Background Science communication organisations shape public understanding, but receive little critical scrutiny. The most well-known is the UK Science Media Centre (SMC) which is active in influencing scientific debates and policymaking by coordinating and sharing expert opinions, and has been criticised in the academic literature as acting to promote a narrow technology-focused lens, particularly regarding medical/health technologies. It has also been claimed that, while presenting itself as an evidence-based defender of science, it may represent corporate and technological interests. Current and past SMC funders include Coca-Cola, Monsanto, pharma, the fossil fuel industry, the nuclear industry, the arms industry, food, beverages, and alcohol industries, raising concerns about conflicts of interest and bias in its framing of health-related issues. These tensions came to the fore at an SMC-organised event in September 2023 discussing ultra-processed foods (UPFs) and health. The political roots of the UK SMC have also been noted, in particularly in respect to organisations which have a strong neoliberal/libertarian, anti-public health, and pro-corporate world view. However, to date there has been no systematic analysis of SMC coverage of scientific topics. In this study we analysed SMC’s expert commentaries to assess what topics were selected and whether there was evidence of bias, and/or alignment with SMC’s corporate funders.

Results Methods/Results: We downloaded and systematically coded and analysed SMC’s expert commentaries on science in the news. SMC ‘rapid reactions’ during 2019 (the last pre-pandemic year) (n=472) were anonymised and analysed. We found SMC commentaries to have a ‘pro-technological innovation’ bias– particularly in relation to drugs, smartphones, chemicals, processed food, e-cigarettes and assisted fertility research. SMC expert comments were significantly more positive about industry-favourable studies; (e.g. studies which were favourable about e-cigarettes were significantly more likely to be rated positively by experts); mean rating of experts’ comments =3.14 vs 2.8 respectively; 95% confidence interval (CI) of difference: -0.59 to -.11; t=-2.91. The order in which expert comments are presented on the SMC website was also found to systematically favour pro-industry findings.

Conclusion These findings suggest that SMC amplifies industry-friendly findings, and suppresses industry-unfriendly findings. This may be facilitated through its choice of scientific experts, and the ordering of their comments on its website. These findings will be placed in the wider context of the history and corporate funding of SMC and other similar UK science ‘fact-checking’ organisations, and their largely-unrecognised relationship to wider neo-libertarian, pro-corporate and anti-public health networks and organisations.