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.
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Question: Paragraph: We’ll give the story the benefit of the doubt for again leaning on an independent expert who says the technology is likely prohibitively expensive. While no dollar estimate is given, we think this is good enough for now. As with the harms, the story does quantify the benefits in one way. It says, “It could help avoid up to 98% of these screening procedures, according to the study, which appears in BMJ.” It also says, “The new study included 753 pregnant women who were at high risk for having a child with Down syndrome. Of these, 86 women were determined to be pregnant with a child with Down syndrome.” The story does quantify potential harms in one way by noting, “There were no false-negative results with the new test.” We wish the story also spoke about false positives. False positives are certainly part of the stress and harms from any screening test that need to be considered. In this case, it appears the false positives were low but not negligible. The story adequately describes the study design. The story does avoid disease monitoring, but we wish it had included some of the data from the paper about the frequency of Down syndrome and even some of the other disorders. The LA Times blog piece managed to do this in much less space. The story provides a wealth of outside experts who provide great commentary and context about the study’s findings. We wish more stories about screenings had quotes like these: “In a year or two, this test may be available, but it won’t replace existing technologies, it will nudge its way into our armamentarium of available methodologies,” says Mark I. Evans, MD,  director of Comprehensive Genetics in New York City, and an obstetrician/gynecologist at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, also in New York City. “The bad news is that prenatal diagnosis is not just about Down syndrome…Down syndrome represents about 50% of what we find, and this new test can help with that, but it may also give women a false sense of reassurance.” The story tries to do a good thing by explaining at the very end that the new test is not a diagnostic test, as amniocentesis and chorionic villus sampling are. Rather, it’s a screening test. The distinction – and the significance of that – could have been made more clearly, but we give the story the benefit of the doubt. The story leans on an independent expert to say that the test is “not ready for prime time….in a year or two, this test may be available.” The story does not establish the test’s novelty, and this is largely because it does not provide the proper context. The study itself says, “In the past 20 years maternal age has been combined with ultrasonographic examination of the fetus and biochemical measurement of various proteins or hormones in the maternal circulation to improve identification of high risk pregnancies. This combined approach of screening can now identify more than 90% of affected fetuses, but there is still a need for invasive testing in 3–5% of the population.” This means that as many as 95% of all women would not need invasive testing to begin with, so this test is only potentially a breakthrough for a small minority of women. BMJ actually makes the novelty question easy to answer by breaking it down this way:  What is already known on this topic: Non-invasive prenatal detection of fetal trisomy 21 is achievable by massively parallel sequencing of maternal plasma DNA Its diagnostic performance and practical feasibility in the clinical setting has not been tested on a large scale. What this study adds: Among high risk pregnancies clinically indicated for invasive prenatal diagnosis, non-invasive detection of fetal trisomy 21 can be achieved with the use of multiplexed massively parallel sequencing of maternal plasma DNA at 100% sensitivity and 97.9% specificity, giving a 96.6% positive predictive value and 100% negative predictive value. The sequencing test could be used to rule out trisomy 21 among high risk pregnancies before proceeding to invasive diagnostic testing to reduce the number of cases requiring amniocentesis or chorionic villus sampling.” The story does not rely on a news release. Claim: Progress Toward Blood Test for Down Syndrome

Answer: This thoroughly reported and carefully written story avoids giving pregnant women false hope of an easier way to detect genetic anomalies while still presenting some compelling information about a new blood test. Pregnancy can be anxiety inducing because of the sheer number of tests already required of women: frequent blood tests, ultrasounds, and amniocentesis in many cases. Add to that the barrage of stories about the way diet and environmental conditions may be affecting in utero development at any given point and one can understand why women might want a simpler solution to find out whether their child might have a genetic disorder. Overall, we think if more stories approached screening the way this story did there would be fewer people demanding the latest over-hyped test from their doctor. This is a “hope for the future” level test that may be inching its way to market. It’s not available now and won’t be in the immediate future – and the story makes that clear.


Question: Paragraph: People who became ill attended the private function Nov. 24 at the Puritan Backroom conference center in Manchester, the state Department of Health and Human Services said Friday. One person later died, but it was unclear if the death was related to the norovirus outbreak, the department said. The restaurant is co-owned by U.S. Rep. Chris Pappas and is famous for its chicken tenders. It has been in his family for more than a century and is a frequent stop for presidential candidates of both parties. The nature of the event was not released, but it didn’t appear that any current presidential candidates attended. The manager of the Puritan Backroom, Erik Zink, said in a written statement that the restaurant’s top priorities are promoting health and excellent food safety and that he was confident it was doing everything possible to maintain those practices. Zink also said the restaurant had reached out to the family of the person who died to express “our condolences” for the death, which he blamed on unidentified causes. After the outbreak, the Manchester Health Department conducted an inspection of the restaurant. Officials determined there was no ongoing norovirus risk to the public. The symptoms of norovirus include diarrhea, vomiting, nausea and stomach pain, health officials said. The state sees 50 to 75 norovirus outbreaks every year. Claim: 18 sickened at popular New Hampshire primary campaign stop.

Answer: A norovirus sickened 18 people after a private function last month at a restaurant co-owned by a Democratic congressman that is popular with presidential candidates campaigning in the New Hampshire primary, state health officials said.


Question: Paragraph: 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. Claim: Dyslexia: Scanning the brain for clues

Answer:
This story is the best of the three we reviewed about a study indicating that brain scans may help researchers understand brain structure and function in people who have dyslexia. It refrains from claiming that the work has near-term clinical implications for people who have trouble reading and writing. However, the bulk of the story is made up of personal stories about living with dyslexia, while key features of this research are buried deep in the story or left out entirely. What’s more, the story describes the study participants as “children,” thus leaving readers with the impression that researchers looked at beginning readers, when they actually were studying teenagers who presumably had been dealing with dyslexia for many years. In addition, the story tosses in a discussion of an unrelated study of dyslexia and spatial skills. Even people with advanced reading skills are likely to come away from this story befuddled about the scope, findings and implications of the research. Good reading skills are fundamental to educational, social and financial success. Dyslexia is a type of reading disability characterized by difficulties in word recognition, spelling and decoding. Most studies suggest early intervention is important, but little is known about why some children respond better than others. This research suggests that brain scans can provide insight to underlying mechanisms of dyslexia and perhaps help track and refine interventions that could be tailored to individuals. But for readers to understand the value of this study, stories must clearly describe the research and its implications.