Promising treatments

Format: Texts

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Language/s: 3-3 Are the treatments practical in your setting?

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Target Audience: 2-6 Peoples' outcomes should be assessed similarly

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Short Description:

'Promising' treatments greatly outnumber actual advances in treatment.

Key Concepts addressed:

• eesti
• dansk

Details

I first wrote about the tendency of “promising” treatments to metamorphose into “disappointing” treatments in a BMJ piece about evidence based mistakes. Early results, after all, can’t promise anything at all.

The graph depicts a cumulative meta-analysis: each new study is being absorbed into a summation of the evidence so far. With 4 studies, it’s shifted from the “this helps” side of the ledger over to the “this harms” side. See more about cumulative analyses in this classic article.

“Promising” is a media and marketing staple, too. Several wonderful initiatives keep the media to account on this, story by story: Behind the Headlines, Germany’s Median-Doktor.de, Japan’s Media Doctor, and the US Health News Review.

Cartoons are available for use, with credit to Hilda Bastian.