Science writers’ reactions to a medical “breakthrough” story

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0277-9536(01)00160-5Get rights and content

Abstract

In numerous incidences, the news coverage of medical research has incited unjustified optimism or fear. The medical literature provides an archive of the scientific community's condemnation of these misleading reports, but little is known about how they are judged by newsmakers. This study explored science writers’ reactions to a controversial New York Times story that inflated the hopes of thousands of cancer patients. More than 60 science writers in the US, Canada, and Great Britain participated in a 12-day email discussion triggered by the Times article. We analyzed 255 of these email postings and coded (1) positive and negative critiques of the Times story, (2) references to the article's repercussions including the creation of false hope, (3) attributions of responsibility for the resulting public misunderstanding, and (4) suggestions to improve the public's comprehension of medical research news. The participating science writers generally responded negatively to the controversial article: 83% of the critiques were unfavorable. In addition, the science writers in the sample were cognizant and concerned about the impact of their work on the public, and accepted the largest share of the responsibility for the false hope created by the news coverage of medical research. Finally, the suggestions offered by respondents to improve the public's understanding of medical research news were similar to those proposed by the scientific community. Thus, some commonality exists between how scientists and science writers believe the news coverage of medical research could be improved.

Section snippets

Method

“Nasw-talk,” the core email discussion group of NASW, is intended for discourse about “almost any subject of relevance to science writers and science writing” (National Association of Science Writers, 1998). Subscriptions to “nasw-talk” are open to anyone, not just NASW members. A person who joined “nasw-talk” would receive a copy of any message posted to the list, and could email a reply which would in turn be distributed to all other subscribers. An archive of past “nasw-talk” postings is

Author to postings ratios

The number of postings per author ranged from 1 to 32 with a median of 2. The author to postings ratios of the 21 coding categories ranged from 1 : 1.0 to 1 : 2.2 with a mean of 1 : 1.4. Thus, the opinions of high-volume posters were not disproportionately represented in this analysis.

Critiques of the Times article

Of the 208 critiques directed at the Times article, 83% were negative (Table 1). In total, 45 authors posted negative critiques of the article, and 22 authors posted positive critiques. Only 15 of the 45 authors who

Discussion

In general, the science writers who took part in the NASW email discussion responded negatively to the Times article, and their evaluations became increasingly unfavorable as questions about the story's accuracy and the reporter's motives for writing it were raised. The public misunderstanding generated by the Times story was one of the repercussions most frequently mentioned. Furthermore, participants attributed the lion's share of the responsibility for the premature and false hope created by

Acknowledgements

This study was supported in part by a Cancer Prevention and Control Training grant (5 R25 CA78447) from the National Cancer Institute. The authors express their gratitude to the National Association of Science Writers for their support of this study and to Michael Burgoon, Ph.D., and the Social Science and Medicine reviewers for their valuable critiques of this manuscript.

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