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        general >> truth >> Article: Beware press releases masquerading as new
        
(Message started by: BenVitale on May 7^th, 2010, 11:43am)

Title: Article: Beware press releases masquerading as new
Post by BenVitale on May 7^th, 2010, 11:43am

Hello,

I visit on a daily basis Science Daily (http://www.sciencedaily.com/) and Physorg (http://www.physorg.com/)

I wasn't aware that there were any issues, until I came across this article Beware press releases masquerading as news on ScienceDaily & other sites (http://ksjtracker.mit.edu/2010/05/06/science-daily-beware-press-releases-masquerading-as-news-and-theres-a-kicker/)

Your thoughts, please.

Title: Re: Article: Beware press releases masquerading as
Post by towr on May 7^th, 2010, 2:42pm

Yeah, I've heard about that kind of thing before from Ben Goldacre ( badscience.net ) amongst others. Reporters are under a lot of pressure, so if someone offers them "news" it can be tempting to just run with it. Good reporting costs a lot of time and money.

What's also pretty bad is when the PR divisions of universities screw up the press release about actual research, and make claims not at all supported by the article they're basing it on. Or, also fun, when conferences mention interesting presentations by students in their press release and reporters promptly promote them to full researchers and tout preliminary/speculative results as cutting edge science. (Really, anything said at a conference should be taken with a grain of salt until it's actually published in a peer reviewed journal. A lot of work presented at conferences actually never leads to a publication, because sometimes decent ideas simply don't pan out.)

[edit]Actually, what that blog you linked to complains about isn't half as bad as what traditional media outlets do. Sure, it'd be nice if they said they just republished press released. But at least they don't mangle it up before rereleasing it. And they're just republishing what bona fide scientific institutions release. What's much worse would be publishing without any skepticism what PR companies dream up.

[edit2]Rereading it a bit more closely, I must say I'm a bit surprised at how the writer interprets the line "Adapted from materials provided by Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS. Original article written by Nicole Giese" as a claim of original writing, rather than an attribution of source.[/edit2]

You could always just go to newscientist.com They've got decent original articles. Although even then you may want to read the original research publications.[/edit]