Background

The placement of medical research news on a newspaper's front page is intended to gain the public's attention, so it is important to understand the source of the news in terms of research maturity and evidence level.

Methodology/Principal Findings

We searched LexisNexis to identify medical research reported on front pages of major newspapers published from January 1, 2000 to December 31, 2002.

We used MEDLINE and Google Scholar to find journal articles corresponding to the research, and determined their evidence level.

Of 734 front-page medical research stories identified, 417 (57%) referred to mature research published in peer-reviewed journals.

The remaining 317 stories referred to preliminary findings presented at scientific or press meetings; 144 (45%) of those stories mentioned studies that later matured (i.e. were published in journals within 3 years after news coverage).

The evidence-level distribution of the 515 journal articles quoted in news stories reporting on mature research (3% level I, 21% level II, 42% level III, 4% level IV, and 31% level V) differed from that of the 170 reports of preliminary research that later matured (1%, 19%, 35%, 12%, and 33%, respectively; chi-square test, P = .0009).

No news stories indicated evidence level. Fewer than 1 in 5 news stories reporting preliminary findings acknowledged the preliminary nature of their content.

Conclusions/Significance

Only 57% of front-page stories reporting on medical research are based on mature research, which tends to have a higher evidence level than research with preliminary findings.

Medical research news should be clearly referenced and state the evidence level and limitations to inform the public of the maturity and quality of the source.

Introduction

Popular media such as newspapers are commonly the initial source of medical research news for both medical professionals and the public [1]–[4].

Medical research news on the front pages of newspapers in particular needs to be reliable because of the intended maximum or immediate impact on the reader.

If not carefully prepared, front-page news about medical research can have powerful, undesirable consequences such as scaremongering and misinformation [5].

To medical researchers and health care professionals, the most credible source of medical information is generally accepted to be “mature” research, that is, studies published in peer-reviewed journals [6].

Among the reasons are the following: Firstly, although peer review is imperfect [7], [8]—most notably, it cannot prevent research fraud [9]—it is the standard process by which independent experts vet the reliability and validity of submitted research, by scrutinizing aspects such as methodology, analysis, and interpretation.

Secondly, publication status indicates the “maturity” of research, and journal publication often represents the formal end-point of a research study.

Medical research news based on published studies can thus be regarded as being more credible than news generated from other sources, such as scientific or press meetings presenting preliminary findings that are not yet published [10], [11].

Finally, journal publication creates a retrievable archive of medical information that can be evaluated for quality and usefulness, as reflected by the strength of the presented evidence (e.g. study design, sample size, and clinical relevance).

Appraisal of this aspect of medical studies—the basis of evidence-based medicine (EBM)—helps health care practitioners to identify, filter, and apply the current best evidence to solve specific clinical problems [12], [13].

The maturity and evidence level of medical research reported on newspaper front pages have so far not yet been investigated. We therefore aimed to systematically characterize sources of front-page medical research news in terms of journal publication status and level of evidence, and to assess whether these characteristics were reported in news stories.

doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0006103.

William Yuk Yeu Lai^1* and Trevor Lane² Alan Ruttenberg, Editor ¹Journalism and Media Studies Centre, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong, People's Republic of China ²Faculty of Dentistry, The University of Hong Kong, Prince Philip Dental Hospital, Hong Kong, People's Republic of China Science Commons, United States of America *

E-mail: wyylai@yahoo.com

Conceived and designed the experiments: WYYL TL. Performed the experiments: WYYL. Analyzed the data: WYYL TL.

Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: WYYL TL. Wrote the paper: WYYL TL.

SEE FULLTEXT

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=2699539&tool=pmcentrez

http://www.e-medicum.com/noticiasDelDia/verNoticia.php?noticia=82911