Given a paragraph, generate a claim that is supported by the given paragraph. 1) The claim must contain information from within the paragraph. 2) A sentence within the paragraph can be used as a claim. 3) The claim should not have contradictions within the paragraph. 4) The claim should be at most one sentence long.

None of the stories we reviewed gave readers sufficient information on the cost of the research scans used in the study. This story includes a comment from a researcher saying that increased use of this type of brain scan would bring the “high cost” down, but it doesn’t provide an estimate of the current cost or any comparison to alternative methods of assessing reading ability or other features of dyslexia. We will give this story a satisfactory rating because it portrays this research as providing information for researchers seeking to understand dyslexia, rather than offering important direct benefits to individuals. However, most of the story is about what it is like to live with dyslexia. These anecdotes have little or nothing to do with the research. The list of celebrities who may have or had dyslexia also seems irrelevant and distracting. Then the story tosses in discussion of a study that looked at correlations between dyslexia and spatial skills; again, unrelated to the topic of the primary study reported here. The jumble of extraneous personal tales and other research muddles the point of the story. MRI brain scans are generally considered to present little physical risk, so the issue here is really the potential negative effects of the information the test produces. At least the story raises that issue by including comments from parents who worry that this sort of scanning could further stigmatize children who have trouble reading or writing. This story fails to point out that the “children” studied were not beginning readers, but teenagers who were already identified as having dyslexia and may have been involved in special reading programs for many years. It also fails to mention several of the caveats and limitations that the researchers noted in their journal article, including the possibility that misclassification of the participants based on their initial testing could affect the results. In other words, rather than actually improving during the study, it is possible some of the teens were actually better readers from the beginning, but just scored low on the baseline tests. Nevertheless, the story appropriately describes this study as helping researchers to understand the disease, rather than evaluating the clinical usefulness of brain scans. Also, one paragraph deep in the story highlights the preliminary nature of the research; specifically that the study included only 25 participants with dyslexia, “which is too small a sample size to prove anything.” It also notes that the study did not look at whether different varieties or reading instruction or other interventions might have had some effect and it includes a comment from an independent expert about the lack of data on instruction or other factors that could influence reading ability. The story would have been better if the alert to the preliminary nature of the study had been near the top, rather than buried near the end. The story refers to estimates that between 5 percent and 20 percent of the population has dyslexia. Unlike the Reuters story we also reviewed, this story provides a useful definition of dyslexia as “a condition that, broadly speaking, hinders a person’s ability to interpret language.”  The story does include independent experts. Although it does not discuss conflicts of interest, the authors of the main study declared no conflicts and reported that their study was supported by a number of grants from public agencies and foundations, though the baseline assessment of the participants was supported by a company that markets treatment interventions for people with dyslexia. One troubling point: the story describes one person who claims to have been helped by “training at a learning development center.” If this individual was associated with the company that helped sponsor this research, the story should have disclosed that connection. The study authors wrote that although standardized tests did not accurately predict changes in reading ability during the study period, “it is possible that there are behavioral measures not included here that may predict outcome.” Indeed, their journal article specifically referred to other research into clinical testing that did appear to predict how children with poor reading skills responded to teaching. The story fails to make clear that the study reported here did not attempt to make a comprehensive comparison of the predictive power of scans and other methods of assessing children with reading problems. The story notes that the type of scan used in this study is not widely available. The story implies that this study is the first to suggest young people with dyslexia use a certain area of the right hemisphere of their brains more than average readers. Actually, the study authors pointed out that their research provides some additional data to support the findings of many other studies of differences between the brains of people with dyslexia and those who read normally. The story does not appear to rely on a news release.
Dyslexia: Scanning the brain for clues

Italy’s Civil Protection officials said the quake, which struck at 3:19 a.m., was part of a swarm of some 1,000 tremors, most of them barely perceptible, linked to Etna’s volcanic eruption this week. Italy’s national seismology institute said the quake had a magnitude of 4.8 on the open-ended Richter scale and 4.9 on the moment magnitude scale, which relates to the amount the ground slips. It struck north of Catania, the largest city in the eastern part of the Mediterranean island, but no damage or injuries were reported there. The quake opened up cracks in homes in several towns, sending chunks of concrete debris tumbling to the ground. It toppled a Madonna statue in a church in Santa Venerina and broke up sidewalks and a stretch of highway, forcing it to close. Many people spent the hours after the quake sleeping in their cars. In the town of Piano d’Api, firefighters removed cracked stucco from the bell tower of the damaged Santa Maria della Misericordia church. Italy’s culture ministry said the quake damage to churches was being tallied by experts. “Etna remains a dangerous volcano, and this country of ours is unfortunately fragile,” government undersecretary Vito Crimi said as he reported 10 people injured. The most seriously injured was a 70-year-old man who fractured ribs and was undergoing surgery for chest injuries. A 71-year-old patient was being kept in hospital for observation, while others were treated and released, the Italian news agency ANSA reported. Additionally, 18 other people went to local hospitals suffering from panic attacks or shock, news reports said. One 80-year-old man was safely extracted from the rubble of his home, ANSA said, while a woman told state radio that her sister was pulled out from under a heavy armoire that had toppled. A ceiling collapsed in another house, and in other homes parts of exterior walls crumbled. Some stone walls along fields and local roads crumbled. Etna, the largest of Italy’s three active volcanoes, has been particularly active since July. In recent days, Etna’s latest eruption has been shooting volcanic ash, heavy smoke and lava stones into the air, coating roads and homes nearby with ash. A new fracture has opened near Etna’s southeast crater and lava has been flowing down an uninhabited slope. The quake was also felt in the upscale Sicilian resort town of Taormina and in other towns in eastern Sicily. The Civil Protection agency said temporary shelters were being set up in gyms or municipal buildings for people whose houses were damaged or who were too frightened to return to their homes. Similar volcanic activity on Etna has been observed many times in past decades, Andrea Billi, a geologist with the state National Council of Research, told RaiNews24. This kind of activity “can last days or weeks,” he said, “but it’s unpredictable.” Italy’s Civil Protection chief said it appeared the activity at Etna was calming down. “From a scientific point of view, we’re dealing with an isolated event,” Angelo Borrelli told Sky TG24 TV. “The technical experts tell us we’re heading toward a cooling of the lava, and we ought to expect a quiescence of the phenomenon (of earthquakes).” Some residents told reporters that after a similar quake in 1984 which killed a person, many on Mount Etna retrofitted their houses to enable them to withstand more powerful temblors. ___ Frances D’Emilio is on twitter at a href=’http://www.twitter.com/fdemilio%3c’www.twitter.com/fdemilio/a
Quake from Mount Etna volcano jolts Sicily, sparks panic.

"The story provided cost estimates for angioplasty. It would have been more complete to include comparable information about the costs of medical therapy. The story discussed the comparable outcomes of the two treatments in terms of heart attacks and death. It also explained that at least initially, angioplasty coupled with medical therapy provided relief of angina to more people (8%) than did medical therapy alone but that this difference between the treatments only lasted for 3 years. The story did not provide an explicit list of harms associated with either treatment. It did mention the increased clotting risks associated with one particular type of stent (drug-coated). The story mentioned several studies that compared people with coronary artery disease who were treated with angioplasty and medical therapy with those that received only medical therapy which found no difference in outcomes such as the numbers who had heart attacks. It also provided quantitative information about how the two treatment approaches compared in terms of symptom reduction For the most part, the story did not engage in overt disease mongering. That said, however, the story opened with a disease mongering vignette that involved medical protocols which were not the subject of the story. And describing angina as ""crushing"" and ""debilitating"" makes it seem worse on the average than it really is. However, the balance of the story did not use scare tactics when talking about coronary artery disease, and in using data to tell the story. Several cardiologists were interviewed for this story. The story covered two of the three treatment options for coronary artery disease. It would have been a more complete piece if it had included mention of coronary bypass surgery. The story was about the use of angioplasty (stents) and medical therapy as compared to medical therapy alone as treatment for coronary artery disease. From the discussion, it was clear that both treatments are currently in common use and appear to be widely available. It was clear from that the story was not about a novel form of treatment but rather a recent line of evaluation of two treatment approaches in current practice. It’s clear this story didn’t rely on a news release; it was based on independent analyses."

Angioplasty’s golden era may be fading