Free Talk - "Why You Should Be Skeptical of the Media's Medical Reporting"

Presented by Dr. John Cmar.

One of the
greatest disservices that the current trend of sensationalist, opinion-based
media "reporting" does is to misinform the public about medical matters.
It's one thing to distinguish evidence-based medicine from science-based
medicine, and another that the news media often doesn't seem to care about
either. We'll discuss specific examples of how news reporting on medical
science can get things both right and wrong, and possible ways the
non-medically trained public can skeptically approach medical news stories
to tease out the truth.

Bio: John Cmar, MD, has been long enthralled with horrible infections that
could spell doom for humankind, as well as sanity and skepticism in the
practice of medicine. He is currently an Instructor of Medicine at the Johns
Hopkins University School of Medicine, and the Assistant Director of
Infectious Diseases at Sinai Hospital of Baltimore. In his role as Associate
Program Director for the Johns Hopkins Internal Medicine residency program
at Sinai, he teaches an annual course series in Evidence-Based Medicine,
among many other duties. He also does Infectious Diseases outreach in
Baltimore television and print media. John is a science fiction and fantasy
fan, avid gamer, and podcast enthusiast. He currently blogs and podcasts on
skeptical, medical, and geeky topics on *The Secret Lair (
www.thesecretlair.com).

The Bethesda Regional Library has free parking on Saturdays. It is also located about 2 blocks from the Bethesda Metro.

Refreshments and socializing after the talk