Currently, there are nearly approximately 17 million articles in PubMed tagged with ‘human(s)’, with >700 000 articles identified as ‘clinical trials’, and >1·8 million as ‘reviews’ (approximately 160 000 as ‘systematic reviews’). Nearly one million articles on humans are added each year. Popular media also abound with medical stories and advice for patients.
Unfortunately, much of this information is unreliable or of uncertain reliability. Most clinical trials results may be misleading or not useful for patients. Most guidelines (which many clinicians rely on to guide treatment decisions) do not fully acknowledge the poor quality of the data on which they are based [4]. Most medical stories in mass media do not meet criteria for accuracy [5], and many stories exaggerate benefit and minimise harms.
— source onlinelibrary.wiley.com 2017-11-25