Medical Review Articles Can Be Deceptive So Be Skeptical
A recent medical review article promoted the benefits of smoking for long-distance runners. The article argued that the increased serum hemoglobin levels, larger lung volume, and reduced body weight associated with smoking cigarettes could be beneficial for running. Although this may sound like it came from the parody newspaper The Onion, this article was published in the highly respected Canadian Medical Association Journal, which ranks 9th out of the top 40 medical journals. Of course, the article was meant to be tongue in cheek. Ken Myers, the author and a long-distance runner himself, wrote the article to point out how nearly any crazy theory can be supporting by presenting only supporting data or improperly correlating or extrapolating data.
Medical review articles can have subjective bias. Sometimes, the researcher will have a noble goal which allows his or her research to be subjectively tainted, a phenomenon known as “white hat bias.” Other times, data may be entirely fabricated to support a certain position, such as the case of medical journal publisher Elsevier publishing fake medical journals for Merck and other pharmaceutical giants. Part of the blame can also be placed on newspapers for not understanding or explaining the difference between correlation (when A happens, B also likely happens) and causation (B happens because of A) and generalizing very specific findings into sensationalized larger conclusions. Another important consideration that newspapers usually neglect is that medical studies need context and do not make sense without knowing what similar studies have shown.
Consumers do not need to be overly concerned with scientific minutiae on a daily basis, but it is important to not base important life decisions, such as which life-saving drugs to request of a doctor or avoid, off of a misunderstanding (or occasional fraud) from a medical review article. Well-informed skepticism is always a healthy choice!
