That should have been the headline.
It wasn’t.
When I opened up the front page of CNN, the top story was this:
Colonoscopies may not reduce cancer deaths, study finds – but experts say you should still get one
Which, since I’m scheduled to get my third colonoscopy on Tuesday, meant I had to click on it.
Of course, you may not be one who pays attention to the medical effectiveness of this particular procedure. You should. But I don’t begrudge you for not. Especially if you don’t have a family history and you’re under 40.
The thing about headlines like this one is that they tend to be technically true, but only sort of. Like, if you squint and ignore half of what you’re reading, then yeah, sure. I’ll let us call it true.
But if we’re being honest, it is hardly true at all.
How is the headline inaccurate?
Primarily, the headline is misleading.
This one study had disappointing results. Which should raise those red flags. A single study is not enough.
But that isn’t even the half of it. Literally. The results were skewed because over half of the people in the test didn’t actually participate.
Imagine trying to find out information from ten people, getting four to fill out the survey and then declaring that nothing really matters because two went one way and two went the other.
This isn’t enough to make any conclusions worth making.
Nobody in the medical field would stop at a single, flawed study. Nor does it actually prove that “Colonoscopies may not reduce cancer deaths”. That “may” is doing all of the heavy lifting.
And for what purpose?
After far more rigorous testing, that actually includes all the people, let’s pretend these results continued, then it, at best, after all of that has the potential of showing that screening alone is not enough.
That headline may sound like a reasonable wording for what the study found. But the reality makes it false.
Because the study didn’t find anything.
The study was so deeply flawed, it doesn’t prove that we should be skeptical of the effectiveness of screening.
In other words, to base a statement that something may not work on a study that doesn’t definitively offer a basis for skepticism doesn’t actually prove anything.
There is no reason to have the level of skepticism offered by a headline that front-loads speculation.
But it’s even more than that.
The existing and verified evidence points in the other direction. And those people who do get screened and are higher risk to begin with, are getting treated. And this alters those outcomes.
This is why it is a terrible headline.
There is nothing verifiably true about it. Including its speculation.
It is only technically true if you throw away the science you’re relying on to consider it true!
And worse, it leaves headline skimmers with the impression that colonoscopies probably don’t work. Rather than the greater truth: that not enough people are actually getting screened.
And it is hard to control for how many of us are getting screened because we are more likely to get this cancer.
This is an example of terrible editorial journalism with tremendous negative health outcomes. As news consumers, always be careful of assuming the headline actually represents the content of the article.
And more importantly,
if you are between the ages of 35 and 45 and have a family risk of cancer, please talk to your doctor. If you’re 45 or above and haven’t had a colonoscopy yet, it’s time to get one.
No, they aren’t fun. But they do save lives.