When the Numbers Lie: How Health Data Get Distorted in the Media

Image by Jan from Pixabay

This post was created in collaboration with M.E. Sidall.

We often blame social media for the spread of mis/disinformation, but mainstream journalists can be just as guilty of distorting data. Case in point: on July 9th, 2025, Newsweek ran a story with the headline “Map Shows States with Higher Cancer Rates.” As an epidemiologist and health communication specialist, I like to observe how the news media reports on health data, so I opened the link.

The main point of the article is that some states have a much higher incidence of cancer diagnosis than others. It is accompanied by a heat map illustrating which states have the most and fewest cancer diagnoses per 100,000 people. The author states that the data was sourced from CDC cancer figures and that analysis was performed by a personal injury law firm. Why the author chose to publish a public health analysis conducted by a law firm is unclear, given that there is a wealth of publicly available resources on cancer incidence produced by epidemiologists and other public health experts. For example, the National Cancer Institute has a user-friendly website that allows users to build their own interactive maps showing age-adjusted cancer rates across the U.S. 

In fact, if you use the National Cancer's Institute's online tool to create the same map, you will notice some significant differences from the one published in Newsweek. That's because the Newsweek map shows cases per 100,000 people, whereas the National Cancer Institute displays age-adjusted rates. That may not sound like a big difference, but it is. That's because when we look at rates of disease in a population, we have to account not just for the size of that population but also for its makeup.

A common example that is often used in intro to epidemiology classes involves comparing the mortality rate of Florida to Alaska. At first glance, it appears as though Florida's mortality rate is significantly higher than Alaska's. But when you adjust the number of deaths per 100,000 for age, it turns out that Alaska's mortality rate is slightly higher than Florida's. That's because Florida is a popular place for Americans to retire, resulting in a much older population compared to Alaska; therefore, it is reasonable to expect the crude mortality rates (crude here means raw data) in Florida to be higher than average before we adjust for age. And if the term “adjusted for age” is confusing, it simply means that the analyst has used a mathematical technique that reveals what the mortality rates of Florida and Alaska would be if their populations had the same age distribution. 

What the Newsweek article does is the equivalent of comparing the crude mortality rates of Florida and Alaska and stopping there, allowing readers to reach the wrong conclusion. The data displayed in the Newsweek map have not been adjusted for any other risk factors, such as age, race or ethnicity, or socio-economic status, all of which are known to be positively associated with a higher risk of certain cancers.

Source: Map Shows States with Higher Cancer Rates - Newsweek

You'll notice that Maine and Florida have some of the highest rates of cancer on the Newsweek map. There are probably multiple factors contributing to these rates, but we know that Maine and Florida have two of the oldest populations in the U.S., and we know that age is strongly associated with risk of most cancers. But if you didn't know that, and you lived in Maine or Florida, a report like this might make you unnecessarily anxious about your risk of cancer or seek screening that you don't need.

But if we adjust the map to show age-adjusted incidence rates instead of cases per 100,000, the colors change considerably. When adjusted for age, Kentucky has the highest cancer incidence, followed by Iowa, West Virginia, Louisiana, and Minnesota. But Newsweek's list of the highest rates is as follows: Maine ranks first, followed by West Virginia, Florida, Connecticut, and Kentucky. 

Age-adjusted cancer incidence rates produced by State Cancer Profiles > Incidence Rates Table

The author of the Newsweek report does not speculate as to the causes of the variability in cancer incidence rates across the U.S., but readers will certainly question why their states have higher rates than others. So, let’s take a closer look at the age-adjusted data for the states with the highest cancer incidence instead of using the raw proportion provided by Newsweek. Kentucky has one of the highest rates of tobacco use in the nation, and indeed the Newsweek report lists lung cancer as the most common cancer diagnosis. Iowa, the state with the second-highest age-adjusted cancer rate, is in a region at high risk for radon gas exposure. Radon exposure is the leading cause of lung cancer in nonsmokers. And like Kentucky, West Virginia also has one of the highest tobacco use rates in the nation. 

The higher cancer rates in Louisiana tell a different story. Tragically, Louisiana is home to “Cancer Alley,” a stretch of the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans that has a high concentration of petrochemical plants and refineries. Cancers here are often the result of exposure to toxic chemicals produced by the poorly regulated petroleum industry.

And while the cause of Minnesota’s high incidence rate is less intuitive, it may be the result of information bias. Specifically, Minnesota has a robust health care system with high participation in cancer screening programs. This phenomenon is sometimes called "diagnostic inflation." In addition, people diagnosed with cancer in Minnesota are more likely to survive compared to other regions. Additionally, states with smaller populations (e.g., Wyoming, Alaska) sometimes rely on out-of-state facilities to report cases, which can introduce reporting gaps and result in undercounts of cancer diagnoses. States that are part of the SEER (Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results) program, such as Connecticut and California, often have better data quality. All of these factors can impact unadjusted cancer rates.

It should be clear by now that raw numbers never tell the whole story. When analyzing health data, context is crucial. To their credit, the author does quote an oncologist who remarks that “social, economic, and physical conditions in the places where people are born and where they live, learn, work, worship, play and get older can affect their health, factors such as socioeconomic status; housing; transportation; and access to healthy food, clean air and water, and health care services.” All of these factors can indeed impact an individual’s risk of receiving a cancer diagnosis. And it's also important to remember that what happens at the population level is not a guarantee of an individual outcome. 

This may not be the most egregious example of poor health communication, but there can be real consequences when the public encounters distorted data. For example, let’s say a Newsweek reader sees that they are in a state with a relatively low cancer incidence rate. That reader may feel more comfortable skipping cancer screenings in the future based on flawed and misrepresented data, leading to a delayed diagnosis and a poorer outcome.

Journalists who report on science and health topics have a duty to the public to educate themselves before publishing reports. This includes familiarizing themselves with basic statistics, along with the public health infrastructure used to gather data. At the very least, they should be able to distinguish a reliable data source from a suspect one (like a personal injury law firm). 

The bottom line: Newsweek can and should do better.