How to fix academic press releases
In the ‘Rapid Responses’ (aka ‘rabid responses’) section of BMJ, Ben Goldacre has two suggestions:
Firstly, all press releases in all academic journals should be made publicly available online, alongside the academic journal article they relate to, so that everyone can see whether the press release contained misrepresentations or exaggerations. Secondly, all academic journal press releases should give named authors, who take full responsibility for the contents, including at least one significant author from the academic paper itself.
This isn’t a complete fix, because the culpable press releases are as likely to come from universities as journals, but it would be straightforward to implement, moderately effectively, and I can’t think of any good reason not to do it.
Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »