Quality of pharmaceutical industry press releases based on original research.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Press releases are a popular vehicle to disseminate health information to the lay media. While the quality of press releases issued by scientific conferences and medical journals has been questioned, no efforts to assess pharmaceutical industry press releases have been made. Therefore, we sought to systematically examine pharmaceutical company press releases about original research for measures of quality.

Methodology/principal findings

Press releases issued by the ten top selling, international pharmaceutical companies in the year 2005 were selected for evaluation. A total of 1028 electronic press releases were issued and 235 were based on original research. More than half (59%) reported results presented at a scientific meeting. Twenty-one percent of releases we

SUBMITTER: Kuriya B 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2518517 | biostudies-literature | 2008 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature