In medical journals there is something called the art of title writing. The idea is that readers look at the table of contents, where the titles of the articles are listed, and decide what may be interesting enough to read based on what the titles say. The best way to get doctors to read an article is first to do a study that produces interesting results and then write a title that tells the reader what you discovered in your research.
This is science, of course, so the title cannot be misleading. Editors and readers alike would take a very dim view of a title that drew in the reader but did not accurately reflect a study's findings. Often the title is a question, which can certainly draw in the reader who wants to know the answer. A good example of this is the title of a recent article from the Annals of Emergency Medicine: "Is MRI More Accurate Than CT in Patients with Acute Stroke?"
My favorite style of title is the kind that tells you the answer. Another recent example from Annals: "Emergency Department Crowding is Associated with Decreased Quality of Care for Children with Acute Asthma."
Either approach works well. Publish a study that answers an important question, and write a title that tells me what the question was, so I will read it to learn the answer. Or cut to the chase, so to speak, and tell me the answer in the title. (I'll still read the paper if the answer is important.)
Why can't the popular press do that? Don't tell me it's because doctors are different from the general population of folks who read the popular press. We are people, too. But the general reader is treated differently. And so we get a headline on Yahoo Health News that says, "Boost Your Memory: Don't forget your vitamins - they may aid your memory as you age."
So if, like me, you're killing time and decide to click on the link, you read the article and learn - surprise! - that the study about which they are writing found no such thing. The paper appeared in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, and even the authors say their findings should be interpreted with caution, although they deftly spin results that are most likely meaningless into something vaguely positive. But the article reporting on the study includes comment from other experts making it quite plain that the results tell us exactly nothing. To the credit of the health reporter for Reuters, the article explains that when you do a bunch of memory tests and find a difference in performance on only one of them, it is probably simply a matter of chance.
The article's conclusion? Eat a balanced, healthful diet that provides amounts of nutrients sufficient to meet recommended allowances. And, by the way, you don't need supplements.
(Oh, for anyone who is a stickler for detail and looks up the Reuters article, you will find that the reporter used the phrase "healthy diet," and I have corrected it to "healthful." Sorry. This is just one of the many common errors I find irritating. The diet is healthful. The person is healthy. We hope the former will lead to the latter.)
Maybe the folks at Yahoo Health News figure an article headlined "Taking Vitamins Will Do Nothing for Your Memory" will draw in no readers. They may be right. They could try it and see. If no one reads it, maybe it's time to stop publishing articles for the lay reader telling them about meaningless clinical studies.
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