sees: Confusing association with causation; focusing on relative risk but not absolute risk, and portraying screening tests "as an imperative, not as a decision." "The words matter," he writes. "Accuracy, balance and completeness in news stories matters."
