After the revolution of personalized and digital health care, medical journalism has become its inevitable part. Everyone wants to live a healthy life, in spite of the fact, that industrialization is just doing the opposite. Because the medical journals and publications are either limited to medical professionals or are full of medical jargon. The only option the layperson has is so-called “health” magazines, the so-called “health” section of the newspaper. Most of the articles there are completely misleading, either exaggerating or completely wrong.

We’ll understand if we look at the title of the articles. Mainstream journalism is all about the headlines. If your article has a catchy headline, you’re already a winner. It doesn’t matter, if the complete article is elsewhere already published or doesn’t have anything new on it or the information is superficial, all you need is a unique title, that attracts the readers.

Just like advertisements, you need to be creative. But at least in the Ads, you need to be creative for the whole thing but for the articles, you only need to be creative for the title. But I guess, it should be just opposite for medical journalism. The article needs to be precise and have only the information, that has medical evidence. The title should only contain information included in the article and not an exaggeration.

For me, that title is just a small joke to laugh at during our long days in the hospital, office or any place we work. It could be either a confusion or a major understanding problem. It’s actually only the title, that is misleading. I don’t know if the journalist was searching for any synonyms of sterilization or just mixed up things between men and women. Vasectomy is a surgery to do permanent sterilization on men, while tubectomy is its counterpart on women. Would that happen, if the journalist was medically trained? That’s a question, I would like to have answers for, but would that have an easy answer?

I’m concerned not only about the choices the patients are making because of the misleading medical articles. But also about people who are trying to learn about current health topics, who are unknowingly learning misleading things and spreading them. I, myself also might not be eligible to write this article and point the finger towards ongoing medical journalism. But I guess, this is just an appeal.

See an example of how misleading the articles can be.

The abortion is never considered as a cause of death from the World Health Organization (WHO) and it should never be considered. The numbers might be correct but the headline is a total fuss. Even if biologically an abortion could be called death, medically death always is the last sequence of life. So, that needs a beginning, that’s the birth. So basically death is not possible without birth. If you read through the page, it’s more like advocacy and only focuses on policies without any science. So, it can’t be a science/medical post but is gaining attention as one of them. I can’t believe this post was shared more than 800,000 times.

The other problem with medical articles is the exaggeration of small wins. Even a small finding or small research is commonly overhyped and many headlines are generated.

Only a few of them try to conduct an operation to find out what the past research says and what the main finding of the new study is. Additionally, the study-type and limitations of the study should never be avoided while presenting the research findings. Every scientist would at least try to find a review before believing the results of a single study.

Medically trained people might have a different approach to these things. The research is one thing but the experience is another thing and we try to combine those to come up to the best possible advice. But it doesn’t mean, the doctors do not do that. Sometimes knowingly and unknowingly, we exaggerate small wins. That, of course, usually happens, when we are waiting years for that result.

See an example here.

The article is a classical example. It’s been shared unbelievable 1,000,000 times. The impact of this article is huge. I can never imagine that high number for a research article in the “medical journal”. The post is not only exaggerating the finding from the study but also completely neglecting the potential risks of cannabis.

It’s not my intention to question the creditability of the article, but I see potential harm from the headline. The basic finding of the low acute toxicity of Marijuana is accurate and also universally accepted. But neglecting the possible chronic abuse and potential harm of a commonly abused substance can have a major unwanted influence. The influence can only be partly seen through (already huge) number, the article has been shared.

I still do not have an answer to the question from the sub-title and I guess, there’s no answer to it. Maybe the future shows us the right thing. I’ve to mention that, I’ve seen a couple of very good medical articles (scientific articles) from non-medical professionals. The question doesn’t have a suitable answer but filtering the right information from the fake news is becoming difficult.