TL:DR: Sugary drinks might up your risk for oral cavity cancer (so says relative risk but it still probably won't kill you (so says absolute risk).  In depth: I love teaching applied statistics, including showing my students how to identify and properly attention-grabbing examples of relative risk ( 1 , 2 ). HOWEVER...relative and absolute risk aren't lying. But they can scare people, so I think it is important to share both, calmly.  This example from JAMA Otolaryngology is a good example of how to responsibly share relative and absolute risk. It has a very calm, non-click bait article title:  https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamaotolaryngology/fullarticle/2831121 Cool. Also, thanks for using female research participants. Next, the results are shared in a non-salacious manner, with the absolute risk in red and relative risk in blue. How could you use this in class? As with most abusable research practices, sharing relative risk isn't in and of itself unethical. Usin...

Taylor, writing for Mashable , describes what happens when carefully conducted public health research (published in the  Journal of the American Medical Association ) becomes attention grabbing and poorly represented click bait. Data published in JAMA (Case, Burwick, Volpp, & Patel, 2015) tested the step-counting reliability of various wearable fitness tracking devices and smart phone apps (see the data below). In addition to checking the reliability of various devices, the article makes an argument that, from a public health perspective, lots of people have smart phones but not nearly as many people have fitness trackers. So, a way to encourage wellness may be to encourage people to use the the fitness capacities within their smart phone (easier and cheaper than buying a fitness tracker). The authors never argue that fitness trackers are bad, just that 1) some are more reliable than others and 2) the easiest way to get people to engage in more mindful walking...