Journalists and science writers

Reporting the findings: Absolute vs relative risk

Absolute Differences between the effects of two treatments matter more to most people than Relative Differences.

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Explaining the mission of the AllTrials Campaign (TED talk)

Half the clinical trials of medicines we use haven’t been published. Síle Lane shows how the AllTrials Campaign is addressing this scandal.

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Tipsheet for reporting on drugs, devices and medical technologies

Questions that will be familiar to reporters covering health and medicine.

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Tips for understanding Intention-to-Treat analysis

Ignoring non-compliance with assigned treatments leads to biased estimates of treatment effects. ITT analysis reduces these biases.

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Tips for understanding Absolute vs. Relative Risk

Absolute Differences between the effects of two treatments matter more to most people than Relative Differences.

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Tips for understanding Non-inferiority Trials

A non-inferiority experiment endeavours to show that a new intervention is ‘not unacceptably worse’ than the comparison intervention.

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Tamiflu: securing access to medical research data

A campaign by researchers has shown that Roche spun the research on Tamiflu to meet their commercial ends.

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Introduction to JLL Explanatory Essays

Professionals sometimes harm patients by using inadequately evaluated treatments. Research addressing uncertainties can reduce this harm.

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Recognizing researcher/sponsor biases and fraud

The vested interests of researchers and organizations tend to be reflected in reports of treatment research in which they are involved.

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Video games and health improvement: a literature review of randomized controlled trials

This is a critical appraisal of a non-systematic review of randomized trials of video games for improving health.

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Surrogate markers may not tell the whole story

A webpage explaining the limitations of using surrogate outcome markers in clinical research.

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Mixed Messages about Statistical Significance

A webpage explaining the difference between statistical and practical significance.

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Testing Treatments Audio Book

The Testing Treatments Audiobook enables visitors to the TTi site to select whichever chapters in the book they would like to listen to.

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7 words (and more) you shouldn’t use in medical news

A webpage explaining that dramatic effects of medical treatments are very rare.

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Observational Studies – does the language fit the evidence?

A webpage explaining observational studies and their advantage and disadvantages.

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John Ioannidis, the scourge of sloppy science

A 8 min podcast interview with John Ioannidis explaining how research claims can be misleading.

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Science Weekly Podcast – Ben Goldacre

A 1-hour audio interview with Ben Goldacre discussing misleading claims about research.

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How do you know which healthcare research you can trust?

A detailed guide to study design, with learning objectives, explaining some sources of bias in health studies.

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CASP: making sense of evidence

The Critical Appraisal Skills Programme (CASP) website with resources for teaching critical appraisal.

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Can measurements show if a treatment works?

An article discussing errors to avoid when testing treatments.

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More than average confusion about what mean means mean

Cartoon and blog about how averages can hide important variations in effects.

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Animal and Lab studies

A webpage explaining how results from animal studies may not be transferable to humans.

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Commercialism

A webpage about commercialism and conflicts of interest in health research.

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Be careful with composites

Kevin Lomangino's article discusses the limitations of composite outcomes and surrogate markers.

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AllTrials: All Trials Registered | All Results Reported

AllTrials aims to correct the situation in which studies remain unpublished or are published but with selective reporting of outcomes.

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Fair tests of treatments: a quick guide for journalists

When deadlines are pressing, how can journalists tell whether to believe claims about the effects of a new treatment or breakthrough?

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Evidence Based Medicine Matters: Examples of where EBM has benefitted patients

Booklet containing 15 examples submitted by Royal Colleges where Evidence-Based Medicine has benefited clinical practice.

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What does the Cochrane logo tell us?

This video and animated slide presentation prepared by Steven Woloshin shows how the Cochrane logo was developed, and what it tells us.

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New – but is it better?

Key points Testing new is necessary because new treatments are as likely to be worse as they are to be […]

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