Mike Adams starts Lying with statistics: How conventional medicine confuses the public by posing this question, "Which drug would you rather take? One that reduces your risk of cancer by 50 percent, or another drug that only eliminates cancer in one out of 100 people?" He believes most people would choose the drug that reduces the risk by half.

But both of these choices refer to the same drug and the same outcome. Curious? Here's how Adams explains it. Let's say a new breast cancer drug is being tested and there are 100 women in the clinical trial. At the beginning of the trial, two women are expected to get breast cancer. The other 98 women are not even expected to get breast cancer. Just two of them. At the end of the trial, only one woman gets breast cancer. If you interpret the results of this trial by absolute risk, then the reduction of breast cancer is one woman out of 100. However, if you interpret the results by relative risk -- that out of two women only one got breast cancer -- then the reduction of breast cancer with the new breast cancer drug being tested is an incredible 50 percent.

Remember, at the beginning of the trial, the researchers hypothesized that two women would get breast cancer and since only one did get breast cancer -- one out of two equals 50 percent. Now, if you are a pharmaceutical company who wants to extol the virtues of this new experimental drug, which risk -- absolute or relative -- would you use? Especially if you are trying to grab the interest and support of financial backers and the public? Relative -- of course. It sounds better. And it's true.

However, if you want to discredit a drug or therapy, you would use absolute risk. You would refer to the therapy in a framework of absolute risk. The one out of 100 statistical outcome, as in, it doesn't work very well -- only one out of 100 showed benefit from use. Adams points out this happens all the time when conventional medicine refers to claims made by alternative therapies in say, herbal remedies. And it's true. Nothing about absolute or relative risk is untrue but each can give a vastly different impression of what is true. Before you read another health news headline about another research study or new drug, go read his commentary in its entirety. It will make you pause -- it will make you think twice -- it will prompt you to ask, "what are we talking here -- absolute or relative risk?"