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Media coverage of medical research often lacks expert commentary, disclosures
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Researchers from New Zealand found that media coverage of medical studies often lack quotes from independent commenters with relevant clinical expertise and do not disclose academic and financial conflicts of interest.
“Despite recommendations that news stories about health research include comments from independent sources, only about 1 in 6 stories generated in response to clinical research published in major medical journals included such comments,” Andrew Grey, MBChB, MD, of the department of medicine at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, and colleagues wrote in CMAJ. “These observations may be important because media coverage of medical research affects the views and behavior of the general public, and academic and clinical communities.”
Grey and colleagues performed a search on MEDLINE for original research published in the New England Journal of Medicine, the Journal of the American Medical Association, The Lancet, PLoS Medicine, JAMA Internal Medicine, the British Medical Journal and Annals of Internal Medicine between Jan. 1 and March 3, 2013. They then searched Factiva, a global news database, to identify news stories generated by the studies.
The researchers examined how often the stories included comments from independent sources, and how many independent sources and editorialists had relevant clinical expertise with disclosed academic and financial conflicts of interest.
They defined independent experts as commenters other than study authors, sponsors or editorialists who were not involved with the research. Commenters, including independent experts and editorialists, had clinical expertise if they practiced a specialty relevant to the article. Researchers considered the commenters academic experts if they coauthored at least five papers related to the topic between 2008 and 2012.
Grey and colleagues identified 131 studies that generated 591 news stories, 92 (16%) of which had comments from independent sources. Overall, there were 104 comments attributed to 102 independent sources and 21 editorial comments.
According to the data, 53% of independent sources and 86% of editorialists had academic expertise, and 56% of independent sources and 48% of editorialists had relevant clinical expertise. All editorialists had at least academic or clinical expertise, while 25% of independent sources had neither. Of those with no identified expertise, 18 were spokespersons for advocacy organizations.
More than half (54%) of the 104 comments had an academic conflict of interest; however, only 25 (45%) were reported in the news stories. Further, 33 (32%) comments had a financial conflict of interest, but only 11 (33%) were reported. Of the reported conflicts of interest, 2 were explicitly mentioned.
Among the editorial comments, 9 (43%) had an academic conflict of interest and 8 (38%) had a financial conflict of interest; however, none of these academic conflicts and only two (25%) of the financial conflicts were explicitly mentioned.
“It is not surprising that academic conflicts of interest were frequently present for editorialists, but it is surprising that financial conflicts of interest were equally common and that only a minority were disclosed,” Grey and colleagues wrote. “All of the journals included in the current analysis require disclosure of financial conflicts.”
Ninety-seven percent of comments from independent sources had positive views when their academic conflicts of interest corresponded with the study findings. However, only 16% of comments had positive views when the academic conflicts were not congruent with the findings. Similarly, 93% of comments were positive when the sources’ financial conflicts of interest corresponded with the findings vs. 17% when there was no correspondence.
“Implicit in all of this, in my view, is that the authors think that reporters ought to be asking people who are absolutely objective, and I don’t think that’s the case,” Infectious Disease News Editorial Board member William Schaffner, MD, medical director of the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases and professor of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, said in an interview. “A lot of the time, reporters purposely seek out people who are proponents or opponents. It depends on the story.”
Schaffner, who is often quoted as a clinical expert in the media, highlighted other potential issues with the study, including how the researchers rated the significance of the conflicts of interest. Despite these limitations, Schaffner said the study calls attention to the importance of thorough reporting.
“The fact that a large proportion of people with financial conflicts of interest were not explicitly evident in the news articles or editorials surprised me because I am asked that all the time,” he said. “I do believe strongly in transparency and straightforwardness, so I would hope that financial conflicts of interest certainly are more evident and that reporters search them out quite explicitly. That’s very important.”
In a related editorial, Julia Medew, BA, and Ray Moynihan, PhD, of the Centre for Research in Evidence-Based Practice, Bond University in Robina, Australia, noted that the strict criterion used to define “expertise” was a “key limitation of the study,” and they did not agree with the suggestion that experts are the only “legitimate commenters.”
“The reality of journalism is the difficulty, if not impossibility, of finding an accessible independent commentator with such expertise quickly,” they wrote.
Medew and Moynihan added that clinicians, academics and journalists must work together to improve the quality of news stories on medical research.
“The call to develop and evaluate strategies to include more genuinely independent and informed commenters in the coverage of medical research is welcome, as part of wider efforts to make medical journalism heathier — in media new and old,” they wrote. – by Stephanie Viguers
References:
Wang MTM, et al. CMAJ. 2016;doi:10.1503/cmaj.160538.
Medew J, Moynihan R. CMAJ. 2016;doi:10.1503/cmaj.161206.
Disclosures: Grey is a shareholder in Auckland Bone Density and coauthored publications on conflicts of interest and the reporting and dissemination of clinical research findings. Medew is a health journalist enrolling in a PhD program that investigates media coverage of diagnostics. Moynihan is a researcher, author and former journalist and has written on conflicts of interest. Schaffner reports serving on data safety monitoring boards for experimental vaccine studies for Merck and Pfizer and consulted with Dynavax, Genentech, GlaxoSmithKline, Novartis and Sanofi Pasteur. Please see the study for a full list of the authors’ relevant financial disclosures.