The article published in Consumer Reports in April 2011 was a poor assessment due to two main reasons. The first weakness was in the way the assessment was conducted, while the second weakness was the nature of solutions or recommendations provided. First of all, the reporter only used one type of supplement in all the 20 interviews. He then ended up concluding that pharmacists knew more about the drugs compared to supplements.
The reporter also suggested that a reason for this difference could be the fact that the drugs, as opposed to supplements, were subject to federal regulation. These are weaknesses for several reasons. First, the reporter did not conduct a control survey to find out whether pharmacists did actually know more about the drugs subject to federal regulation. Secondly, insinuating that federal regulations influence pharmacists’ knowledge about drugs is a form of media propaganda. Thirdly, the effectiveness of fully functioning electronic media records is not actually supported because some pharmacists still could not give the correct answers even after consulting one.
The second major weakness in the article is that the recommendations given had little to no correlation to the aforementioned assessment. This is because the recommendations are mainly addressed to drug buyers and not the pharmacists.
Furthermore, most of the recommendations actually involve the patients asking pharmacists important questions regarding prescribed drugs or supplements. This is paradoxical because the competence of these very pharmacists has just been brought to question in the short assessment above. Therefore, the article, although providing valuable advice to the patient, does not lay a relevant or effective premise for providing advice. It displays a lack of coherent relationships between ideas. It also fails in providing solutions to problems that have been indicated.