This is true of all studies, not just medical studies. It would be nice if the people at Vox realized this as a lot of their explainers are based on one shot studies with small sample size, marginally significant p-values, and no replication.
Not a week goes by without a ton of these, revolutionary improvements on battery technology, solar power, wind power, curing cancer, curing AIDS, things that give you cancer and on and on.
There must be money in it, I can't think of any other reason why structurally mis-informing the public is fun or useful.
Think about it...you dedicate your life to your science, and grind day after day, year after year with no verifiable results, because, you know, in case you haven't noticed, curing cancer is motherfucking hard.
I can see where maybe at some point, you just want to feel some sense of accomplishment or to be noticed in your social group, so you find some questionably-causal, but statistically-relevant piece of research you did and just publish the damned thing.
Don't get me wrong, I find this sort of thing appalling, but in the end, most of us are fairly imperfect people.
At least that is what I take away from a lot of it.
What's more interesting then a headline that promises some scientific breakthru is about to change the world?
The real issue, I believe, is that there is no accountability for almost anyone these days. If there is some upside in publishing or reporting on questionable science, and no downside, what is the incentive not to do it?
I fear that no training can be helpful if you're supposed to have 10 stories written by this afternoon, and they'd better be good at attracting readers, or else.
> The real issue, I believe, is that there is no accountability for almost anyone these days. If there is some upside in publishing or reporting on questionable science, and no downside, what is the incentive not to do it?
I agree. I think you captured the essence of the problem. There is no immediate cost to doing this (if people had an actual span of attention, most of the news sites would go banrkupt quickly), and clear benefits. There is no direct price to be paid for misleading people, and the accumulated costs are apparent only years later, in the form of growing distrust towards everything, which destroys society from inside.
Misinforming the public makes cool headlines, which bring in eyeballs, which bring in ad-dollars. I think it's as simple as that.