Descriptions of Scientific Evidence and Uncertainty of Unproven COVID-19 Therapies in US News: Content Analysis Study

Sara Watson   ^{1 *} , MA ;   Tyler J Benning   ^{2 *} , MS, MD ;   Alessandro R Marcon   ³ , MA ;   Xuan Zhu   ⁴ , PhD ;   Timothy Caulfield   ³ , LLM ;   Richard R Sharp   ^{1, 5} , PhD ;   Zubin Master   ^{6, 7, 8, 9} , PhD

¹ Biomedical Ethics Research Program, Department of Quantitative Health Sciences, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, United States

² Department of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, United States

³ Health Law Institute, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada

⁴ Robert D. and Patricia E. Kern Center for the Science of Health Care Delivery, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, United States

⁵ Center for Individualized Medicine, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, United States

⁶ Department of Social Sciences and Health Policy, Wake Forest University School of Medicine, Winston-Salem, NC, United States

⁷ Maya Angelou Center for Health Equity, Wake Forest University School of Medicine, Winston-Salem, NC, United States

⁸ Center for Bioethics, Health and Society, Wake Forest University School of Medicine, Winston-Salem, NC, United States

⁹ Wake Forest Institute of Regenerative Medicine, Wake Forest University School of Medicine, Winston-Salem, NC, United States

*these authors contributed equally