All are not created equal: Method descriptions in an epidemiology publication differ among media summaries – A case study comparison

Abstract

It is common to see mass media headlines about health-related topics in traditional and online news outlets, as well as on social media platforms. What a consumer might not realize is that often these headlines are a distillation of results reported in epidemiologic publications. Journalists make decisions about what information to include and exclude, hopefully without compromising the main conclusions. In this exercise, sixty-three media articles that summarized one peer-reviewed journal publication (Zhang et al., 2021) describing results from a cohort study on coffee and tea consumption and risk of stroke and dementia were compared to determine the consistency of details among them. The most heterogeneity was observed in whether articles compared results with other literature. There was some variation in inclusion of a measure of frequency within the study population, and in details describing measurement of exposure. However, most of the articles were consistent in either including or excluding other methodological details in the main text. The results of the present comparison have implications for readers, researchers, and journalists. Readers must know that media summaries of peer reviewed studies are just that – summaries. It is likely that some information from the original source is not represented by the article, and that additional information might be necessary to craft an informed opinion on a given topic.