[Editorial] Medical journals should not avoid political issues that have a bearing on health

Medical journals should not avoid political issues that have a bearing on health.

From the 12 May 2015 British Medical Journal editorial

Criticism of the Israeli government does not necessarily equate with antisemitism

In April, Reed Elsevier, publishers of the Lancet, received a complaint written by Professor Mark Pepys and signed by 396 physicians and scientists, including five Nobel Laureates.1 They protested that the Lancet was being used for political purposes and for “publication of deliberately false material which deepens polarization between Israelis and Palestinians.”

The most recent example of what was termed this “political vendetta” was the July publication, during the latest Israeli assault on Gaza, of an “Open letter for the people in Gaza.”2 They wrote that the letter “contains false assertions and unverifiable dishonest ‘facts,’ many of them libellous,” and that its authors had failed to declare possible conflicts of interest. The complaint insisted that the July letter be retracted (disagreeing with the Lancetombudsman’s decision3) and that it contravened the code of the Committee on Publication Ethics (disagreeing with a former chair of the committee4). It asked for the support of all scientists and clinicians “on whom they [Reed Elsevier] depend for their business,” adding “none of us is under any obligation to submit and review material for publication in their journals or to serve on their editorial or advisory boards.”

An email chain soliciting support for this complaint was more explicit.5 In it Pepys accused the July letter of “viciously attacking Israel with blood libels echoing those used for a thousand years to create anti-Semitic pogroms” and being “written by dedicated Jew haters.” He suggested that the letter “would have made Goebbels proud” and that “anybody who was not a committed anti-Semite would firstly not have published Manduca [lead author of the July letter] and secondly would have retracted instantly when her long track record of blatant anti-Semitism were [sic] exposed.” Two days before the complaint, the title of the email chain was modified to read “DO NOT CITE The Lancet in your work—Their content includes fraudulent data.”6

The July letter included a UN estimate of the number of Gazan children killed up to that date during the Israeli bombardment,7 which the Pepys email implied was exaggerated.

…

Medicine cannot avoid politics

These events raise two issues. The first is the appropriateness of medical journals discussing political issues that have bearing on health, including civilian mortality and morbidity.

…

The second issue is the similarity between this complaint’s attempt to stifle coverage of the conflict in Gaza and previous examples of writing campaigns provoked by articles in medical journals critical of Israeli policies, including allegations of hyperbole, accusations of antisemitism, and threats of boycott.

…
The reports published by the UN and others all point to the need for an independent investigation into the conflict by international teams of humanitarian, arms, and legal experts to determine whether and by whom—from either side of the conflict—violations of international human rights and humanitarian law were committed. The effect of this war on civilian mental health, morale, and assets is magnified by the cumulative burden of still destroyed houses and livelihoods dating from previous conflicts. As a deputy editor of The BMJ has pointed out, “Future generations will judge the journal harshly if we avert our gaze from the medical consequences of what is happening to the occupants of the Palestinian territories and to the Israelis next door.

 

[Reblog] Curēus, an open-access medical journal with crowdsourcing

[Reblog] Curēus, an open-access medical journal with crowdsourcing December 23, 2012

Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in Medicine, Web 2.0, Medical journalism,Medicine 2.0, e-Science.
trackbackJohn Adler who is a neurosurgeon at Stanford just launched Curēus, an open-source medical journal that leverages crowdsourcing to make scientific research more readily available to the general public. What do you think?

Based in Palo Alto, California, Curēus is the medical journal for a new generation of both doctors AND patients. Leveraging the power of an online, crowd-sourced community platform, Curēus promotes medical research by offering tools that better serve and highlight the people who create it, resulting in better research, faster publication and easier access for everyone.

We make it easier and faster to publish your work – it’s always free and you retain the copyright. What’s more, the Curēus platform is designed to provide a place for physicians to build their digital CV anchored with their posters and papers.

The Curēus site also has..

• Posters
• A supportive care collection
• Google map for who is posting (couldn’t get the map to “work” for me..)
• “Instructions for Authors”

Currently, a relatively few number of papers online. The concept is good, here’s hoping this is not a flash in the pan, but the wave of the future.

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• Curēus, New Open-Source Medical Journal Created by Stanford Neurosurgeon John Adler,Scientific Research More Readily Available, Peer To Peer Reviews (ducknetweb.blogspot.com)
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Medical journal news releases shouldn’t just try to make news but to make news reporting better

Medical news press releases do strongly affect health/medical news items in the “popular press”.
All the more reason, as this article points out, that these press releases need to be as complete and accurate as possible!

From the 31 Janauary 2012 HealthNewsReview.org*** article

Not to be missed:  last week’s BMJ published an analysis by a team at Dartmouth Medical School led by Steven Woloshin and Lisa Schwartz – “Influence of medical journal press releases on the quality of associated newspaper coverage.”***

This is an important contribution to our understanding of the food chain of the dissemination of research news to the American public:  medical journals feed journalists who feed the American public what they get out of journals – sometimes driven largely by what’s in journal news releases.  If the information at the source is complete and high quality, the flow of information from journalists to the public is more likely to be complete and high quality as well.  But this analysis also suggests that “low quality press releases might make (associated newspaper stories) worse.”

Excerpts:

Higher quality press releases issued by medical journals were associated with higher quality reporting in subsequent newspaper stories. In fact, the influence of press releases on subsequent newspaper stories was generally stronger than that of journal abstracts. Fundamental information such as absolute risks, harms, and limitations was more likely to be reported in newspaper stories when this information appeared in a medical journal press release than when it was missing from the press release or if no press release was issued. Furthermore, our data suggest that poor quality press releases were worse than no press release being issued: fundamental information was less likely to be reported in newspaper stories when it was missing from the press release than where no press release was issued at all (although the findings were generally not statistically significant).

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Reporting on medical research is challenging:…

***HealthNewsReview.org is a group of independent professional journalists who review medical stories in newspapers, magazines, etc

Please see my earlier blog posting for a fuller description

Related articles

• Quality medical journal news releases can help newspapers do a better job informing public (medicalxpress.com)
• Quality medical journal news releases can help newspapers do a better job informing public (eurekalert.org)
• 5 Ways to Reinvent the Press Release With SEO (prnewsonline.com)

***Influence of medical journal press releases on the quality of associated newspaper coverage: retrospective cohort study

• Source:  British Medical Journal

  Objective

  To determine whether the quality of press releases issued by medical journals can influence the quality of associated newspaper stories.

  Design

  Retrospective cohort study of medical journal press releases and associated news stories.

  Setting

  We reviewed consecutive issues (going backwards from January 2009) of five major medical journals (Annals of Internal Medicine, BMJ, Journal of the National Cancer Institute, JAMA, and New England Journal of Medicine) to identify the first 100 original research articles with quantifiable outcomes and that had generated any newspaper coverage (unique stories ≥100 words long). We identified 759 associated newspaper stories using Lexis Nexis and Factiva searches, and 68 journal press releases using Eurekalert and journal website searches. Two independent research assistants assessed the quality of journal articles, press releases, and a stratified random sample of associated newspaper stories (n=343) by using a structured coding scheme for the presence of specific quality measures: basic study facts, quantification of the main result, harms, and limitations.

  Main outcome

  Proportion of newspaper stories with specific quality measures (adjusted for whether the quality measure was present in the journal article’s abstract or editor note).

  Results

  We recorded a median of three newspaper stories per journal article (range 1-72). Of 343 stories analysed, 71% reported on articles for which medical journals had issued press releases. 9% of stories quantified the main result with absolute risks when this information was not in the press release, 53% did so when it was in the press release (relative risk 6.0, 95% confidence interval 2.3 to 15.4), and 20% when no press release was issued (2.2, 0.83 to 6.1). 133 (39%) stories reported on research describing beneficial interventions. 24% mentioned harms (or specifically declared no harms) when harms were not mentioned in the press release, 68% when mentioned in the press release (2.8, 1.1 to 7.4), and 36% when no press release was issued (1.5, 0.49 to 4.4). 256 (75%) stories reported on research with important limitations. 16% reported any limitations when limitations were not mentioned in the press release, 48% when mentioned in the press release (3.0, 1.5 to 6.2), and 21% if no press release was issued (1.3, 0.50 to 3.6).

  Conclusion

  High quality press releases issued by medical journals seem to make the quality of associated newspaper stories better, whereas low quality press releases might make them worse.

A free directory of open-access material from over 2,400 medical journals

From  FreeMedicalJournals.com (Intellogist)

FreeMedicalJournals.com is a free directory of open-access material from over 2,400 medical journals, offered as a service from Flying Publisher and Amedeo. Updates to the site are provided by Manuel Montenegro and Bernd Sebastian Kamps.^[1]. Users can sign up for free email alerts to learn about new journals added to the site. On the home page of the website, users can select links to:

• Sign up for Journal Alerts.
• View a list of new enters added to the site (organized in reverse chronological order).
• View the top 60 free journals.

Each journal listing includes the title, language, ISSN #, EISSN #, FMJ Impact, ISI Impact Factor, when content in the journal becomes free (after 6 months, 12 months, etc.), publication date range, and any notes about accessing the free content. Selecting the link in the journal title will take the user directly to the journal’s publisher website. Selecting the magnifying glass icon beside the listing will take the user to a PubMed search that limits results to content from that particular journal.