OMG. ASCO in the age of Twitter. We’re being bombarded with information.
True advances are announced at scientific meetings. But, a lot of findings are overhyped. Beware the annual barrage of news from The American Society of Clinical Oncologists meeting.
Or indulge in it: Twitter hashtag #ASCO2010.
Local tweets from MGH and Dana Farber.
For some perspective on how this is filtered through the news, see The Health News Review, which reports:
Journalists and consumers who rely on information presented in talks at scientific meetings need to realize how incomplete that information may be.
Dartmouth and VA researchers Steve Woloshin and Lisa Schwartz wrote an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association called “Media Coverage of Scientific Meetings: Too Much, Too Soon?” In it, they show how many news stories in one analysis reported on various types of abstracts, or short summaries of research, at scientific meetings. They reported:
“We found that research abstracts presented at prominent scientific meetings often receive substantial attention in the news media. This prepublication dissemination of medical research often brings findings to the public before the validity and importance of the work has been established in the scientific community. Adding to this concern, many of the abstracts receiving media attention have weak designs, are small, or are based on animal or laboratory studies; 25% remained unpublished more than 3 years after the meeting. Interestingly, presentations that receive front-page coverage are no more likely to be published than abstracts receiving less prominent coverage.
Woloshin and Schwartz recommend the following language for journalists who choose to write about preliminary unpublished research presented at meetings: “The findings presented are a work in progress. Because the findings have not undergone final peer review, they have yet to be independently vetted, and may change.”
We hope you can see why publication in a peer-reviewed medical journal – although no guarantee of integrity or quality – is an important screen. At least other scientists can evaluate and comment on the research methods and on the strength of the evidence. something not done at many scientific meetings.
Also, Breast Cancer Action scrutinizes the news from the meeting a bit more than some of the industry-funded breast cancer patient groups.