Behind the Mask online workshop:
Get Your Numbers Straight: Making Sense of Health Data

BtM Workshop - 20 March - Get Your Numbers Straight.jpg

Saturday, March 20 · 2021, 15:00 - 17:15 CET, online workshop
Cost: €8 / reduced €5 · Language: English · Tickets

Part of the conference BEHIND THE MASK: Whistleblowing During the Pandemic (18-20 March 2021)

Get Your Numbers Straight: Making Sense of Health Data

With: Serena Tinari (Investigative Journalist, Co founder, Re-Check, IT/CH)

In the current global crisis, journalists and the general public have been forced to become experts in complex public health issues - at warp speed. For a year now, we all have been confronted with a tsunami of numbers, statistical models and a science that seems to change by the day. How can you make sense of competing claims, varied specialists and the now daily jargon of a new, highly medicalized normal? Here’s an antidote: a crash course with a medical investigative journalist whose work is at the intersection between muckraking and Evidence-Based Medicine.

In this 2-hour workshop, you’ll learn why a study is not ‘just a study’ and how come numbers do make sense only if put in a context. Also, how can you spot the flaws in the claims of corporate press releases and government officials? What about conflicts of interest, and how can you develop a spider-sense to spot red flags in public health communication and mainstream media reporting? With concrete examples out of the COVID-19 era, and tips to avoid common pitfalls.

Workshop leader

Serena Tinari is an investigative journalist and filmmaker who specialises in health and medicine, and for two years from 2009 on reported extensively for the Swiss public broadcaster about the H1N1 pandemic and the antiviral drug Tamiflu. Along with Catherine Riva, she co-founded in 2015 the non-profit organization Re-Check and in 2020 the two authored together the Global Investigative Journalism Network’s Guide on Investigating Health and Medicine.

Registration