On the Embargo Watch blog, Ivan Oransky keeps chipping away at the question of whose interests are served by embargoes.
In “Break a JAMA embargo, get blacklisted. Then what?” he writes:
Adam Feuerstein and Patricia Anstett are part of an elite journalism club.
They’ve both been blacklisted by the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), accused of breaking embargoes.
That means the journal will no longer send either of them embargoed material. How did they earn such a punishment, and what effect has it had on their reporting? I caught up with both of them yesterday to find out.
Read the rest of the piece to get the rest of the story.
Then, over on the Retraction Watch blog that Oransky co-publishes with Adam Marcus, there’s this piece: “Researchers: Stop the spin and boasting in articles, say other researchers.” Excerpt:
Researchers often like to complain that science journalists puff up their results to sell newspapers. And there’s no question that reporters make missteps. But a commentary published today in the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicinebrings to mind the old saying about those who live in glass houses not casting the first stones.
In a piece called “Spin and Boasting in Research Articles,” Peter Cummings and Frederick Rivara, two University of Washington faculty members, write:
Some authors exaggerate the importance of their research and unfairly denigrate other studies. This occurs only in a minority of articles we review but is frequent enough that we have collected examples and grouped them into categories.
For example:
Hackneyed phrases do not make the writer appear thoughtful, are boring for the reader, and take up space. Consider whether the reader needs to once again hear that obesity is common, diabetes is increasing, and that the cost of medical care is a problem. We think not.
Then there are the boasts:
Boasts of being first are common. Some are inadvertently amusing because they have so many qualifiers, like bragging about being the oldest left-handed person to walk backward up the Washington Monument.
All of this leads the authors to urge:
Writing for scientific journals should be as clean and concise as possible. Leave spin and boasting to others.
It’s difficult to keep up with the good stuff that these two blogs generate frequently. Best if you bookmark them, grab their RSS feeds and make it a habit to go there yourself.
Comments
Please note, comments are no longer published through this website. All previously made comments are still archived and available for viewing through select posts.
Comments are closed.
Our Comments Policy
But before leaving a comment, please review these notes about our policy.
You are responsible for any comments you leave on this site.
This site is primarily a forum for discussion about the quality (or lack thereof) in journalism or other media messages (advertising, marketing, public relations, medical journals, etc.) It is not intended to be a forum for definitive discussions about medicine or science.
We will delete comments that include personal attacks, unfounded allegations, unverified claims, product pitches, profanity or any from anyone who does not list a full name and a functioning email address. We will also end any thread of repetitive comments. We don”t give medical advice so we won”t respond to questions asking for it.
We don”t have sufficient staffing to contact each commenter who left such a message. If you have a question about why your comment was edited or removed, you can email us at feedback@healthnewsreview.org.
There has been a recent burst of attention to troubles with many comments left on science and science news/communication websites. Read “Online science comments: trolls, trash and treasure.”
The authors of the Retraction Watch comments policy urge commenters:
We”re also concerned about anonymous comments. We ask that all commenters leave their full name and provide an actual email address in case we feel we need to contact them. We may delete any comment left by someone who does not leave their name and a legitimate email address.
And, as noted, product pitches of any sort – pushing treatments, tests, products, procedures, physicians, medical centers, books, websites – are likely to be deleted. We don”t accept advertising on this site and are not going to give it away free.
The ability to leave comments expires after a certain period of time. So you may find that you’re unable to leave a comment on an article that is more than a few months old.
You might also like