Our views and opinions on industry issues.
Have we really had enough of experts? by Rob Dawson In an interview with Faisal Islam of Sky News on June 3, 2016, Michael Gove said that the British people have had enough of experts. I remember it well because I had not long left working as Head of News at one of the Research
…More
Matt Chorley, communications lead at the National Institute for Health Research UCLH/UCL Biomedical Research Centre, reflects on how a journalism course has benefited his medical and science PR. I used to think dealing with the media was easy. In my first job which involved media relations, my press releases were widely picked up, letters to editors
…More
This is a guest blog from Prof Petroc Sumner, Professor of Neuroscience at Cardiff University, and member of InSciOut, a group of scientists and journalism academics studying how science gets reported in the press and the processes that create misunderstandings and exaggerations. Since we started on the daunting task of analysing hundreds of press releases
…More
“It’s greed that makes you fat,” wrote Amanda Platell in the Daily Mail back in 2017. “Fatties lack the willpower to stop eating.” I realise that the sole purpose of Mail columnists is to raise the nation’s blood pressure, but this piece so incensed me, I was determined to challenge in somehow. The opportunity came
…More
By Amy Drummond, AprilSix Proof The term ‘techlash’ – the backlash against the technology industry – was shortlisted recently for the Oxford Word of the Year, which is awarded to a word or expression “judged to reflect the ethos, mood, or preoccupations of the passing year.” The techlash has certainly surged in its intensity this year.
…More
A blog post by Dr Claire Hastings I first wanted to re-ignite the embargo debate a couple of years ago after I, like many press officers, received an email from Eureka Alert saying the journal PNAS would no longer embargo a paper if any of the data was previously published on a preprint server. Since
…More
Stempra members might have seen the recent discussions of a case where an organisation was approached to comment on an embargoed report by a journalist, only to be told that said report couldn’t be shared with them at that point. It turned out that the organisation’s experts never got sight of the report before it
…More
By Jess Devonport In October, Petroc Sumner from the InSciOut group at Cardiff University joined Stempra to discuss their research on where hype in science and health news comes from. At that point the study was yet to be published and we were unable to disclose the findings in our event report, we were told
…More