what I learned in school today

This afternoon we had a journalist speak to us about medicine and the media. He largely told us stories of screw-ups by the media in conveying medical information and why that may occur (largely due to their lack of understanding re the drug approval process and interpreting statistics). Many reports will report relative vs absolute improvements between drugs which emphasizes the differences. For example, drug A showed an improvment of 50% over drug B in reducing X - while if they told you practically speaking it meant that drug A reduced X to 1 while drug B reduced it to 2 it would be much less exciting. Here's a link to a great (and short - 1 page) article printed in the British Medical Journal about the media getting totally carried away by a "miracle drug for the common cold" early in clinical trials before it was even released. It turns out had such a minimal effect that it never even made it out of the gates and was shot down by the FDA. Take home message: Don't believe everything you read - especially about medical/science issues.