University of Wisconsin-Madison presentation, November 2, 2010

1. This Talk Is Not Embargoed:
How Scientific Journals and Societies
Use Embargoes to Manipulate the Flow
of Scientific Information
Ivan Oransky, MD
Executive Editor, Reuters Health
Blogger, Embargo Watch
http://embargowatch.wordpress.com
ivan-oransky@erols.com
University of Wisconsin, Madison
November 2, 2010

2. When Did Embargoes Start?

3. Why Embargo?
NEJM, a typical policy:
The Journal embargo policy is designed primarily to
ensure that physician subscribers have their copy of
the Journal at about the same time their patients hear
about new research through the news media. It also
gives the media time to learn about a topic, gather
relevant information, and interview authors and other
experts so they can accurately report complex
research findings.

4. • Time to digest findings
• Time to find outside comments
• More time for reporters should mean
greater accuracy
Why Embargo?

5. The Short Embargo Parade
American Journal of Gastroenterology
22:58 on May 11, 2010

6. The Short Embargo Parade
The Lancet
9:19, March 31, 2010

7. The Short Embargo Parade
Journal of Clinical Oncology
2:41, May 24, 2010

8. The Short Embargo Parade
The New England Journal of Medicine
0:49, on September 15, 2010

9. So Is It Really About Accuracy?
Does 49 minutes give reporters enough time to
do a good job?
How do you measure accuracy, anyway?
“Proponents of the embargo system maintain that
embargoes promote journalistic accuracy, but this
claim is essentially tautological, because the
embargo system reflects and fosters a definition of
accuracy promoted by the scientific establishment.”
– Kiernan V. Embargoed Science,
University of Illinois Press, 2006

10. Unusual Embargo Policies

11. Unusual Embargo Policies
Chest
The papers are available on
HighWire when they’re ready, but
you won’t know when the embargo
lifts until the print TOCs are
announced – often months later

12. Unusual Embargo Policies
University of Leeds
Embargoed a study that was already
published in Geophysical Review
Letters

13. Unusual Embargo Policies
The Lancet
7:01 p.m. Eastern – unless you’re on
the East Coast of the U.S., in which
case it’s 6:30 p.m., since nightly
network newscasts start then

14. Unusual Embargo Policies
American Journal of Preventive Medicine
An embargo that lifts 26 different times,
since it’s at news outlets’ local times

16. Honorable Mention

17. Some Societies Agree:
They Don’t Make Sense

18. When Studies Aren’t
Available at Embargo

19. Inconsistency: What Breaks are
Worth an Early Embargo Lift?
• Twitter – sometimes
• Press releases – sometimes
• Naming the journal – if you’re a mainstream
outlet
• Quoting from the paper – if you’re a
mainstream outlet

20. Two Cases

21. By the Numbers
Since late February,
one noted embargo break per week,
on average

22. Do Embargoes Mean
More Coverage?
“…coverage [by the New York Times] of
JAMA increased by 50 percent after the
journal’s publication date was shifted from
Friday to Wednesday in April 1990.”
Kiernan V.
Embargoes and the New York Times' coverage of the
Journal of the American Medical Association.
Science Communication, June 1998

23. American Geophysical Union’s unembargoed
journals get nearly no coverage in
newspapers, compared to Science and
Nature, which appear nearly every week.
Do Embargoes Mean
More Coverage?
Harvey Leifert, quoted in Kiernan, pp 104-105

24. Does Coverage Mean
More Citations?
Articles… covered by the Times received a disproportionate
number of scientific citations in each of the 10 years after
the… articles appeared.
The effect was strongest in the first year after publication,
when… articles publicized by the Times received 72.8%
more scientific citations than control articles.
This effect was not present for articles published during the
strike; articles covered by the Times during this period were
no more likely to be cited than those not covered.
Phillips D et al. Importance of the lay press
in the transmission of medical knowledge to
the scientific community. NEJM 1991

25. Breaking news coverage by twenty-four daily newspapers
of articles from the Journal of the American Medical
Association, Nature, the New England Journal of
Medicine, and Science was associated with more frequent
citations; coverage by network television was not.
Breaking news coverage by the New York Times, when
considered with coverage by television and other
newspapers, was unrelated to citation rates.
Does Coverage Mean
More Citations?
Kiernan V. Diffusion of news about research.
Science Communication, Sept. 2003

26. How Do Embargoes
Change Coverage?
“The often slavish reliance on a few journals implies
taking science as a given, simply reporting on work
that is already done. With a supply of easy stories
guaranteed, there is little incentive to ask about
issues like the motivation underlying funding or who
creates the agenda for doing the research.”
– John Turney, quoted in Kiernan, p 106

27. So What Is it Really About?
• Advancing the journals’ scientific and
profit-driven agenda
• A fail-safe that helps prove this:
The Ingelfinger Rule
• Kills competition and enterprise

28. “…important science news often is more a
produce of news management by the journals
that publish peer-review research, than of any
one reporter’s special expertise or investigative
energy”
So What Is it Really About?
– Robert Lee Hotz, quoted in Kiernan, p 77

29. It’s About Control
Suggested Embargo Policy Text
Our embargo policy is in place to ensure as much coverage of
research [in our journal/by our society’s members] as possible.
This may divert attention from other important issues in
science and medicine. Provided we have a reasonable interval
between the release of material and the embargo time, it may
also help reporters do a better job covering these studies.
However, policies that bar pre-publication publicity of
scientists’ work can also have a chilling effect on the spread of
scientific knowledge.

30. Or Should Journalists
Just Give Them Up?
What if we just got rid of the Ingelfinger
Rule?
Is it safe to write about research that isn’t
peer-reviewed?

31. Or Should Journalists
Just Give Them Up?

32. Kiernan’s Vision
It is a rough-and-tumble vision of the journalistic future,
one lacking the gentility that now pervades journalism
about science and medicine.
But the public interest, not the interest of the scientific
and medical establishment, should be the uppermost
concern of science and medical journalists – and, in
fact, of institutional science and medicine.
The embargo should go.
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