Reading path

Reading Health News Without Being Misled

Health stories reach you through a chain of choices, from the study to the press release to the headline, and each link can bend the meaning. This path walks you through that chain so you can tell a solid finding from a dressed-up one, and read the next scary or hopeful headline with a calm, checking eye.

The path, step by step

  1. 1 How to Read a Health Headline Without Getting Fooled

    4 min read

    It opens the journey with the whole skill in miniature, giving you a first checklist for approaching any health story before we slow down on each part.

  2. 2 How a Study Becomes a Misleading Headline

    4 min read

    Placed early because it shows where a headline is born, tracing how a measured finding turns into an overstated claim on the way from lab to news desk.

  3. 3 Confounding and Causation: Why a Real Association Can Still Lie to You

    6 min read

    This is the heart of correlation versus causation, teaching why two things moving together may share a hidden cause rather than one driving the other.

  4. 4 Absolute Versus Relative Risk, and the One Question That Cuts Through the Hype

    7 min read

    Once you can question a causal claim, this teaches the single most common numerical trick in headlines, the gap between a big percentage change and a small real one.

  5. 5 Why '1 in 100' Beats '1 Percent': Communicating Risk Clearly

    4 min read

    It builds on the risk idea by showing how the same number reads clearly as one in a hundred and confusingly as a percent, so you can restate a scary figure plainly.

  6. 6 Reading Contraception Risk: Absolute Versus Relative Numbers

    4 min read

    A concrete worked example where identical data reads as alarming or reassuring depending on framing, letting you apply the previous two lessons to a real story.

  7. 7 Why No Single Study Settles a Question

    3 min read

    This addresses the single-study fallacy directly, explaining why one striking paper behind a headline rarely settles anything on its own.

  8. 8 How to Spot Spin in a Study Abstract or Press Release

    5 min read

    A fitting capstone that pulls the thread together, giving you the language of spin so you can name the moves in an abstract or press release the moment you see them.

Each step is a full article on the Reading the Evidence blog.

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