BMJ publishes more than 50 specialist journals, and distributes news releases from these journals as well.
That’s a big workload, and sometimes it shows.
This week, BMJ sent out two releases in one email.
The good: The news release included this important caveat: “This is an observational study so no definitive conclusions can be drawn about cause and effect, and the researchers point out that only the healthiest participants in the first wave of the study took part in the second wave, which may have lowered overall absolute risk.”
The bad: Despite that caveat, the news release used this subhead under the bold headline above: “Impact on health as good as giving up smoking, suggest researchers.”
Wait a minute. You can’t have it both ways. In one line you admit, appropriately, that cause and effect has not been established. But up at the top, you allow researchers to get away with a huge, powerful cause-and-effect claim.
The good: “linked to” in the headline is OK, because, again, this was an observational study. A link, or a statistical association, is all that was shown.
The bad: Even though this was another observational study, as was the one above, and even though the news release appeared in the same email as the one above that included the caveats about the limitations of observational studies, this one did not.
We’ve been criticizing BMJ news releases for language used about observational studies for a long time. Then we praised them when we first saw improvement. Then we noted a setback. Now we’re stuck in limbo with mixed messages within one BMJ email.
At one point, a BMJ staffer wrote, “we sometimes wonder why you don’t seem to pick up issues with others’ press releases to the same extent.”
We’re not picking on BMJ. Just yesterday we criticized a news release by the Lancet for a similar flaw.
Why does it matter? Because I can guarantee you that news stories will follow the lead of these news releases and miscommunicate to the general public. We saw yesterday how The Lancet’s news release, “Testing hand-grip strength could be a simple, low-cost way to predict heart attack and stroke risk,” undoubtedly misled many journalists into reporting less-than-helpful stories. And it’s again after these news releases from BMJ. See a search of news stories on the first release….and a search of news stories on the second release. Good luck finding appropriate caveats. You may find a few in news stories based on the first release, because of the way it was framed. Journals, and their news release writers, can do so much good, or not.
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