clinical-trials/

Randomized, controlled clinical trials are studies in which a new intervention, such as a medical device, is randomly assigned to some participants and tested against a control group, which receives a standard treatment or a placebo to determine its effects. They often are considered the gold standard of medical studies because they can provide evidence of causation.

Last week, Journalist’s Resource attended Health Journalism 2019, the annual conference of the Association of Health Care Journalists (AHCJ), in Baltimore, Maryland. One of the sessions we attended, titled “Begin Mastering Medical Studies,” offered pointers for deciding which research is worth covering.

Be wary of parachute journalism. And also parachute research.

A new study in the British Medical Journal serves as an example for all journalists who swoop in and out of academic papers without much care.