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Why You Should Be Skeptical of the Media’s Medical Reporting (Dr. John Cmar)
One of the greatest disservices that the current trend of sensationalist, opinion-based media “reporting” does is to misinform the public about medical matters. It’s one thing to distinguish evidence-based medicine from science-based medicine, and another that the news media often doesn’t seem to care about either. We’ll discuss specific examples of how news reporting on medical science can get things both right and wrong, and possible ways the non-medically trained public can skeptically approach medical news stories to tease out the truth.
Bio: John Cmar, MD, has been long enthralled with horrible infections that could spell doom for humankind, as well as sanity and skepticism in the practice of medicine. He is currently involved in resident and medical school education in internal medicine at two institutions in Baltimore, and his clinical work involves caring for patients in his specialty of Infectious Diseases. He also does Infectious Diseases outreach in Baltimore television and print media. John is a science fiction and fantasy fan, avid gamer, and podcast enthusiast. He currently blogs and podcasts on skeptical, medical, and geeky topics on The Secret Lair.
Video Link #1: http://cnnpressroom.blogs.cnn.com/2011/09/07/dr-sanjay-gupta-reports-terror-in-the-dust-debuts-wednesday-sept-7/
Video Link #2: http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-september-7-2011/sanjay-gupta
Video Link #3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGT0r-udstQ
