A September 26,20

1. An Unhealthy Bond:
Embargoes and the Ingelfinger Rule
Science Writers in New York
September 26, 2011
Ivan Oransky, MD
Executive Editor, Reuters Health
Blogger, Embargo Watch
http://embargowatch.wordpress.com
ivan-oransky@erols.com

2. Why Journals Say They 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.

3. The Criticism
“…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”
– Robert Lee Hotz, quoted in Kiernan V.,
Embargoed Science (2006), p 77

4. What’s In It For Journals?
“…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

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

6. 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

7. 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

8. Review: Why Journals Say They Embargo
• Time to digest findings
• Time to find outside comments
• More time for reporters should mean
greater accuracy

9. Are their policies consistent with
these reasons?
• The Short Embargo Parade
• Unusual Embargo Policies
• Freely Available But Embargoed
• It’s Not Just Journals
• When Studies Aren’t Available at Embargo
• Do Journals Sanction Embargo Breakers?

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

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

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

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

14. 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

15. Unusual Embargo Policies

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

17. 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

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

19. Freely Available But Embargoed

20. Freely Available But Embargoed

22. Honorable Mention

23. It’s Not Just Journals

24. When Studies Aren’t Available at Embargo

25. More Inconsistency: Do Journals
Sanction Embargo Breakers?
Not often.
In Embargo Watch experience, somewhere
between 10% and 20% of the time.

26. Two People Who Were Punished

27. But Wait, We Can Haz Change!

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

29. FDA Reverses Itself

30. 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.
- Page 140

31. Even Without Embargoes, We’d Still
Have Ingelfinger

32. The Letter of the Rule: Nature
• Nature does not wish to hinder communication
between scientists. For that reason, different
embargo guidelines apply to work that has been
discussed at a conference or displayed on a preprint
server and picked up by the media as a result.
(Neither conference presentations nor posting on
recognized preprint servers constitute prior
publication.)
-more-

33. The Letter of the Rule: Nature
• Our guidelines for authors and potential authors in
such circumstances are clear-cut in principle:
communicate with other researchers as much as you
wish, but do not encourage premature publication by
discussion with the press (beyond a formal
presentation, if at a conference).
-more-

34. The Letter of the Rule: Nature
• This advice may jar with those (including most
researchers and all journalists) who see the freedom
of information as a good thing. But it embodies a
longer-term view: that publication in a peer-reviewed
journal is the appropriate culmination of any piece of
original research, and an essential prerequisite for
public discussion.
From
http://www.nature.com/nature/authors/policy/embargo.html

35. Ingelfinger in Practice

36. Ingelfinger in Practice

37. Ingelfinger in Practice

38. Ingelfinger in Practice

39. 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?

40. 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.