The News They Don’t See Fit to Print

The news media love to report on the search for the next Viagra. From a business perspective there is so much money involved in the next big fake promise to fix your sex life pharmaceutical treatment for sexual dysfunction, and from a lifestyle angle it gives the paper a chance to write about sex “clean”.

So you could be forgiven if everything you know about medication research you learned from the news. And yet, if you care about your health and about truth in advertising, a study published this month in the Journal of the American Medical Association reminds us why relying on the print or online media alone isn’t a safe bet.

The authors of the study looked at how often news articles about medication research reported whether or not the research was funded by a pharmaceutical company. They found that 42% of all news articles failed to report that research had received company funding. They also surveyed editors to ask about editorial policy (both written and unwritten) regarding citation of funding sources. Of the 104 articles taken from publications where editors reported always citing funding sources, 45% failed to do so. Three percent of the editors surveyed said their paper had a written policy about naming company funding sources. Far more (62%) said there was an unwritten policy. According to the data neither is working out very well.

Interestingly for anyone who thinks they’re getting a more critical perspective from online news media, the study found no significant difference between online and print news sources in terms of non-reporting rates.

It’s hard to know what the answer is for regular people who are looking for treatment of a condition and want to know more about new medication research. Obviously research that is funded by a pharmaceutical company has value. The problem is that the more companies ignore or try to hide their bias and financial interests the less trust we should probably have in that research and, I’m guessing here, the more opportunity there is for explicit misrepresentation of results. I know my first stop when I get a question about medication is the original research and that tiny paragraph near the end that starts “financial disclosures.” But we don’t all have institutional access or time to track down the original research. Will the news media step up?

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