Premature coverage of abstracts troublesome

May. 28th, 2009 by Pia Christensen
Filed under: Conflicts of interest, Health journalism 

Gary Schwitzer of the University of Minnesota writes about what he calls a “troubling trend:” Reporters are writing articles based upon abstracts for a meeting that hasn’t been held yet.

As Schwitzer points out, this allows companies to make claims about their research without reporters being able to examine all the data and get independent sources to comment on the findings.

Schwitzer goes into more detail and links to some of the stories in question.

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