IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0001266.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Reporting Science and Conflicts of Interest in the Lay Press

Author

Listed:
  • Daniel M Cook
  • Elizabeth A Boyd
  • Claudia Grossmann
  • Lisa A Bero

Abstract

Background: Forthright reporting of financial ties and conflicts of interest of researchers is associated with public trust in and esteem for the scientific enterprise. Methods/Principal Findings: We searched Lexis/Nexis Academic News for the top news stories in science published in 2004 and 2005. We conducted a content analysis of 1152 newspaper stories. Funders of the research were identified in 38% of stories, financial ties of the researchers were reported in 11% of stories, and 5% reported financial ties of sources quoted. Of 73 stories not reporting on financial ties, 27% had financial ties publicly disclosed in scholarly journals. Conclusions/Significance: Because science journalists often did not report conflict of interest information, adherence to gold-standard recommendations for science journalism was low. Journalists work under many different constraints, but nonetheless news reports of scientific research were incomplete, potentially eroding public trust in science.

Suggested Citation

  • Daniel M Cook & Elizabeth A Boyd & Claudia Grossmann & Lisa A Bero, 2007. "Reporting Science and Conflicts of Interest in the Lay Press," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 2(12), pages 1-5, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0001266
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0001266
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0001266
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0001266&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0001266?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Timothy Caulfield, 2004. "The Commercialisation of Medical and Scientific Reporting," PLOS Medicine, Public Library of Science, vol. 1(3), pages 1-1, December.
    2. Lisa Bero & Fieke Oostvogel & Peter Bacchetti & Kirby Lee, 2007. "Factors Associated with Findings of Published Trials of Drug–Drug Comparisons: Why Some Statins Appear More Efficacious than Others," PLOS Medicine, Public Library of Science, vol. 4(6), pages 1-10, June.
    3. Lenard I Lesser & Cara B Ebbeling & Merrill Goozner & David Wypij & David S Ludwig, 2007. "Relationship between Funding Source and Conclusion among Nutrition-Related Scientific Articles," PLOS Medicine, Public Library of Science, vol. 4(1), pages 1-6, January.
    4. Rosenstock, L. & Lee, L.J., 2002. "Attacks on science: The risks to evidence-based policy," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 92(1), pages 14-18.
    5. Philip Campbell, 2001. "Declaration of financial interests," Nature, Nature, vol. 412(6849), pages 751-751, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Luca Iaboli & Luana Caselli & Angelina Filice & Gianpaolo Russi & Eleonora Belletti, 2010. "The Unbearable Lightness of Health Science Reporting: A Week Examining Italian Print Media," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 5(3), pages 1-6, March.
    2. Maike Winters & Anna Larsson & Jan Kowalski & Carl Johan Sundberg, 2019. "The association between quality measures of medical university press releases and their corresponding news stories—Important information missing," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(6), pages 1-14, June.
    3. Patrick DeLuca & Steve Buist & Neil Johnston, 2012. "The Code Red Project: Engaging Communities in Health System Change in Hamilton, Canada," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 108(2), pages 317-327, September.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Antoine Popelut & Fabien Valet & Olivier Fromentin & Aurélie Thomas & Philippe Bouchard, 2010. "Relationship between Sponsorship and Failure Rate of Dental Implants: A Systematic Approach," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 5(4), pages 1-9, April.
    2. Ferrán Catalá-López & Adolfo Alonso-Arroyo & Rafael Aleixandre-Benavent & Manuel Ridao & Máxima Bolaños & Anna García-Altés & Gabriel Sanfélix-Gimeno & Salvador Peiró, 2012. "Coauthorship and Institutional Collaborations on Cost-Effectiveness Analyses: A Systematic Network Analysis," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 7(5), pages 1-9, May.
    3. Timotijevic, Lada & Khan, Shumaisa S. & Raats, Monique & Braun, Susanne, 2019. "Research priority setting in food and health domain: European stakeholder beliefs about legitimacy criteria and processes," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 83(C), pages 116-124.
    4. Béné, Christophe, 2022. "Why the Great Food Transformation may not happen – A deep-dive into our food systems’ political economy, controversies and politics of evidence," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 154(C).
    5. Gordon, Elisa Jill, 2006. "The political contexts of evidence-based medicine: Policymaking for daily hemodialysis," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 62(11), pages 2707-2719, June.
    6. Scott, C. & Hawkins, B. & Knai, C., 2017. "Food and beverage product reformulation as a corporate political strategy," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 172(C), pages 37-45.
    7. Gary Sacks & Devorah Riesenberg & Melissa Mialon & Sarah Dean & Adrian J Cameron, 2020. "The characteristics and extent of food industry involvement in peer-reviewed research articles from 10 leading nutrition-related journals in 2018," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(12), pages 1-15, December.
    8. Marie A. Bragg & Brian Elbel & Marion Nestle, 2020. "Food Industry Donations to Academic Programs: A Cross-Sectional Examination of the Extent of Publicly Available Data," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(5), pages 1-15, March.
    9. Yongjin Choi & Ashley M. Fox, 2022. "Fact‐value framework for adjudicating public health policy debates," Review of Policy Research, Policy Studies Organization, vol. 39(6), pages 820-844, November.
    10. Adolfo Maria Tambella & Anna Rita Attili & Gilles Dupré & Andrea Cantalamessa & Stefano Martin & Vincenzo Cuteri & Sabrina Marcazzan & Massimo Del Fabbro, 2018. "Platelet-rich plasma to treat experimentally-induced skin wounds in animals: A systematic review and meta-analysis," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(1), pages 1-26, January.
    11. Weldon, Isaac & Parkhurst, Justin, 2022. "Governing evidence use in the nutrition policy process: evidence and lessons from the 2020 Canada food guide," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 112430, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    12. Gorman, Dennis M. & Conde, Eugenia, 2007. "Conflict of interest in the evaluation and dissemination of "model" school-based drug and violence prevention programs," Evaluation and Program Planning, Elsevier, vol. 30(4), pages 422-429, November.
    13. Campbell, Norah & Mialon, Melissa & Reilly, Kathryn & Browne, Sarah & Finucane, Francis M., 2020. "How are frames generated? Insights from the industry lobby against the sugar tax in Ireland," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 264(C).
    14. Diels, Johan & Cunha, Mario & Manaia, Célia & Sabugosa-Madeira, Bernardo & Silva, Margarida, 2011. "Association of financial or professional conflict of interest to research outcomes on health risks or nutritional assessment studies of genetically modified products," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 36(2), pages 197-203, April.
    15. Racine, Eric & Waldman, Sarah & Rosenberg, Jarett & Illes, Judy, 2010. "Contemporary neuroscience in the media," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 71(4), pages 725-733, August.
    16. Benhur Ruqsana, 2019. "The Impact of Source of Funding on the Outcome of Clinical Trials in India," Arthaniti: Journal of Economic Theory and Practice, , vol. 18(2), pages 201-216, December.
    17. Anna Lene Seidler & Kylie E Hunter & Nicholas Chartres & Lisa M Askie, 2019. "Associations between industry involvement and study characteristics at the time of trial registration in biomedical research," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(9), pages 1-12, September.
    18. Ferrán Catalá-López & Gabriel Sanfélix-Gimeno & Manuel Ridao & Salvador Peiró, 2013. "When Are Statins Cost-Effective in Cardiovascular Prevention? A Systematic Review of Sponsorship Bias and Conclusions in Economic Evaluations of Statins," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(7), pages 1-1, July.
    19. Zimmerman, Frederick J., 2013. "Habit, custom, and power: A multi-level theory of population health," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 47-56.
    20. Scott Burris, 2008. "Regulatory innovation in the governance of human subjects research: A cautionary tale and some modest proposals," Regulation & Governance, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 2(1), pages 65-84, March.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0001266. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.