I have been a cheerleader for the breast cancer drug Herceptin ever since I began receiving it. I had my initial worries -- about an allergic reaction that I knew caused death within 24 hours for a handful of women and about possible toxicity to the heart -- but after faring well through my first dose and having now successfully completed my one year obligation to the drug, with no allergic reaction or heart damage, I have come to believe the Herceptin might just be the gem of a drug that the media says it is. Yet now I've read an article that makes me question what I really know about Herceptin -- and the studies that surround it and the statistics that back it and the messages sent out over the lines of mass communication to every day, non-medical people like me.

Epidemiologist John Ioannidis believes that most published research findings are false. Latest medical research is wrong about one-third of the time, he says -- or at least that's what the latest research shows. And there are many factors to consider when examining the inaccuracies of research -- like who is sponsoring the study. Typically, researchers are not trying to mislead people. But the sponsor of a study might be. Until recently, few published studies named those who paid for research or whether or not the researcher stood to gain financially. During the past 20 years, money for most clinical studies has not come from the federal government but from pharmaceutical and biotech companies -- and a drug-maker may try several trials until it gets the result it wants. By the time consumers hear about the results, the study may be skewed and flawed and not even applicable to its intended population.

Other studies are flawed because they can't get enough subjects for their trials. It took 10 years to get enough women to volunteer for bone marrow transplants to potentially save women with metastatic breast cancer -- and then the trial showed the transplants did not work. Other considerations -- does the study include people of various ages and ethnicities and regions and risk factors -- further complicate the reporting of research to the general public to whom the research may not even apply.

There is a whole food chain of confusion, says one doctor of psychiatry, who explains that when research is shared with the general public, there are many unanswered questions -- like what is risk? what is a risk factor? And with cancer treatments, we often hear statements like, "This drug extended life expectancy for 40 percent of the people." But for how long did it extend life? What if it was for just a few weeks? And what if there were huge trade-offs in terms of pain or disruption of healthy living?

I have always paid close attention to the facts and figures that apply to my treatments and therapies. I have questioned and analyzed and debated in search of that gut instinct that has guided me well through breast cancer and beyond. Perhaps in the future, though, I will hunt a little more for the buried bits and pieces that might help me make even better decisions about issues that are often so unclear and contradictory.