Accuracy of medical press releases

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We post a lot of press releases on Podiatry Arena as they do tend to add value to the topic, but they need to be taken what they are for.... researchers puffing up their own research.

I blogged about one study in which the press release went viral in the fan boy community, but the research did not back up the claims that were in the press release. I also blogged about another one which let some websites to literally 'lie' about what the research found.

Now there is an editorial in the British Medical Journal from Ben Goldacre: Preventing bad reporting on health research commenting on this study in the BMJ:

The association between exaggeration in health related science news and academic press releases: retrospective observational study
BMJ 2014; 349 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.g7015 (Published 10 December 2014)
Petroc Sumner et al

 

Science by press conference

Aspect of science news

Science by press conference or science by press release is the practice by which scientists put an unusual focus on publicizing results of research in the news media via press conferences or press releases.^[1] The term is usually used disparagingly,^[2] to suggest that the seekers of publicity are promoting claims of questionable scientific merit, using the media for attention as they are unlikely to win the approval of the scientific community.

Premature publicity violates a cultural value of most of the scientific community, which is that findings should be subjected to independent review with a "thorough examination by the scientific community" before they are widely publicized.^[3] The standard practice is to publish a paper in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. This idea has many merits, including that the scientific community has a responsibility to conduct itself in a deliberative, non-attention seeking way; and that its members should be oriented more towards the pursuit of insight than fame. Science by press conference in its most egregious forms can be undertaken on behalf of an individual researcher seeking fame, a corporation seeking to sway public opinion or investor perception, or a political or ideological movement.

1. ^ Jerome, F (July 1989). "Science by press conference". Technology Review (92): 72–73.
2. ^ Hall, Stephen S. (2004). Merchants of Immortality: Chasing the Dream of Human Life Extension. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. ISBN 978-0-618-49221-3.
3. ^ Cite error: The named reference EMBOreports was invoked but never defined (see the help page).

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