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The association between exaggeration in health related science news and academic press releases:

barbc56

Senior Member
Messages
3,657
This is an intriguing article that analyzes a study showing how news releases from a University's Press Office highly influence how a study is reported in the news

The following blog is about this study.The study can be linked there but I found the analysis more informative and easier to read.. i would suggest reading this article first, then go to the study that includes a video demonstrating the principles sited in the first article.

The author has the following suggestions for formatting university press releases that hopefully reduce media hype about a study.

Scientists or press offices should follow some basic rules for good science news reporting:
  • Put a study into an overall scientific context

  • Do not emphasize minor aspects of the research simply because they are more exciting
  • Do not search for any health implication of pre-clinical data just for the headline, and certainly don’t make it seem like the focus of the study

  • Anticipate and explicitly address common misinterpretations of the research

  • Consider not reporting preliminary data at all, or at least clearly label preliminary data as such early in the press release and make is absolutely clear what this means

  • Do not report correlations as if they prove a specific causation

  • Be up front about all the limitations of a study and alternate interpretations

  • Make it clear when a study is an outlier, if there are multiple schools of thought, or where the study lies in relation to the current preponderance of expert opinion; in other words, do not present one small study as if it overturns a well-established consenses
  • I broke up the above for readability but can't delete some of the bullets.
Barb
 
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barbc56

Senior Member
Messages
3,657
Not so in to the SBM piece. A couple of worthwhile Rapid Responses at the BMJ though.

I also liked the video as it demonstrates a news release that is clear. I forgot to look at the rapid responses.. Thanks for mentioning that.

Barb
 

Sean

Senior Member
Messages
7,378
Thanks Barb.

We thank our professional advisory group for input into this research, including [snip], Fiona Fox (Science Media Centre), [snip], Helen Jamison (Science Media Centre),

:grumpy:

I remain completely opposed to the whole idea of a single gatekeeper or authority to decide what is 'official' science.

Exhibit A: Science Media Centre
 

barbc56

Senior Member
Messages
3,657
This study speaks about university press releases. It showed that the media uses these press releases more than thought, sometimes verbatim and coming to It's not saying these should be the only source of informatio.

I would also oppose only one source of information.

There was a press release from the University of Colorado where most of the press wrote directly from the press release. Because the press release was so vague, it was interpreted as being the opposite of the studies intent.

I will post the link when I find it.

Barb
 

biophile

Places I'd rather be.
Messages
8,977
This paper may actually underestimate the exaggeration rates.

It focused on three specific types of exaggeration, so other problems may have been missed.

I haven't spent much time looking at the full text but someone pointed out to me that it included reporting on the PACE Trial. However, it only sampled one news article and generally didn't find much exaggeration (at most there is something about an association being promoted to causation?).

Yet we know that the PACE results were exaggerated in multiple articles e.g. claiming that 60% of patients would benefit from pushing their limits (failing to include the control rate of 45% or any evidence that patients can push their limits) and claiming that 1/3 of participants recovered back to normal. Here the exaggeration was largely because of how the results were misleadingly presented in the paper itself, at the Lancet press conference, and in the Lancet editorial, about patients getting back to normal or recovering (using very dubious criteria). In other words, the primary source of the exaggeration was the principal investigators themselves and the journal which published the paper, rather than a university press release.

As for the recovery paper, that was sheer exaggeration, since the criteria used and the attempts to justify massive changes to the protocol were generally ridiculous. Some parts of the paper are so bad or incorrect that a retraction may be warranted.

Amusingly hypocritical commentary from the Science Media Center (which uncritically hyped PACE results twice):

science media centre > blog > abandon hype, all
December 12, 2014
http://www.sciencemediacentre.org/abandon-hype-all
 
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barbc56

Senior Member
Messages
3,657
@biophile

Very interesting take. I have bookmarked the blog.

Thanks

Barb

ETA It looks like there's some related information to the right of the blog. However it took so long to load, I was timed out. Maybe tomorrow.
 
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MeSci

ME/CFS since 1995; activity level 6?
Messages
8,231
Location
Cornwall, UK
There is an item on this paper in Journal Watch:

http://www.jwatch.org/na36641/2014/12/23/press-releases-and-news-stories-often-contain-exaggerated

Paul S. Mueller, MD, MPH, FACP reviewing Sumner P et al. BMJ 2014 Dec 10.

Explicit claims often are reported that are not backed up by corresponding peer-reviewed research articles.

Healthcare institutions use press releases to convey the results of research studies to news media; however, some press releases exaggerate findings and lack appropriate caveats. In this study, researchers determined how often press releases and news stories contained claims and advice that distorted or exaggerated those presented in corresponding peer-reviewed original research articles.

The researchers identified 462 press releases issued in 2011 by 20 leading U.K. universities, the press releases' associated peer-reviewed research articles, and 688 related print and online news stories. Forty percent of press releases contained more direct or explicit advice than the associated journal articles did. The odds of exaggerated advice in a news story were seven times higher when the press release also contained exaggerated advice than when it did not. For correlational results, one third of press releases were more deterministic (causal) than the associated research articles. For nonhuman studies, one third of press releases contained inflated claims regarding implications for humans. However, the presence of exaggeration in press releases was not associated with a greater number of related news stories.
 

biophile

Places I'd rather be.
Messages
8,977
A nice piece of irony about the topic of this thread from Max Pemberton, a doctor journalist who repeated and then defended the hype about "recovery" in the Lancet publications on the PACE Trial back in 2011:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/h...-not-journalists-are-bad-for-your-health.html

Why scientists, not journalists, are bad for your health

Shocking and exaggerated claims made by some scientists in a desperate bid for research funds and academic glory are fuelling health scare stories.

By Max Pemberton

7:05AM GMT 15 Dec 2014

You could argue, I suppose, that journalists share some of the blame for not going back to the source material and checking out the claims made for themselves. But the reality is that journalists, like the public at large, have tended to believe what the white coats tell them because, well, scientists are wedded to empiricism and truth, aren’t they? Why would they lie? Their mission is a search for the truth.

So when a newspaper report says ‘‘scientists claim that...’’ and they have indeed claimed it and are quoted in a press release to boot, I hardly think the journalist is to blame. The problem is that scientists don’t exist in the ivory towers of academia any more. They have funding and grants to worry about and a page 1 story in a newspaper about their research is as important for securing future revenue as it is getting it accepted by the Lancet.

The other problem is that interpreting results and conclusions in a scientific paper relies on a degree of scientific literacy that most journalists don’t posses. I think that this is a good reason to make understanding and interpreting a scientific paper a fundamental part of science education. That way we encourage more people to scrutinise the claims more thoroughly for themselves and, hopefully, improve the public’s understanding of basic scientific principles, instead of being hoodwinked by the hype.
 
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barbc56

Senior Member
Messages
3,657
Ben Goldacre's BMJ editorial.

http://www.bmj.com/content/349/bmj.g7465.full?ijkey=pdGfXk42ClHVR4e&keytype=ref

Accountability is straightforward: all academic press releases should have named authors, including both the press officers involved and the individual named academics from the original academic paper. This would create professional reputational consequences for misrepresenting scientific findings in a press release, which would parallel the risks around misrepresenting science in an academic paper
.

Since reading about this issue, I've been more aware of press releases from academic institutions and how the wording misconstrues what a study is saying. No wonder we see contradictory information in the media such as one day something is good for you and several months later it's harmful. Brainfog prevents me from an example at the moment.:thumbdown:

In the past, I always put the blame on the traditional media sources and while they aren't innocent, they also play a role in all this.

Sigh.

Barb

Sorry, Max Pemberton. In the rush to get the lead on a story, fact checking is often neglected and that's your(plural) bad.
 
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MeSci

ME/CFS since 1995; activity level 6?
Messages
8,231
Location
Cornwall, UK
Ben Goldacre's BMJ editorial.

http://www.bmj.com/content/349/bmj.g7465.full?ijkey=pdGfXk42ClHVR4e&keytype=ref

Since reading about this issue, I've been more aware of press releases from academic institutions and how the wording misconstrues what a study is saying. No wonder we see contradictory information in the media such as one day something is good for you and several months later it's harmful. Brainfog prevents me from an example at the moment.:thumbdown:

Scientific views do change all the time, though, based on new evidence that contradicts old evidence or long-held views that weren't evidence-based.
 

barbc56

Senior Member
Messages
3,657
Scientific views do change all the time, though, based on new evidence that contradicts old evidence or long-held views that weren't evidence-based.

Yeah, I neglected to say that. It's the way science works. Thanks!

Barb