Reporting on the reporting of Vytorin Cancer Data

Our colleagues at The Wall Street Journal used some data from Dow Jones Insight to blog about the size of the spike of press coverage of a possible link between use of cholesterol-fighter Vytorin and increased risk of cancer.

A few of the comments were hostile toward the post. This one was from someone called "Steve Walker":

So now the WSJ is going generate and report statistics on how frenzied the press becomes over junk science flowing from questionable meta-analyses? Then try to analyze why some junk science leads to less or more press frenzy?...

I disagree with this criticism. I think reporting on the media coverage of a story such as this is valid as is the methodology used to count the media mentions.