Exaggerations and Caveats in Press Releases and Health-Related Science News.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Exaggerated or simplistic news is often blamed for adversely influencing public health. However, recent findings suggested many exaggerations were already present in university press releases, which scientists approve. Surprisingly, these exaggerations were not associated with more news coverage. Here we test whether these two controversial results also arise in press releases from prominent science and medical journals. We then investigate the influence of mitigating caveats in press releases, to test assumptions that caveats harm news interest or are ignored.

Methods and findings

Using quantitative content analysis, we analyzed press releases (N = 534) on biomedical and health-related science issued by leading peer-reviewed journals. We similarly analysed the as

SUBMITTER: Sumner P 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5158314 | biostudies-literature | 2016

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature