Een lijngrafiek van de NOS geeft een overdreven beeld weer van de toename in het aantal doden na politiegeweld in de VS. De toename is er, maar niet zo extreem als de grafiek suggereert.
Abbott, T.M.C.; Aguena, M.; Alarcon, A.; Alves, O.; Amon, A.; Andrade-Oliveira, F.; ... ; Zuntz, J. 2023
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... Show moreObjective: 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. Show less
