Abstract
BackgroundNews stories represent an important source of information. We aimed to evaluate the impact of “spin” (i.e., misrepresentation of study results) in health news stories reporting studies of pharmacologic treatments on patients’/caregivers’ interpretation of treatment benefit.MethodsWe conducted three two-arm, parallel-group, Internet-based randomized trials (RCTs) comparing the interpretation of news stories reported with or without spin. Each RCT considered news stories reporting a different type of study: (1) pre-clinical study, (2) phase I/II non-RCT, and (3) phase III/IV RCT. For each type of study, we identified news stories reported with spin that had earned mention in the press. Two versions of the news stories were used: the version with spin and a version rewritten without spin. Participants were patients/caregivers involved in Inspire, a large online community of more than one million patients/caregivers. The primary outcome was participants’ interpretation assessed by one specific question “What do you think is the probability that ‘treatment X’ would be beneficial to patients?” (scale, 0 [very unlikely] to 10 [very likely]).ResultsFor each RCT, 300 participants were randomly assigned to assess a news story with spin (n = 150) or without spin (n = 150), and 900 participants assessed a news story. Participants were more likely to consider that the treatment would be beneficial to patients when the news story was reported with spin. The mean (SD) score for the primary outcome for abstracts reported with and without spin for pre-clinical studies was 7.5 (2.2) versus 5.8 (2.8) (mean difference [95% CI] 1.7 [1.0–2.3], p < 0.001); for phase I/II non-randomized trials, 7.6 (2.2) versus 5.8 (2.7) (mean difference 1.8 [1.0–2.5], p < 0.001); and for phase III/IV RCTs, 7.2 (2.3) versus 4.9 (2.8) (mean difference 2.3 [1.4–3.2], p < 0.001).ConclusionsSpin in health news stories reporting studies of pharmacologic treatments affects patients’/caregivers’ interpretation.Trial registrationClinicalTrials.gov, NCT03094078, NCT03094104, NCT03095586
Highlights
News stories represent an important source of information
Each Randomized controlled trial (RCT) considered news stories reporting a different type of study evaluating pharmacologic treatments: (1) pre-clinical study, (2) phase I/II non-randomized trial, and (3) phase III/IV RCT
Identification of health news stories We identified a sample of news stories with spin reporting studies of pharmacologic treatments that earned mention in the press or on social media
Summary
News stories represent an important source of information. We aimed to evaluate the impact of “spin” (i.e., misrepresentation of study results) in health news stories reporting studies of pharmacologic treatments on patients’/caregivers’ interpretation of treatment benefit. News stories represent an important source of information for patients [1,2,3]. Some evidence suggests that many news stories do not accurately represent research results and could mislead readers with “spin,” defined as “the presentation of information in a particular way, a slant, especially a favorable one” [7,8,9,10,11,12]. The most frequent are misleading reporting such as not reporting adverse events, misleading interpretation such as claiming a causal effect despite the non-randomized study design, overgeneralization of the results such as extrapolating a beneficial effect from an animal study to humans, and highlighting a single-patient experience for the success of a new treatment instead of focusing on the group results [13]
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