ORTHOPEDICS TODAY: What makes us a medical newspaper?

Our goal is accurate reporting of major news in orthopedics.

Issue: October 2003

ByDouglas W. Jackson, MD

Douglas W. Jackson, MD [photo] --- Douglas W. Jackson, Chief Medical Editor

In my position as chief medical editor, I receive personal letters from some of you after each issue. Letter writers may offer a different viewpoint, challenge one of the researchers quoted in a story or criticize our coverage — and we try to publish these letters in subsequent issues. However, some of you write and specifically state that you do not want your opinion published or your name used. We respect that also.

This column is in response to one letter writer who questioned why we did not screen the background of a presenter at a scientific meeting that we covered in an article. We work hard to give a representative and unbiased reporting of some of the scientific work in our field so I think it is important that I respond to this letter.

Selection of presentations

Let me start by stating what Orthopedics Today tries to be in the world of orthopedics. We are a scientific newspaper. Our writers cover and write about selected presentations at national and international orthopedic meetings. We try to select the key papers and presentations that we think will interest our readers.

In addition to covering podium presentations, we like to summarize highlights from some of the symposia and instructional courses presented at these meetings. Our challenge is to cover the broad field of orthopedics and to present our readers some of the latest information (which can sometimes be controversial) given in presentations at these meetings. We give preference to information that is scientifically and clinically new, and to information about innovative developments within the industry.

Our objective is to accurately report the authors’ presentation of their data. When there are good discussions following the presentations, we try to include the essence of these discussions and sometimes we provide follow-up interviews. We hope our readers will pursue, in more depth, the individual topics and their scientific validity.

In addition, most issues have interviews with leading authorities and round tables that go into depth on specific issues and topics. We choose these by anticipating what our readers will find interesting.

Background checks?

Our writers and editors are excellent and are a pleasure for me to work with in preparing these articles. Reading all their stories before publication gives me insight into the accuracy of their reporting. They are quite sophisticated and understand the nuances of presentations at scientific sessions, often recognizing the conflicts of interest and personal agendas.

Here is my specific reason for writing this column: The complaint I received in a recent letter was that we should not have included a presentation by a specific researcher. The letter writer felt that we gave credence to the presenter by covering his presentation and that we should have checked out the presenter’s credibility before we reported on his research. The writer of this recent letter felt that if we had checked, we would have seen the scientific work we reported was skewed by personal bias as well as a conflict of interest.

Orthopedics Today does not have the staff for nor is it our mission to do background checks and peer-reviews of presenters at the scientific meetings we choose to cover. The program committees at these meetings do peer-review and screening when selecting the presenters and their work for the scientific portions of these national and international orthopedic meetings. The symposia and panel participants are usually chosen from a pool of well-known and qualified individuals.

Our writers and editors cover the presentations and I review their prepared articles before they are published. We let you know where a presentation was given, the authors, and often we report on the discussion after a presentation.

In the virtual round tables and interviews we develop for each issue, we make certain to cover the differing viewpoints on specific
topics.

Our underlying goal is to be accurate in our reporting. We assume you will read this as a publication bringing you coverage of scientific meetings and topics in the field of orthopedic surgery. We do not ever intend for this reporting to be a validation of the presenter’s work. It is our intention that you read our news reports about presentations at orthopedic meetings and then incorporate this information into your knowledge base with further scrutiny and confirmation.

The processing of any scientific information into patient care is an ongoing process. The staff of Orthopedics Today has the charge to bring information that may interest you and may be relevant to your patient care. You as the doctor need to choose which information to pursue further, to question and to use in patient care.

Keep your letters coming. I must say I enjoy reading your perspectives and different viewpoints.