7 - Retractions, press releases and newspaper coverage - Chris Schippers

Chris Schippers

Reference:

Rada, R. F. (2007). Retractions, press releases and newspaper coverage. Health Information & Libraries Journal, 24(3), 210-215. doi:10.1111/j.1471-1842.2007.00724.x Retrieved from http://ezproxy.uvu.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=26218738&site=ehost-live on October 24, 2013.

Theme:

The theme of this article was to see how often newspapers covered a retracted medical journal article and if it was preceded by a press release.  In other words, newspapers would only cover a retraction of a medical journal article if it were presented first with a press release.

Summary:

·         Retracted medical publications represent a serious problem

·         Mistakes are more common than misconduct

·         Retraction articles vary widely in style and scope

·         A study of international newspapers suggested that press releases provide the primary source material

·         Press releases do not highlight study limitations, the role of industry funding, and they tend to exaggerate the importance of findings

·         Print media provides more reliable health care news than online media and the media generally sensationalize to improve market share

·         Discusses the case study of 50 retracted publications and raises questions

·         Is a newspaper more likely to report on a retracted publication after a press release appears about the retraction than when no press release appears?

·         Medical librarians should know how the mass media works in comparison to scholarly, medical literature content analysis on these retrieved newspaper articles and press releases provides data from which to infer relationships among the three, different, retrieved document samples, and thus to address the questions raised earlier.

·         This article talks more about retracted medical journals than press releases

Application to the Lesson Topic:

Unfortunately, this article did focus a whole lot on press releases by themselves, instead it focused on the on how newspapers cover retractions of medical journals.  The only time this article referenced a press release was when one was written about a medical journal retraction due to some error or misconduct of the journal.

Application to Emergency Services:

I was unable to see the correlation and understand how this article might be applied to emergency services.  If I had to take a stab in the dark about how it might relate, I would suggest the information given in this article and the talk of error and misconduct being exposed in press release could be related to how important it is for EMS workers to watch their conduct and pay attention to the reports they fill out.