Angelina Jolie's well-publicized preventative mastectomy prompts this account from David Kroll on two papers analyzing how the news was covered. The upshot: Neither reporters nor readers placed Jolie's risk in context: "While the researchers addressed other issues, their most striking reminder on the overall impact of any health reporting relates to the inadequate math skills and probability or risk understanding among a large percentage of the U.S. population."
January 6, 2014