Bonevski Billie, Wilson Amanda, Henry David A
Discipline of Clinical Pharmacology, University of Newcastle, Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia.
PLoS One. 2008 Jun 11;3(6):e2406. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0002406.
To examine the accuracy and adequacy of lay media news stories about complementary and alternative medicines and therapies.
METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: A descriptive analysis of news stories about complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) in the Australian media using a national medical news monitoring website, mediadoctor.org.au. Each story was rated against 10 criteria by two individuals. Consensus scores of 222 news articles reporting therapeutic claims about complementary medicines posted on mediadoctor.org.au between 1 January 2004 and 1 September 2007 were calculated. The overall rating score for 222 CAM articles was 50% (95% CI 47% to 53%). There was a statistically significant (F = 3.68, p = 0.006) difference in cumulative mean scores according to type of therapy: biologically based practices (54%, 95% CI 50% to 58%); manipulative body based practices (46%, 95% CI 39% to 54%), whole medical systems (45%, 95% CI 32% to 58%), mind body medicine (41%, 95% CI 31% to 50%) and energy medicine (33%, 95% CI 11% to 55%). There was a statistically significant difference in cumulative mean scores (F = 3.72, p = 0.0001) according to the clinical outcome of interest with stories about cancer treatments (62%, 95% CI 54% to 70%) scoring highest and stories about treatments for children's behavioural and mental health concerns scoring lowest (31%, 95% CI 19% to 43%). Significant differences were also found in scores between media outlets.
CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: There is substantial variability in news reporting practices about CAM. Overall, although they may be improving, the scores remain generally low. It appears that much of the information the public receives about CAM is inaccurate or incomplete.
考察大众媒体关于补充和替代药物及疗法的新闻报道的准确性和充分性。
方法/主要发现：利用全国性医学新闻监测网站mediadoctor.org.au对澳大利亚媒体中关于补充和替代医学（CAM）的新闻报道进行描述性分析。两名人员依据10项标准对每篇报道进行评分。计算了2004年1月1日至2007年9月1日期间发布在mediadoctor.org.au上的222篇报道补充药物治疗效果声明的新闻文章的共识得分。222篇补充和替代医学文章的总体评分是50%（95%置信区间47%至53%）。根据疗法类型，累积平均得分存在统计学显著差异（F = 3.68，p = 0.006）：基于生物的疗法（54%，95%置信区间50%至58%）；基于手法的身体疗法（46%，95%置信区间39%至54%），整体医学系统（45%，95%置信区间32%至58%），身心医学（41%，95%置信区间31%至50%）和能量医学（33%，95%置信区间11%至55%）。根据感兴趣的临床结果，累积平均得分存在统计学显著差异（F = 3.72，p = 0.0001），关于癌症治疗的报道得分最高（62%，95%置信区间54%至70%），关于儿童行为和心理健康问题治疗的报道得分最低（31%，95%置信区间19%至43%）。在不同媒体机构之间的得分也发现了显著差异。
结论/意义：关于补充和替代医学的新闻报道做法存在很大差异。总体而言，尽管可能在改善，但得分仍然普遍较低。看来公众获得的关于补充和替代医学的许多信息不准确或不完整。
