Correspondence

Medical Journals and the Popular Media

N Engl J Med 1993; 329:890September 16, 1993

Article

To the Editor:

Journalists who report on health and medicine need full and accurate information if they are to report accurately to the public. The statement on medical journals and the popular media approved by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors at its January 1993 meeting (April 29 issue)1 properly said, “Policies designed to limit prepublication publicity should not apply to accounts in the media of presentations at scientific meetings or to the abstracts from these meetings.” But it went on to add, “Researchers who present their work at a scientific meeting should feel free to discuss their presentations with reporters, but they should be discouraged from offering more detail about their study than was presented in their talk.”

It is seldom that an oral presentation answers all the questions a reporter must ask if the public is to get a useful report. To discourage researchers or others from talking to reporters and further explaining their findings by giving “more detail” can only result in less effective and often misleading reports.

Speakers interested in true public understanding aided by accurate reporting should ignore this recommendation and answer as many questions as possible. And they should share full copies of their presentations and slides.

Victor Cohn
Washington Post, Washington, DC 20071

1 References

1. 1

   International Committee of Medical Journal Editors. Medical journals and the popular media. N Engl J Med 1993;328:1283-1283
   Full Text | Web of Science

Author/Editor Response

Editors' reply:

As members of the committee we shall respond to Mr. Cohn's letter.

We sympathize with his concern for accuracy in reporting presentations given at scientific meetings. The committee's statement discouraging researchers “from offering more detail about their study than was presented in their talk” was not meant to prevent them from responding forthrightly to questions about the presentation. We agree with Mr. Cohn that any areas of uncertainty should be clarified.

What the statement referred to was a researcher's adding appreciably to the substance of a presentation -- e.g., by telling the reporter of other aspects of the study that had not been mentioned in the talk. This is an unnecessary short-circuiting of the peer-review process and could easily result in the dissemination of flawed information.

Jerome P. Kassirer, M.D.
Marcia Angell, M.D.