Study Points to Press Releases as Sources of Hype

Researchers love to blame the news media when reports about science are misleading or even wrong. But a December study¹ making the rounds online suggests that much of the hype and misinformation about health-related research in the news has its roots in university press releases — which are almost always approved in advance by the researchers themselves. “Academics should be accountable for the wild exaggerations in press releases of their studies,” tweeted Catherine Collins, a dietitian who works for the National Health Service in London. But some say that others are to blame. Steve Usdin, editor and co-host of BioCentury This Week, a US public-affairs show covering the biopharma industry, tweeted:

The study, published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), examined 462 press releases produced by the leading 20 UK research institutions in 2011. Overall, 40% of those releases contained health advice that was more explicit than anything found in the actual article. One-third emphasized possible cause and effects when the paper merely reported correlations. And 36% of releases about studies of cells...