[PiggySpeed]

People are losing their heads out there because they don't understand how to interpret studies.

The most infuriating offenders are the media, who have been irresponsible with the presentation of clinical study results. They'll take the results of an observational study and herald it as some revolutionary insight, when in reality the doctors, nurses, and pharmacists interpreting these results are saying "hmm okay, well let's be cautious in our approach and wait for other studies to be done".

Clinical practice should never change, and has never changed (to my knowledge) from the whims of a single OBSERVATIONAL study. But outside medical circles, people will see the results they want to see, and never look past the first 10 words of a headline.

[userbinator]

They'll take the results of an observational study and herald it as some revolutionary insight

That's been going on for a while, it reminds me of this: https://kill-or-cure.herokuapp.com/

[thu2111]

A problem is that different fields that sound similar have very different standards.

Epidemiologists appear to frequently take un-reviewed, un-published papers straight to the press and politicians specifically to change government policy.

Actual doctors, not so much.

What's the difference between an expert in infectious diseases and an expert in treatment of infectious diseases, to the layman? Hardly any.

The media plays a part. Journalists routinely conflate doctors, academics and political activists under the rubric of "experts". Sometimes this is deliberate and overt. Guido Fawkes has had a long running campaign where they expose TV news presenting left-wing activists as neutral experts, without telling anyone about the interviewees backgrounds. As can be seen in this particular incident, that campaign has started to have a small effect, but some journalists don't like being exposed that way!

https://order-order.com/2020/05/22/sky-news-gets-there-event...

For people to get better at interpreting studies the first step must be to de-conflate different kinds of "expert". In particular academics need to be referred to as such and separated from the type of practical expert who practices their craft in the real world every day.