Have media outlets learned their lesson about reporting vaccine-related studies? Maybe so.
A study published Wednesday in the journal Vaccine found a slightly higher rate of miscarriages in a group of women who’d received a certain type of flu vaccine two years in a row. In the paper’s conclusion, the researchers are careful to say they “cannot establish a causal relationship between repeated influenza vaccination and (miscarriages), but further research is warranted.”
While the Washington Post story that alerted me to the study was cautious and well-reported, I was worried about what I would see from other news outlets. But the other headlines that turned up in a Google News search were surprisingly free of clickbait as well.
They ranged from definitive (“There is no evidence that flu vaccines cause miscarriages”) to mostly vague (“Researchers find hint of a link between flu vaccine and miscarriage”) to only slightly leading (“Study linking early miscarriages to flu vaccine puzzles doctors”).
Overall, it seemed like outlets were taking great pains to avoid another “vaccines cause autism” situation. Then again, maybe Google was just protecting me from the Internet’s darker places.