Mass media received from the others, such as the Associated Press, or Reuters, to be released for publication. It really does not matter who may have composed such a press release, but in my opinion, they are overall nothing short of a well-constructed sales pitch by sponsors of media outlets who are instructed specifically how the press release will be presented to readers in an authoritarian manner. It is public relations for the sponsor of the embellished if not intentionally incomplete results reported that are designed to attract favorable media attention not only regarding this content, but towards the corporation who designed the release who implemented its release, who coerced outlets to present it to the public. Mass media receiving press releases are transformed into front groups to offer third party legitimacy for the content of the press release, which is biased by design, which allows the sponsor to escape liability for its content, perhaps, yet remains vicariously liable for the flaws associated with the presentation of the content. Flaws that reflect reckless disregard for the public. The readers of what likely is not objective and complete.
An example is an anonymous press release posted on the Medical News Today website from March of 2006. The title: “Cymbalta Safely and Effectively Treats core anxiety symptoms associated with generalized anxiety disorder.” Clearly, this title included words associated with relief or elation, which are subjective and not objective elements which would clearly be more appropriate.
The first paragraph repeats the results mentioned in the title of this article, but also states Cymbalta offers relief of painful symptoms associated with anxiety, as well as improved functional impairment, also claimed to be associated with anxiety.
Cymbalta was not approved for anxiety or any of the symptoms associated with this condition. In fact, cymbalta was not filed to the FDA for this speculated new indication desired by Eli Lilly until May of 2006. By definition, this press release is clear off-label promotion and misbranding that was performed overtly.
Shortly before the lightly stated disclaimers about Cymbalta were annotated in this press release, testimonials were intentionally created, I surmise, and were spoken about Cymbalta. The first testimonial was from the lead author, who expanded the claims made initially with various medical terms included, followed by his hope about the great potential of Cymbalta based on this study, which was planned to be shortly announced and discussed in greater detail soon after this press release at a national anxiety association meeting. The second testimonial was Eli Lilly’s Medical Advisor expressing his elation about what the lead author just stated, followed by how much he was encouraged by these results that will benefit so many others.
What was not discussed in this press release was the devastating post-marketing adverse events correlated with Cymbalta- which include what is termed discontinuation syndrome, along with suicidal ideation as well as cases of suicide by those on Cymbalta. There are more, but these are the most concerning to others, yet not stated overtly in the press release.
As with any healthcare journalism, objectivity has to be a necessary requirement with any publishing that is potentially exposed to so many others, more so with such medical issues in particular. Because these so many potential readers are in fact us- public citizens who deserve much more than half truths and fabrications from those whose purpose is supposed to be the sharing of complete and unbiased information, yet apparently and clearly is not the case.

Dan Abshear

Author’s note: What has been written has been based upon information and belief.

No one goes around questioning whether “normal people” are a danger to the public – perhaps they should.

I accept that the underlying data and trends are important – but if you are a journalist bombarded with 100s of press releases every day, then the headline and first paragraph have to grab you by the balls and make you take notice. Instead, this comes across as a very dry and heavy statistical piece, and as such, will get added to the ‘get round to it at some point’ pile.

It’s not that journalists are stupid or lazy (although, like in every profession, including medicine, science, etc. I’m sure there are a few), but that they have suffered from huge cutbacks in staffing levels, to the extent that if something isn’t given to them on a plate, then they just don’t have the luxury to read something like this in detail to properly understand what it is trying to convey.

If you truly have something important to say then you need to invest a reasonable effort in working out how to best say it and to whom – its not enough to just whack it on an email and hope ‘the meeja’ will just run with it.

Methinks the The Royal College of Psychiatrists need a better PR team.

ChrisR, if you normalised and found that a difference still existed between murder rates among black and white people, and you went looking for causes, you might well come up with something like a more prevalent culture of gang membership and/or carrying weapons among young black men, something that has been extensively covered in the media I think you’ll find. Where’s the cover-up here? What conclusion are you driving at?

Finally, am I the only one who thought that Ben’s use of ‘people like you’ was simply, er, amusing? You, the Guardian reader, couldn’t possibly be mad – but you might be a murderer…

If they are going to refer to studies and not tell you which studies they are on about then it is going to make it very difficult to work out how accurate their coverage is. Some media outlets don’t even give you handy clues (e.g., author’s name), whereas the NYT (as HD says) give full refs. If they can do it…

some of your q’s about what was measured are answered in the paper. if you can’t get to it then i agree ,it is absurd that not all journals are open access.

regarding “people like you” vs “people with mental illness” i absolutely agree, reading back, that was probably a poor choice of phrase, but i feel fairly sure in context it was clear that it was driving at challenging people who fearmonger about people with mental illness, in a spirited defense of a group of people who are dealt some of the grimmest blows in our society.

lastly, i gave the figures in the form they were given in the paper, i didn’t want to convert them or process them (that would have been v wrong and risky) but i have emailed the authors, and will let you know if they are able to get back to me with comparable figures.

Most murders don’t involve killing strangers. Most murders involve people you know: your girlfriend, the neighbor you’re always arguing with, the family member that did you wrong, the kid down the street who is looking for drug money. These may be higher risk situations, but they’re less worrisome to us, because we feel like we understand and control the situation: I won’t argue with him when he’s drunk, I’ll make sure other neighbors are around when I talk to the jerk, I’ll get the family to help me with Joe, I’ll call the kid’s parents and suggest they get him in treatment for his addiction.

But the random psychotic person is a tough question. How was I (a person who just got off a bus) supposed to protect myself if the crazy guy next to me had attacked me?

The response from the scientific community seems to be, “It’s not very likely to happen, so you just don’t need to worry about it.”

Well, it’s true that it’s not very likely to happen in general. But would you have been happy giving that advice to Tim McLean? Could you have stood up at his funeral nine days ago and said, “Well, these things really don’t happen often enough for people to worry about them”?

However, my point was more that taking the numbers at face value the way that the media completely ignored a potentially interesting story (and I don’t believe that they have done so because they are waiting for the results of the normalisation analysis before drawing conclusions).

The murder rate by normal people has tripled to 2 in 100,000, over 1,000 murders in the UK per year. Only 20 murders in the last year were by people with serious mental issues.

So yes the chances are that if you are going to be murdered it’s not going to be bu someone with a serious mental illness. Not really too much of a shock there.

However surely the more important question is whether someone with serious mental problems poses a greater risk to the population than a “normal” person. There is no way of knowing that based on the numbers you gave.
You never give the murder rate for people with mental issues only the total number, without that the numbers fairly meaningless.

Also you don’t indicate if there is any control in those numbers to allow for changing definitions of “serious mental issues”. This is total speculation on my part but I’d guess that the definition has changed a little since the 50’s for both medical and political reasons. If the proportion of the population within the group changes then you would expect to see a change in the number of murders which doesn’t match the population growth.

Although S=said mental health professionals probably use a much more politically-correct term than “the mentally ill”.

I’d also like to thank Ben Goldacre for his talk to the IGMM PODS society in Edinburgh. I’ve been a fan of the Bad Science column and this blog for a while, and it was good to hear you speak in person.