Press releases from research universities are the source of exaggerated claims of health benefits from new health research and not the news media. This is the conclusion reached by Professors Petroc Sumner and Chris Chambers at Cardiff University in an analysis of published research and press coverage of that research in Britain.
The researchers looked at 462 health and medical science press releases produced by 20 major research universities in Britain and compared them with the 668 national news stories that covered the same research findings. The investigators were looking for unfounded inference about humans from animal findings, direct advice to readers to change their behavior based on a single study, and making claims of direct cause that could not be substantiated by the research data. The researchers found the source of the majority of exaggerated health research news was the press releases about the research prepared by university staff.
The news media takes these exaggerations and either prints them verbatim or amplifies the unfounded claims in advice to readers or a claim of extraordinary and unfounded benefits of a given research study. The researchers find that the underlying cause of exaggerated claims of health benefits from research is competition for dwindling funding for health research in universities. The study found that exaggeration in research press releases had an average of 15 percent more exaggeration in the media.
The study suggests that press releases be treated as a part of the published research with the same influence on funding and the reputation of the scientists. In the majority of cases the scientists involved with the research do not write the press release. Tying a researcher’s reputation and opportunity for new funding to the veracity and accuracy of press releases written about their research by authors involved with the university system should provide less exaggerated health press.
