The Public Forum – Sharing the News with the Public

What the public learns about medical research usually comes from newspapers, television, magazines and the Internet. This requires a journalist to translate a medical report into a newsworthy story, but the media and medical research professions each have a distinct method of operation, different standards and certainly different goals so that the communication between these two bodies can lead to incomplete and misleading articles. The media largely gets its information from press releases prepared by the organization that sponsored the medical research study and that can cause a lack of objectivity. Another source of information is a scientific conference where researchers present new work to colleagues, but the papers presented are usually a work-in-progress and based on exploratory research without the safeguards of peer review or thorough analysis. The way data are presented can influence a person's interpretation of the significance of a story and too often only the more sensational statistics makes it into print. Direct-to-consumer advertising by the drug industry is also an issue and the strong differences of opinion that exist are reviewed.