Clinical Trials for Journalists: Understanding, Interpreting And Reporting Medical Research
Successful medical science editors and reporters must be able to find, understand, and explain clinical study data in layman’s terms. This seminar will focus on how to do just that: to find, assess, and communicate the Validity, Importance, and Actionability of clinical study results. In this session, clinical trial and statistical experts will teach healthcare journalists how to avoid unintended distortions arising from ignorance of statistical complexities or clinical context. Journalists attending this course will become more knowledgeable of this “VIA” approach to science reporting in order to deliver more accurate, complete, and balanced healthcare messages.
- Fundamentals of clinical research
- How do researchers formulate questions of efficacy, effectiveness or safety?
- What is clinical context?
- How are study designs selected?
- What is validity?
- Which study results are truly important?
- How actionable are a study’s findings?
- Why does it matter who funds the research?
- Where does the FDA fit in to this picture?
- “Lies, damn lies, and statistics!”
- What does sample size mean?
- What is follow-up time?
- What is statistical significance and what does a p value really mean?
- What are odds ratios, hazard ratios, risk ratios, mean differences and confidence intervals?
- What’s all the fuss about post hoc analyses?
- What are regressions? And stratified analyses?
- What are meta-analyses?
- What is Bayesian analysis?
- How can all these be explained in plain English?
- Published examples of pitfalls to avoid as healthcare journalists (or healthcare stories gone wrong!)
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