For the first time, one of my articles has been reviewed by Media Doctor, a website dedicated to improving the accuracy of media reports about new medical treatments.
And I’m very relieved to have scored 4.5 stars (out of a possible five) for my recent story in The Australian about research on a potential disease-modifying drug for Alzheimer’s disease.
The article also tied with one by Adam Cresswell, health editor of The Australian, for Story of the Month this September.
Here’s what the reviewers said:
“This is more of a feature article than news. It covers in some detail the development and early human testing of a drug that is designed to deplete amyloid- peptide beta, thought by some to be a cause of Alzheimer’s disease. Strong features of the article are that it goes well beyond the media release that accompanied publication of the clinical trial report in July 2008 and the cautionary note that these are very early clinical data. The article could have pointed out that this was a randomised placebo controlled trial of two doses of the experimental drug. It could also have mentioned that rates of diarrhoea and nausea were slightly higher with the experimental drug than with placebo. But overall this is good reporting containing much of what we’d like to see in health reports.”
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freelance science journalist and author
Bianca Nogrady
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