How Preposterous News Propagates

Every so often – perhaps more frequently, if you’re continuously canvassing the literature – there’s a rapturous press release regarding a new medical innovation that seems too good to be true.  And, you wonder, how does the lay media get it so wrong?

This study reviewed a consecutive convenience sample of published literature, looking for articles resulting in press releases.  Then, they looked for elements of the article that made it into the press release, as well as the relative accuracy of the release compared with the overall findings of the article.  Essentially, what they found is that press releases were most likely to have “spin” if the conclusion of the article abstract misrepresented the study findings with “spin”.

The authors also have an interesting summary of the sort of “spin” found in abstracts that misrepresent study findings.  These include:

 • No acknowledgment of nonstatistically significant primary outcome
 • Claiming equivalence when results failed to demonstrate a statistically significant difference
 • Focus on positive secondary outcome
 • Nonstatistically significant outcome reported as if they were significant

…and several others.

“Misrepresentation of Randomized Controlled Trials in Press Releases and News Coverage: A Cohort Study”