Insights

<p>Here’s what we’re reading today:</p> <p><strong>Health Reform: </strong>KBUR’s Common Health Blog’s Carey Goldberg <a href="http://commonhealth.wbur.org/2010/09/top-10-health-reform/">finds “nuggets” that can serve as great health reform story ideas</a> in a new Robert Wood Johnson Foundation on how health care reform has affected Massachusetts.</p>

<p><strong>Superbug:</strong> In his Neurotribes blog, Wired’s Steve Silberman details how the <a href="http://blogs.plos.org/neurotribes/2010/09/08/is-wikipedia-journalism-ai… has gotten the Acinetobacter superbug story all wrong</a> with potentially disastrous consequences.</p>

<p>The best doctors know their limits. General practitioners trust radiologists to read X-rays, pathologists to interpret lab results. Pulmonologists call oncologists if they suspect cancer. Obstetricians send patients to nutritionists to make sure they are eating the right foods during a pregnancy.</p> <p>And then there are doctors who like to fly solo.</p>

<p>Here's what we're reading and watching today:</p> <p><strong>Research:</strong> Poor meta-analyses: they’re often bashed for mashing together a bunch of studies that don’t really belong together, leading to suspect conclusions. Current Medicine TV features an Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality researcher talking about how the federal &nbsp;agency <a href="http://www.currentmedicine.tv/2010/biostatistics/roger-chou-md-how-the-… which meta-analyses are good and which are junk</a>. &nbsp;</p>

<p><a href="../../../../../../../../blogs/qa-dr-adriane-fugh-berman-ghostwriting-sneaks-past-most-journal-editors">Adriane Fugh-Berman</a> has been leading the charge against the use of drug company-sponsored ghostwriters to craft scientific articles for publication in seemingly legitimate journals. She has been a paid expert witness on behalf of plaintiffs in the litigation over hormone replacement therapy drugs, and she directs <a href="http://www.pharmedout.org/">PharmedOut</a&gt;, a project at Georgetown University that aims to scrub industry influence from medical training.

<p><em>Editor's note: To hear from one of the grantees who has started up a new community health project, thanks to Mary Lou Fulton’s vision on community health, see </em><em> ReportingonHealth’s Barbara Feder Ostrov's </em><em><a href="http://www.reportingonhealth.org/blogs/qa-kqeds-raul-ramirez-blogging-o… with KQED’s Raul Ramirez</a>.</em></p>

<p><em>Editor’s Note: The project featured in this post is one of a number of new media initiatives launched by <a href="http://www.reportingonhealth.org/users/marylou">Mary Lou Fulton</a>, a grant-maker at <a href="http://www.calendow.org">The California Endowment</a>, which also supports ReportingonHealth. We’ve invited her to share the philosophy behind all of her new journalism and New Media grant-making on community health.

<p>The annual convention of the Asian American Journalists Association (<a href="http://www.aaja.org/">AAJA</a&gt;) early in August was filled from top to bottom with practical and career-oriented sessions. For me, one of the most useful was off the official books. By Twitter and email, AAJA Texas chapter president Iris Kuo organized a lunchtime get-together for freelancers in the hotel lobby.</p>

<p><strong>Foreclosures:</strong> Heart palpitations, insomnia, acid reflux: <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/09/02/MN891F6B62… can make you sick</a>, according to a new report covered by the San Francisco’s Victoria Colliver.</p> <p><strong>Flawed Polls:</strong> Political science professor Terry Jones <a href="http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb6666/is_318_40/ai_n54804366/">e… flaws in media coverage of health care polls</a> in the St. Louis Journalism Review. &nbsp;</p>

<p>In March, <em>Antidote </em>launched a series called <a href="../../../../../../../../blogs/shadow-practice-part-1-disciplined-doctor-found-exile-community-immigrant-health-care">The Shadow Practice</a> that reported on a network of shady physicians operating below the radar of most state and fed