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Randomized Controlled Trial
. 2019 Jun 4;17(1):105.
doi: 10.1186/s12916-019-1330-9.

Three randomized controlled trials evaluating the impact of "spin" in health news stories reporting studies of pharmacologic treatments on patients'/caregivers' interpretation of treatment benefit

Isabelle Boutron  1   2   3 , Romana Haneef  4   5   6 , Amélie Yavchitz  4   6 , Gabriel Baron  6 , John Novack  7 , Ivan Oransky  8 , Gary Schwitzer  9 , Philippe Ravaud  4   5   6   10
Affiliations
Randomized Controlled Trial

Three randomized controlled trials evaluating the impact of "spin" in health news stories reporting studies of pharmacologic treatments on patients'/caregivers' interpretation of treatment benefit

Isabelle Boutron et al. BMC Med. .

Erratum in

Abstract

Background: 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.

Methods: We 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]).

Results: For 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).

Conclusions: Spin in health news stories reporting studies of pharmacologic treatments affects patients'/caregivers' interpretation.

Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT03094078 , NCT03094104 , NCT03095586.

Keywords: Detrimental research practices; Distorted interpretation; Randomized trial; Spin.

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Conflict of interest statement

IB is an academic editor at BMC Medicine. IO is employed by Medscape, which is part of WebMD. He is also the volunteer co-founder of Retraction Watch, which has been paid writing fees for journalism by Science magazine, STAT News, The Boston Globe, and other publications, and has in the past received grants from the Laura and John Arnold Foundation, the Helmsley Trust, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. All other authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Flow of participants in the study
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Participants’ interpretation of the benefit of treatments when reading a news story reported with or without spin. Scores are based on a numerical rating scale, ranging from 0 (very unlikely) to 10 (very likely). Boxes represent median observations (horizontal rule) with 25th and 75th percentiles of observed data (box edges). The diamonds represent the mean. The error bars represent the minimum and maximum values. RCTs, randomized controlled trials
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Forest plot of the results for primary and secondary outcomes
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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