
Let’s Start Tracking Misleading Press Releases About Scientific Findings - tokenadult
http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2016/01/lets-track-overhyped-research-press-releases.html
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chestnut-tree
In the UK, the NHS (National Health Service) website has an excellent section
called _Behind the headlines_ that " _provides an unbiased and evidence-based
analysis of health stories that make the news_ ".

Their articles are well-written and thorough, but unfortunately much less
widely-read than the misleading newspaper reports they often debunk.

[http://www.nhs.uk/News/Pages/NewsIndex.aspx](http://www.nhs.uk/News/Pages/NewsIndex.aspx)

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TazeTSchnitzel
Not exactly on the subject of science, but the European Commission runs a
similar blog debunking news stories about the EU:

[http://blogs.ec.europa.eu/ECintheUK/](http://blogs.ec.europa.eu/ECintheUK/)

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lutusp
> Why isn’t anyone holding universities accountable for their press releases?

It's about time. Maybe in the future, universities will adopt ethics
guidelines that will oblige them to say, "Here's another social science study
of dubious provenance, one that, based on a now-famous survey of similar past
studies [1], is more likely to be false than true."

[1] [http://www.nature.com/news/over-half-of-psychology-
studies-f...](http://www.nature.com/news/over-half-of-psychology-studies-fail-
reproducibility-test-1.18248)

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JonFish85
Problem is: the people who care already know, and the majority of people don't
care. They care enough to "share" a headline on Facebook, not to actually read
the conclusions. "Scientists link coffee drinking to smart gene!"\--how many
people would read further than just sharing with their friends, regardless of,
say, the New York Times' rebuttal of such an argument. It's not about
accuracy, it's about virality.

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100ideas
"Research shows sharing links on social networks prevents cancer"

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kbenson
A common part of many cons is to not just get the mark to accept the offer
that looks to benefit them, but to make them feel they are doing something
good at the same time. There are people who will resist doing the moral thing
when it doesn't benefit them, there are people who will resist doing the thing
that benefits them if it's not moral, but there's very few that will resist
something that offers both. It's a double whammy, right to our reward centers.

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Animats
This is particularly bad in certain fields. "Nanotechnology" (which, for PR
purposes, means surface chemistry, not molecular assemblers.) seems to be the
worst.

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OopsCriticality
Fortunately, that specific hype train appears to have left the station. The
worst for me at the peak were nanotechnology articles where the structure in
question was somewhere in the submicron (or rarely, micron!) range.

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mbesto
And then Nymag has a Taboola ad section which has titles like "This drug could
cure cancer, find out how"... this doesn't help the problem.

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dredmorbius
Yes, a thousand times. I've long since learned to treat Stanford University's
press office, to name a specific example, as nothing but noise.

More generally, this is a problem of press and media generally, which as much
of this moves to an online / technical component, intersects with what many HN
readers are actively involved with at their day jobs. Advertising-supported
media are only one part of the overall failure, though a large part, and much
of the low-value and/or low truth valence of online information can be traced
to this.

More generally, as with so many other areas of abuse, corruption, and
malfunction, the problem is one of _impunity_. Those who misbehave aren't
called to account and made to pay.

That said, the support for a truth-telling system seems to be very, very
difficult to come by. I've got thoughts but no clear answers.

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mari_says
I think there is in one site a problem with the press business model. People
do not pay most of the time for the information they read, so journals are not
considered anymore exactly a public service but an investment for funds or
controlled by debt and governments. In the other side there is the politics of
gross investment in R&D for economic growth and a new diplomacy of rankings
about everything education, transparency, business friendly policies to
attract investors. The problem as I see it is not in the excesses of the
system but in the system of knowledge economy, as we know it. As long as you
convert intangible assets in into a patent of so you can speculate with it in
the financial economy. Anyway, an interesting approach I've seen lately is
sites like theconversation where real experts write about their field, besides
every post includes a release statement about their personal involvement, and
conflicting interests on the subject. Also this link about the technology of
measurement is interesting
[https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2015-10-20/rank-
has-...](https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2015-10-20/rank-has-its-
privileges)

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oconnor663
Does anyone think we can all agree on which social science headlines are
misleading, and which ones are unbiased summaries of the facts?

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dotjinks
I hope by tracking you mean tying it back to who initiated the misleading
article. Not just who wrote it but who paid for it and to what gain. Then once
a year publish a chart showing the top ten sources ,and their most published
topics/titles of misleading articles, from source to publication.

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Ultimatt
Though universities carry a lot of blame science journalists who dont read or
comprehend the actual science content before writing an article should find a
different career!

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rl3
Studies show that such press releases are then further twisted by the media,
experts say.

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mari_says
"The basis of framing theory is that the media focuses attention on certain
events and then places them within a field of meaning." source:
[http://masscommtheory.com/theory-overviews/framing-
theory/](http://masscommtheory.com/theory-overviews/framing-theory/) Media
twists these findings to frame them either in their own interest or to have
more visits with polemic titles. But rankings based in scientific measurements
might also make use of that to get their results published in the media. I
don't mean to undervalue scientific work at all. But the instrumentation of it
not for purposes other than scientific.

