TASK DEFINITION: Generate an explanation for the given claim using the provided supporting material from the paragraph. Please consider the following points while generating an output. 1) The claim will always have supporting proof in the paragraph, and the paragraph will have a clear point of view supporting the claim. 2) There can be instances where direct correlation to the claim is not available. Make use of the sentences in the paragraph to provide a corresponding output supporting the claim. 3) The explanation should be at least one and at most twelve sentences long.
PROBLEM: Paragraph: "As a matter of course, stories about the increased use of drugs should report the drugs’ prices. A change in guidelines based on the study would increase the number of patients eligible for treatment by several hundred thousand in the US. The annualized cost of drug treatment is $12,000-$24,000 depending on the regimen, leading to potential new expenditures of $24 to $48 billion. While there are significant offsets, the potential for this level of additional costs should have been included in the story The story states that delaying treatment ""nearly doubles the risk of dying over the next several years"" and yields a ""70 percent improvement in survival."" This reporting is vague. The story should have compared absolute risks, not relative risks. See our primer on this issue. The story should have included the time span studied. These numbers should have stated the two death rates directly so readers can understand the magnitude of the benefit–whether the risk of death went from [say] 2 percent to 1 percent or from 30 percent to 15 percent. The story places the recommended treatment of earlier drug intervention in the context of the treatments’ known side effects, which can be very serious. The story should have described the severity of those side effects. We give this a satisfactory score, but barely. The report is based on a study presented at a major medical meeting. The story should have mentioned the fact that it has not been published or peer-reviewed. It should also have pointed out that it was a retrospective cohort study, which is considered to be less conclusive than prospective, double-blind studies. It should also have pointed out, as the NIH press release does, that a clinical trial is needed to validate the results in a way that would call for changing the current guidelines. These failures to provide caveats and context earn the story an ""unsatisfactory"" rating under this criterion. The story does not exaggerate the gravity or prevalance of AIDS. The story quotes Anthony Fauci, one of the best-known and -respected experts in the field of HIV/AIDS. The story also quotes the study’s lead investigator, and the author of AIDS treatment guidelines. That source’s link to companies that make AIDS drugs is properly noted. The story also quotes an independent clinician familiar with the guidelines and the current research. The story plainly compares the current guidelines with the regimen tested. The story explains that the drug combinations used by AIDS patients have been widely used since the mid-1990s. No claims are made for the novelty of the drug treatment. The recommendation to treat earlier is presented not as novel, but as a plan under consideration and study for quite some time. The story does not draw excessively on the NIH press release." Claim: AIDS treatment should be started sooner, study says

SOLUTION: "This is a Columbus Dispatch version of a story reported by the Associated Press. Since the Columbus paper changed the original article substantially, we send our comments to the Columbus paper. Taking the big view, this story about the benefits of starting the standard multi-drug AIDS treatment sooner than current guidelines suggest accomplishes its mission. It fairly describes important new research that verifies earlier work suggesting the same thing. It says, correctly, that the continuing research could drive changes in treatment. The story is well-sourced and provides a lucid description of the disease process and detailed definition of ""early"" treatment. Having said that, the report falls short of two key best practices:  It fails to quantify the benefits of early treatment in a meaningful way. It uses ""relative risk"" [a percent reduction in mortality] instead of ""absolute risk"" [which would allow readers to understand the gravity of the risk and the size of the benefit. It fails to describe the limitations of the study with caveats and context. If the story had mentioned those limitations, its predictions of imminent clinical use and eventual changes to the guidelines would have been properly tempered. As presented, the story fails to check the sources’ consistent enthusiasm with journalistic disinterest. Given the credibility of the study, the opinions of multiple high-quality sources and the previous research record, the predictions seem justifiable. But the history of AIDS science, treatment and politics recommends a bit more reporting distance and care."

PROBLEM: Paragraph: We’ll rule this not applicable because, in general, most people have ballpark knowledge of how much chocolate costs. The story did not mention that dark chocolate is typically more expensive than milk chocolate — especially for the premium brands with very high concentrations of cocoa solids. A brief explanation would have been helpful. The story went the extra mile here, providing the absolute rates of stroke seen in the groups consuming the lowest and highest quantities of chocolate. “Among those with the highest weekly chocolate intake — more than 45 grams — there were 2.5 strokes per 1,000 women per year. That figure was 7.8 per 1,000 among women who ate the least (less than 8.9 grams per week).” These statistics weren’t provided in the study text, suggesting that the writer made the calculations based on data contained in one of the study tables. We applaud the extra effort made to provide meaningful statistics to readers! Close call here, but the story goes a step further than WebMD when discussing the possible adverse effects of consuming too much chocolate. In addition to warning that chocolate has a lot of fat, sugar and calories, it explicitly notes that eating too much of it “could be counterproductive.” WebMD offers no comparable warning and suggests that eating more chocolate than was consumed in this study would result in similar health benefits. This story was much more cautious in its depiction of the findings than the competing WebMD coverage. Most important, it was careful to explain high up that the study found only a correlation between chocolate intake and lower stroke risk. As one of the study authors explains: “Given the observational design of the study, findings from this study cannot prove that it’s chocolate that lowers the risk of stroke.” We also appreciate the story’s more nuanced language regarding which constituents of chocolate might be responsible for possible benefits. Whereas WebMD states unequivocally that flavonoids and antioxidants “deserve the credit” for these benefits, Reuters says more judiciously that  flavonoids “may be responsible for chocolate’s apparent effects on health.” [Emphasis ours.] “Whether that theoretical benefit translates into real-life benefits remains to be proven by rigorous studies, however,” Reuters appropriately adds. There was no disease-mongering. This was the only major shortcoming — no independent perspective. An expert in epidemiology might have pointed out, for example, that the data on chocolate consumption were collected from subject self-reports, and therefore should be viewed cautiously. The availability of chocolate is not in question. The story appropriately notes that there is a stronger statistical association with dark chocolate as opposed to milk chocolate. The story notes that previous research has linked higher levels of chocolate consumption with improved heart health. The story includes comments attributed to a direct email from one of the study authors, so we can confirm our overall impression that this story wasn’t based on a press release. Claim: Chocolate lovers have fewer strokes, study finds

SOLUTION: Starting with the headline, this story is careful to explain that the study observed fewer strokes in those who ate more chocolate; it doesn’t suggest that the chocolate prevented strokes. It also features excellent use of statistics, a more explicit description of potential harms, and mentions alternative approaches to prevention. The only major shortcoming was a lack of an independent perspective on the findings. Some journalists may balk at our insistence that stories about observational studies include appropriate discussion of the limitations of the evidence. In only 378 words, this story provides another example that this can be done – and it doesn’t require the length of a full medical journal article to do so.

PROBLEM: Paragraph: "Don't mess with Charlie Crist when it comes to open government. It was Crist, as Florida governor, who created something called the Office for Open Government. And we've heard stories of the governor himself ordering agency heads to hand over public records requested by nosy reporters. Now Crist is taking up the cause of the nation's people in a debate over transparency when it comes to the health care reform bill. ""It seems that a bill that was crafted in a closed-door, backroom meeting in the White House will end the same way,"" Crist, who is running for U.S. Senate, said in a statement released Jan. 5, 2010. ""President Obama has broken his pledge to the American people to be transparent throughout this process, and (Senate Majority Leader) Harry Reid and (House Speaker) Nancy Pelosi have only aided in the secrecy with sweetheart deals and dead of the night votes."" Crist is claiming that Obama broke a promise when it comes to transparency and health care reform. Lucky for us, we have this thing at PolitiFact called the  Obameter  , where we are tracking Obama's more than 500 campaign promises. If you'll now turn to  Promise No. 517  . To achieve health care reform, Obama said in August 2008, ""I'm going to have all the negotiations around a big table. We'll have doctors and nurses and hospital administrators. Insurance companies, drug companies -- they'll get a seat at the table, they just won't be able to buy every chair. But what we will do is, we'll have the negotiations televised on C-SPAN, so that people can see who is making arguments on behalf of their constituents, and who are making arguments on behalf of the drug companies or the insurance companies. And so, that approach, I think is what is going to allow people to stay involved in this process."" If it only happened ... While the Senate and House floor debates have been televised on C-SPAN, negotiations have almost always been away from television cameras. ABC's Jake Tapper put the discrepancy in front of White House press secretary Robert Gibbs this week, to see if the final negotiations between the House, the Senate and the president would be televised. ""There have been a countless number of public hearings,"" Gibbs said. ""The Senate did a lot of their voting at 1 and 2 in the morning on C-SPAN ... I think what the president promised and pledged was so that you could see who was fighting for their constituents and who was fighting for drug and insurance companies."" But, Tapper pressed, the president was talking about negotiations, not votes -- which would hardly be a campaign promise since they would have been televised regardless. ""Well, but the bill gets put together on the floor of the Senate,"" Gibbs said. ""That's where the bill got augmented. And I think if you watched that debate ... you'd have seen quite a bit of public hearing and public airing."" Despite the action on the House and Senate floors, most of the serious negotiations on the health care bill have been done in the same fashion as other major initiatives in the past -- behind closed doors. From negotiations with the drug companies and health care interests to final assembly of the delicate compromise on abortion, the bulk of the big deliberations and discussions have occurred out of the public eye. The debate over the resulting bill may have been on C-SPAN as Gibbs claims, but the real sausagemaking took place in a private kitchen. 517 a Promise Broken. On top of that, C-SPAN CEO Brian Lamb  wrote  to House and Senate leaders last week inviting negotiations on the channel. ""President Obama, Senate and House leaders, many of your rank-and-file members, and the nation’s editorial pages have all talked about the value of transparent discussions on reforming the nation’s health care system,"" Lamb wrote. ""Now that the process moves to the critical stage of reconciliation between the Chambers, we respectfully request that you allow the public full access, through television, to legislation that will affect the lives of every single American."" Obama promised an end to closed-door negotiations and complete openness for the health care talks. But he has failed to deliver. When Crist says ""President Obama has broken his pledge to the American people to be transparent throughout this process,"" he's right." Claim: President Obama has broken his pledge to the American people to be transparent throughout (health care reform negotiations).

SOLUTION:
Gov. Charlie Crist says Obama breaks transparency promise on health reform bill