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.

Ex Input:
The story doesn’t address costs for any of the treatment options discussed. Is MBSR comparable to CBT? Does insurance cover either treatment option? The story tells readers what percentage of study participants who got MBSR treatment reported improvement in pain, as well as what percentage of MBSR participants “reported improvement in the activities they could do.” It also offered the same numbers for participants who received CBT and for the control group, which received typical medical care for this condition. These details deserve a Satisfactory rating. But: The story notes: “The study did caution that 30 of the 103, or about one-third, of the participants in the meditation group reported an ‘adverse event,’ most often an increase in pain due to yoga.” It’s good to see that included. Since the story is effectively comparing MBSR to CBT and conventional treatment, it would also have been worth noting “adverse events” for those groups in the study. According to the study, 10 percent of the CBT group also experienced “adverse events,” and no adverse events were mentioned for the control group. Defining “adverse events” would also have been good, since it’s not clear whether they mean momentary pain or a debilitating flare-up of long-term pain. According to the study, the pain–for both MBSR and CBT groups–was “mostly temporary” and no “serious” adverse events were reported. Those things are worth mentioning. (It’s also worth finding out what “mostly” and “serious” mean.) The story describes the study in detail, explicitly stating the study size and the absolute percentages in each arm that had benefit. It also acknowledged the study was randomized. We’ll count this as sufficient for Satisfactory, keeping in mind the following: As explained in the summary above, the story doesn’t make clear MBSR and CBT were used in addition to conventional medical treatment, rather than instead of medical treatment. The story didn’t mention that the study excluded participants with what the study authors term “a specific diagnosis (eg, spinal stenosis).” In other words, the study did not address treatments for back pain caused by issues like a herniated disc or rheumatoid arthritis. Many readers have these conditions, and should be informed that these study results may not be applicable to their situation. Lastly, we would have welcomed a discussion of the high rates of success within the control group. Forty-four percent in that group experienced a gain in functionality, for example. That seems pretty good! What do the researchers have to say about that? No disease mongering here. However, we did want to point out that the story “fear mongers” in a sense, by stating back pain is “one reason why more and more people are addicted to painkillers.” The story insinuates that these other treatment methods–especially meditation–could help with that. And maybe they could. But the study itself says “No overall differences in treatment effects were observed for…self-reported use of medications for back pain.” So why the mention of painkiller addiction? Conflicts of interest don’t appear to be an issue here, and the story includes statements from an accompanying editorial in JAMA, which was written by experts unaffiliated with the research. This squeaks by as Satisfactory, though it should be noted that most of this material was available via news releases (see below). The story is effectively all about comparing alternatives, though–again–it should have made clear that MBSR and CBT were used in conjunction with conventional medical treatment, and it left out discussion of other well-known non-medication treatment methods, such as exercise. It’s not clear from the story whether MBSR is widely available, is available in mainly metropolitan areas, or is a relatively new field that is still uncommon. The story does quote from a separate editorial in JAMA that says health care systems “should provide access to affordable mind-body therapies,” implying that it’s not widely available. Is this the case, or can it be easily accessed? Given the constraints of a brief news story, the piece does a nice job of articulating the differences between MBSR and CBT. It would have been even more helpful for the story to mention previous studies on the impact of MBSR and CBT on low back pain, to help us understand how novel this new study is. There is little in the story that is not found in the two news releases issued on this study. (Those releases can be found here and here.)

Ex Output:
Mindful meditation may be the answer to relieving chronic back pain, study suggests


Ex Input:
Diana Nyad cries as she speaks to reporters and fans after arriving back in Key West, Florida August 9, 2011. An asthma attack, a painful shoulder and battering wind and waves forced 61-year-old swimmer Diana Nyad to abandon early on Tuesday her bid to become the first person to swim from Cuba to Florida without a shark cage. REUTERS/Rob O'Neal/Florida Keys News Bureau/Handout The American, who tried and failed the 103-mile swim more than three decades ago when she was 28, gave up after enduring nearly 30 hours of a crossing expected to last 60, exhausted by her body’s limits and the force of the elements. “I thought this was my time. We set out, thinking the conditions were favorable. They were not. The winds were stronger and the waves were bigger than what I’d expected,” she told Reuters after her escort boat Bellisimo brought her to the Key West Yacht Club on Stock Island. Nyad, a veteran long-distance swimmer, had started out strongly, stroking rhythmically through calm seas after she dived off from the Marina Hemingway on the western outskirts of Cuba’s capital Havana at 7:45 p.m. EDT on Sunday. But, she said in an interview with CNN, she suffered an unexpected bout of asthma that left her gasping for oxygen. An “excruciating pain” also developed in her right shoulder and these physical handicaps combined with contrary winds and seas that pushed her floundering off course. “Last night at midnight, I was trembling, the 11 hours of asthma had taken so much from my body ... I just knew that it wasn’t mind over matter any more, I was absolutely spent,” Nyad, wearing a white bathrobe, told CNN at Stock Island. She said that toward the end she was “limping” and “slapping around” in the water and even resorted to breast stroke instead of her usual crawl. Her doctor joined her in the water at one point to try to give her relief with an inhaler. CNN, which had a producer on one of the boats accompanying Nyad, said she was vomiting when she was brought aboard an escort boat at 12:45 a.m. EDT (0445 GMT) on Tuesday. Nyad, who later recovered to breakfast on scrambled eggs on her way to Key West, was disappointed but had no regrets about her motives for attempting the swim. She turns 62 this month. She had said her main aim in attempting the Cuba to Florida swim again, without a shark cage, was to help people her age and older realize they can still achieve many things. “I was the best person I could be ... that’s the message. I dug down, I dug deep ... Whatever you’re doing, do your job well,” Nyad, who has the muscled body and the steely resolve of a marathon swimmer, told CNN. Raised in southern Florida, she first tried the crossing from Cuba in 1978, but failed in the face of winds and heavy waves. The same swim was completed successfully in May 1997 by Australian Susan Maroney, who was 22 at the time. But Maroney used a shark cage. Nyad’s flotilla of escort vessels included specially equipped kayaks transmitting an anti-shark shield in the form of an electronic signal that is annoying to the sleek ocean predators that stalk the waters of the Florida Straits. When she was years younger, Nyad put herself into the record books by swimming around Manhattan in 1975 in less than eight hours and by completing a 102.5 mile swim from Bimini in the Bahamas to Florida in 1979. Despite her having to abandon her bid, her fans tweeted their admiration on Tuesday. “That was Diana’s whole point. Rethink old. Sorry she (had) to abandon but my admiration doesn’t waiver. Go Diana,” said one. Asked whether she would attempt the swim again, Nyad told CNN: “You don’t beat Mother Nature ... I think I’m going to have to go to my grave without swimming from Cuba to Florida.”

Ex Output:
Sea defeats body, not spirit, of swimmer, 61.


Ex Input:
Family members of Democratic state Rep. Wilson Stone posted a message to his personal Facebook page on Sunday. It says Stone “had a spell” while teaching Sunday school. They said testing at a local hospital “revealed some type of brain tumor” and that more tests are scheduled. “He reminded us that the election is 3 weeks from this Tuesday and for everyone to keep his re-election going strong while he recovers!” family members wrote. House Democratic Caucus spokesman Brian Wilkerson confirmed the Facebook account belongs to Stone. Stone faces Republican Brian “Tiger” Gann in the Nov. 6 election. Gann said he is praying for Stone to have a speedy recovery and a return to full health. “He and I are opponents in our race, but we are brothers in Christ,” Gann wrote on his campaign’s Facebook page. Stone has been in the legislature since 2009. When Democrats were in power, Stone had the unofficial job of making the opening motion to begin each day’s session, which included excusing lawmakers who were absent. He was elected House minority whip in 2017, shortly after Democrats lost control of the House of Representatives for the first time in nearly a century. Last month, state Republican Party officials filed an ethics complaint against Stone for using taxpayer money to campaign for votes. Stone sent a survey to his constituents, which is legal. But the survey included the line: “I request your vote and support.” Stone apologized for the mailing and said he would reimburse the state.

Ex Output:

Kentucky lawmaker to continue campaign despite brain tumor.