Todays’ ‘news’ on breast screening

mammography screening

This is the paper attracting the headlines.

It would make an ideal paper for students to analyse if they fancied doing it with How to Read a Paper by Trish Greenhalgh.

What we really have to ask is in what way this can be more authoritative than the Cochrane review on the subject.

It’s not an RCT, it relies on case study analysis (see blog post on the hazards of this below) it relies on expert estimation (and remember that expert opinion is far less reliable than RCTs) which is fraught with difficulties.

I have read a couple of media reports and am dismayed at the lack of journalistic critique of what’s been presented.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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