The editor of Mayo Clinic Proceedings spoke about the impact medical journalism has on the public to a group of about 15 students and medical professionals Tuesday at the Walter Cronkite School.
William Lanier spoke about the process of producing a top medical journal and navigating the field of medical journalism. He gave insight into the rigor and difficulties medical writers face when attempting to publish their findings. He also discussed the skewed perception the public has of the medical world.
“The public looks to science today to determine truth, but science can’t determine truth. Integrity in science is what we’re after, not truth in science,” Lanier said.
Mayo Clinic Proceedings puts every submitted journal manuscript through an extremely stringent peer review session and ends up publishing only about 20 percent of submissions. Even so, medical findings are constantly evolving, and what was published one year can just as easily be refuted in a new finding the next year.
With such fluidity of fact, Lanier urges that the public not take every medical finding at face value. Lanier said he is especially wary of the medical reporting done by journalists that caters to the general public.
“People just want good content,” Lanier said. “They want to be entertained and they want to be informed. It has to have an appeal.”
This fear comes from many instances Lanier has seen where mainstream media presents unsupported scientific findings as valid. Another common problem is unequal coverage of positive and negative medical findings.
Lanier said such journalism has huge consequences.
He acknowledged that the media has a great multiplying effect on the public’s reception of medical findings. However, when the medical findings reported on are inaccurate, not only is public understanding misled, but more importantly, public health is put at risk.
This issue has grown significantly with the rise of social media. While social media sites allow an unparalleled number of people to learn about new medical findings, such news mediums often lack validity.
Mayo Clinic has tried to combat this flow of misinformation by joining social media platforms so they can provide the public with easy-to-digest information that is accurate.
But Lanier admitted that misinformation is not just the media’s fault; it is also the fault of those in the medical field. He said he realizes that it is still the responsibility of those in the medical field, first and foremost, to make sure the methods behind medical research are valid and the presentation of findings is accurate.
“We, as scientists and physicians, do a horrible job of providing a juried background of determining what is true,” Lanier said.
Journalism graduate student and former Mayo Clinic physician of 30 years Kay Miller said the presentation touched upon a lot of information she was already aware of, but was presented in a way that gave her a new perspective on the matter.
“The biggest takeaway is to always remember as a journalist that what you say can have consequences greater than what you imagined,” Miller said.
Hubert H. Humphrey Fellow Wahida Ifat, who worked for the International Public Health Organization in Bangladesh, said the presentation gave insight about how technical medical publications work.
“It was good to come here and see how international medical journals function,” Ifat said.
Contact the reporter at kristy.westgard@asu.edu
