On the front page of today’s New York Times, long-time science writer Gina Kolata reports that an FDA advisory committee has recommended approval of “the first test — a brain scan — that can show the characteristic plaques ofAlzheimer’s disease in the brain of a living person.”

Kolata is careful not to call this the first test for Alzheimer’s disease, but she treats it, throughout the story, as if it were. The new scan, she writes, “would be especially valuable in a common and troubling situation — trying to make a diagnosis when it is not clear whether a patient’s memory problems are a result of Alzheimer’s disease or something else.”

And she goes on in a similar vein:  ”…having a diagnosis is important for planning and for understanding what lies ahead…” She quotes Dr. P. Murali Doraiswamy, an Alzheimer’s researcher at Duke University, who said, “This technique will allow family doctors to feel confident ruling out Alzheimer’s,” he said.

That all makes it sound as if this is the first test for Alzheimer’s. Another researcher says “this is a big deal.” “This is nothing but a positive for our families,” says a representative from the Alzheimer’s Association. If it were not the first test for Alzheimer’s disease, it might not be such a big deal. But I’m convinced–it’s a big deal!

It is not, however, the first test for Alzheimers–a fact I glean from Kolata’s own reporting.

On August 9, 2010, she reported on the front page of the Times that researchers had developed “a spinal fluid test can be 100 percent accurate in in identifying a signature level of abnormal proteins in patients with significant memory loss who went on to develop Alzheimer’s disease.”

Again, note the careful qualifications. But reading over the meaningless phrase “a signature level of abnormal proteins,” Kolata is reporting on the development of a predictive test for Alzheimer’s disease.

Kolata’s story today on the scan for plaques is strangely quiet on that previous reporting. She might have said–and should have said–that the scan follows the announcement last year of a spinal-fluid test that could also help identify Alzheimer’s disease. Today’s brain scan might be more accurately described as the second test for Alzheimer’s disease–with appropriate qualifications noted.

Why would she omit mention of that earlier test? Perhaps because it was widely criticized here on the Tracker and elsewhere, and even “corrected” in the Times itself, as I noted at the time.

Kolata wrote then that the new test “can be 100 percent accurate,” a phrase, as I wrote, that doesn’t mean anything–although it’s likely to be read by many as a test that “is” 100 percent accurate. (Every pitch a batter hits “can be” a home run; only a few of them are.)

Kolata has done her readers a disservice. And she’s done a disservice to her colleagues, who are stuck, as I often was, trying to explain to their editors why trying to match a big story on the front page of the New York Times isn’t going to be as easy as they think.

- Paul Raeburn

This entry was posted on Friday, January 21st, 2011 at 9:48 am and is filed under Health & Medicine Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.