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Medical Evidence Boot Camp

 

The Program

One of the most difficult challenges facing journalists who cover health is the uncertainty of nearly all medical evidence. Many studies come to contradictory conclusions, yet the public’s interest in medical news and the need for reliable health information is growing.

To help journalists make sense of all this, MIT’s Knight Science Journalism Fellowships program offers an intensive course, now in its seventh year, on how to evaluate medical evidence.

“The experience benefitted my work in two ways:

1) eye-opening information on topics I thought I knew something about, and 2) the encouragemeent to think critically and ask good questions.”

 

—Michael Edgerly,
Minnesota Public Radio

Boot Camp begins with an overview of clinical and epidemiological research methods, giving you tools to understand and evaluate medical studies. Through lectures and discussions, we’ll look at science’s increasingly sophisticated ways of studying disease, determining causes and evaluating preventions and treatments.

Medical researchers from MIT, Harvard Medical School, Harvard School of Public Health, the NIH, the FDA and other institutions will teach the course. They’ll explain how clinical trials are designed and carried out and why some kinds of studies are more credible than others.
We’ll explore the politics and ethics of how new drugs are tested, often by the companies that stand to profit from them. And we’ll look at how the FDA, the NIH and other agencies evaluate treatments, old and new. Finally, we’ll look at the rise of a new phenomenon called “evidence-based medicine.” (Don’t be surprised to learn that a lot of what doctors do has little or no evidence to prove that it works.)

Fellows

A list of the journalists chosen to attend the boot camp can be found here.

Schedule

Monday, December 1

6:00–9:00pm

  

Welcoming Dinner at the Blue Room, Kendall Square
     

Tuesday, December 2

9:00–9:15

  

Introduction to the week, Philip J. Hilts

9:15–3:00

  

Epidemiology 101, Julie Buring
     

Wednesday, December 3

9:00–12:00

 

Reporting health risks and medical statistics: A practical guide, Lisa Schwartz & Steve Woloshin

1:00–3:00

  

How to think about studies of diet and health, Walter Willett

3:15–4:45

 

Reporting health risks and medical statistics: A practical guide, continued, Lisa Schwartz & Steve Woloshin

Thursday, December 4

9:00–11:00

 

Pitfalls of cancer screening, Barnett Kramer

1:00–3:00

  

Herbals and Supplements: the other drug industry, Bruce Silverglade

3:15–5:15

  

How FDA evaluates new drugs and devices, Robert Temple
     

Friday, December 5

9:00–11:00

  

Can journalists do better?, Gary Schwitzer

11:00–12:30

  

How conflict of interest impacts medical research and treatment, Jerome Kassirer

12:30–end

  

Discussion over lunch: What to take back with you

 

Faculty

Julie Buring

Julie Buring, Professor of Epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health and Principal Investigator of the Women’s Health Study. Scores of journalists have praised her ability to explain clinical studies and epidemiology clearly and engagingly.

   

Philip J. Hilts, director of the Knight Science Journalism Fellowships

   

Jerome Kassirer, Distinguished Professor at the Tufts University School of Medicine, a former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, and the author of "On the Take: How Medicine's Complicity with Big Business Can Endanger Your Health."
   
Barry Kramer

Barnett Kramer, Associate Director for Disease Prevention at the National Institutes of Health. He leads a major effort to upgrade the evidenciary basis of NIH’s recommendations to doctors and patients.
   
Lisa Schwartz, Steve Woloshin

Lisa Schwartz and Steve Woloshin, Professors at Dartmouth Medical School who study how the media cover medical news. They have developed practical exercises to teach journalists how to avoid common mistakes.
   

Gary Schwitzer, Associate Professor, University of Minnesota School of Journalism & Mass Communication. Schwitzer is the Publisher of HealthNewsReview.org, a Web site dedicated to
improving the accuracy of news stories about medical treatments, tests, products and procedures.
 
Robert Temple

Robert Temple, Director of the Office of Medical Policy at the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research and Acting Director of the Office of Drug Evaluation. He explains the process by which the FDA evaluates new drugs.
   

Walter Willett, Principal Investigator on many long-term studies of large groups to learn the effects of diet on the cause and prevention of cancer, heart disease and other major diseases. He is professor of epidemiology and nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and author of Eat, Drink and Be Healthy.

 

 

Who is eligible?

Twelve journalists will be chosen to attend the Medical Evidence Boot Camp, joining the eleven Knight Fellows already in residence at MIT. Applicants may be journalists who already cover science, medicine or health, or those who wish to prepare themselves to cover these fields. Applicants may be reporters, writers, editors or producers and must have at least five years of full-time experience in journalism.