Objective: To determine how often press releases and news articles contain exaggeration and to locate its origin in the trajectory from research paper to news article.
Design: Retrospective quantitative content analysis
Method: Sample used consists of press releases on biomedical research, published by 15 Dutch universities and university medical centers in 2015 (N=129), and associated news articles (N=185) and peer reviewed research papers. Quantitative content analysis was performed using Rstudio.
Results: 20% of press releases and 29% of news articles contain exaggeration of conclusion of causal claim. Explicit health advice was, when present, exaggerated in 7% of press releases and 10% of news articles. When the press releases contained an exaggeration of conclusion of causal claim, 92% of associated news articles was exaggerated as well (N=34). When the conclusion or causal claim in press releases was not exaggerated...
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Objective: To determine how often press releases and news articles contain exaggeration and to locate its origin in the trajectory from research paper to news article.
Design: Retrospective quantitative content analysis
Method: Sample used consists of press releases on biomedical research, published by 15 Dutch universities and university medical centers in 2015 (N=129), and associated news articles (N=185) and peer reviewed research papers. Quantitative content analysis was performed using Rstudio.
Results: 20% of press releases and 29% of news articles contain exaggeration of conclusion of causal claim. Explicit health advice was, when present, exaggerated in 7% of press releases and 10% of news articles. When the press releases contained an exaggeration of conclusion of causal claim, 92% of associated news articles was exaggerated as well (N=34). When the conclusion or causal claim in press releases was not exaggerated, 6% of associated news articles contained exaggeration (N=6). The relative chance of exaggeration in news is 16.1 when the associated press release is exaggerated. Additionally we found that exaggerated press releases have a higher number of associated news articles. The relative chance of news uptake for exaggerated press releases compared with non-exaggerated press releases is 1.45 (1,02-2,04).
Conclusion: Exaggeration of health related news is strongly associated with exaggeration in the associated press release and occurs in more than 1 in 5 articles. Monitoring and, if necessary, improving the accuracy of academic press releases are likely to be important measures to improve the quality of health news.
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