Institute of Neurodegenerative Diseases, University of Bordeaux, Bordeaux, France.
PLoS One. 2012;7(9):e44275. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0044275. Epub 2012 Sep 12.
Because positive biomedical observations are more often published than those reporting no effect, initial observations are often refuted or attenuated by subsequent studies.
To determine whether newspapers preferentially report on initial findings and whether they also report on subsequent studies.
We focused on attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Using Factiva and PubMed databases, we identified 47 scientific publications on ADHD published in the 1990s and soon echoed by 347 newspapers articles. We selected the ten most echoed publications and collected all their relevant subsequent studies until 2011. We checked whether findings reported in each "top 10" publication were consistent with previous and subsequent observations. We also compared the newspaper coverage of the "top 10" publications to that of their related scientific studies.
Seven of the "top 10" publications were initial studies and the conclusions in six of them were either refuted or strongly attenuated subsequently. The seventh was not confirmed or refuted, but its main conclusion appears unlikely. Among the three "top 10" that were not initial studies, two were confirmed subsequently and the third was attenuated. The newspaper coverage of the "top 10" publications (223 articles) was much larger than that of the 67 related studies (57 articles). Moreover, only one of the latter newspaper articles reported that the corresponding "top 10" finding had been attenuated. The average impact factor of the scientific journals publishing studies echoed by newspapers (17.1 n = 56) was higher (p<0.0001) than that corresponding to related publications that were not echoed (6.4 n = 56).
Because newspapers preferentially echo initial ADHD findings appearing in prominent journals, they report on uncertain findings that are often refuted or attenuated by subsequent studies. If this media reporting bias generalizes to health sciences, it represents a major cause of distortion in health science communication.
由于阳性的生物医学观察结果比无效应的观察结果更常被发表，因此最初的观察结果往往会被后续的研究反驳或减弱。
确定报纸是否更倾向于报道初始发现，以及它们是否也会报道后续研究。
我们专注于注意力缺陷多动障碍（ADHD）。使用 Factiva 和 PubMed 数据库，我们确定了 20 世纪 90 年代发表的 47 篇关于 ADHD 的科学出版物，并很快在 347 篇报纸文章中得到了回应。我们选择了十个最有回应的出版物，并收集了它们所有相关的后续研究，直到 2011 年。我们检查了每篇“十大”出版物中报告的发现是否与之前和之后的观察结果一致。我们还比较了报纸对“十大”出版物的报道与它们相关科学研究的报道。
“十大”出版物中有 7 篇是初始研究，其中 6 篇的结论随后被反驳或大大减弱。第七篇没有被证实或反驳，但它的主要结论似乎不太可能。在三个不是初始研究的“十大”中，有两个随后得到证实，第三个则被削弱。“十大”出版物的报纸报道（223 篇文章）比 67 篇相关研究（57 篇文章）要多得多。此外，只有一篇后者的报纸文章报道了相应的“十大”发现被削弱了。报纸报道的科学期刊（17.1 n = 56）的平均影响因子高于（p<0.0001）未被报道的相关出版物（6.4 n = 56）。
由于报纸更倾向于回应出现在知名期刊上的 ADHD 初始发现，因此它们报道了不确定的发现，这些发现往往会被后续研究反驳或减弱。如果这种媒体报道偏差普遍存在于健康科学领域，它将是健康科学传播失真的一个主要原因。
