Phrasing something a different way can flip its apparent meaning. Here’s an example. A press release begins by saying this: “Adults over 50 who sleep for five hours or less per night have a greater risk of developing more than one chronic disease…” Now re-phrase that — in a way that is equally true — […]
We are eager to see the press release (if there is one) that heralds this research study: “Exaggerations and Caveats in Press Releases and Health-Related Science News,” Petroc Sumner, Solveiga Vivian-Griffiths, Jacky Boivin, Andrew Williams, Lewis Bott, Rachel Adams, Christos A. Venetis, Leanne Whelan, Bethan Hughes, and Christopher D. Chambers, PLoS One, vol. 11, no. 12, […]
Here is the verbatim text of the OUTSTANDING PRESS RELEASE of the Year: Date: Thursday, February 1, 2018 at 9:41:29 AM Pacific Standard Time From: Michelle Thompson Boston’s beloved facial injector, Dr. Onir Spiegel, was the only doctor in Massachusetts named as RealSelf’s “Most Loved Injector Award for 2017.” RealSelf received over 20,000 nominations nationwide, and […]
The OUTSTANDING PRESS RELEASE of the Year will be announced at the Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), in the special Improbable Research session. WHERE: Hilton Austin Hotel, Austin, Texas — in Salon H. WHEN: Saturday night, February 17, 2018, 8:00 pm. Selected by the Committee of Reporters who Receive […]
This week’s Impressively-Complicated-Chain-of-Logic Press Release of the Week implies that playing video games might cause Alzheimer’s disease. Or, more precisely, it says that no one has ruled out the possibility that playing video games causes or might cause Alzheimer’s disease. It’s complicated. McGill University issued the press release, which says: “For more than a decade now, […]
This week’s Expert Logic Puzzle is simple. How many leaps of faith are necessary to make a sturdy chain of logic that ties together the parts of a single press release? Count the number of logic assumptions in the text of the press release [to see the entire press release, click on the link]. Start point of the chain […]
This week’s PRESS RELEASE HEADLINE OF THE WEEK is: Can HIV Be Transmitted Via Manicure Instruments? The headline gleams atop a press release from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., Publishers, dated November 10, 2014. The meat of the press release, the lead sentence of its culminating paragraph, is: Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers is a privately held, fully integrated […]
This week’s Press Release Headline of the Week is from a press release pumped out for the American Journal of Human Biology: Beauty & Bacteria: Slim, Attractive Men Have Less Nasal Bacteria than Heavy Men (Thanks to investigator Erwin Kompanje for bringing this to our attention.) BONUS: For students with a strong mental stomach: Read […]
This week’s Press Release of the Week was released into the wild by Leiden University. Here are its headline and highlights: Reduced cognitive control in passionate lovers People who are in love are less able to focus and to perform tasks that require attention. Researcher Henk van Steenbergen [pictured here] concludes this, together with colleagues […]
Heads turn when they see the phrase “Contact: Mary-Ann Twist” on a press release, because the minds in the brains in many of those heads know there’s a good chance the press release heralds a new discovery reported in the pages of The Journal of Consumer Research. Mary-Ann Twist is managing editor of same. Here […]