Drug company press releases short on details: study

Published Friday August 8th, 2008

THE CANADIAN PRESS

TORONTO - Researchers who scrutinized news releases put out by top-selling pharmaceutical companies say they've found some shortcomings. Dr. Chaim Bell, the senior author of the study, said he began the project after noticing press releases and news articles that dealt with "really preliminary information" but didn't itemize caveats or limitations of the studies.

Altogether, they counted 1,028 press releases. Of these, 235 concerned an announcement about original research. When these were studied, it was found that more than half were concerning preliminary research. In addition, about 30 per cent did not quantify the study results, Bell said.

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