athy” is entirely bogus. The study found an interesting difference in the ways that teens processed information, but the difference did not demonstrate that teens are less empathic than adults.
Yet major news organizations--including WebMD, MSNBC and CBS--printed the distortions on their websites. And it wouldn’t have happened if reporters had waited to read the study—or simply asked some pertinent questions.
The “teen brains lack empathy” story is a rather extreme case. But there are plenty of other examples of research that gets the wrong spin.
Recently, I saw headlines proclaiming that “TV causes learning lag in infants.” In reality, the research in question suggested that babies develop better language skills when they get lots of conversation time with adults. To the degree that TV time displaces conversation time, it hurts baby language development. There may be lots of reasons to restrict TV time for young children. But these studies didn’t find that TV is intrinsically damaging to language development.
misleading headlines about TV diverted the public’s attention from the
real story--that parents who care about language development should make
time to really engage their babies in frequent, meaningful
conversations. For more information,
see this analysis of the research on baby language development, conversation time, and TV.
Of course, the problem isn’t limited to research about kids.
Misleading press releases about medical research
In 2009, Steven Woloshin and colleagues examined press releases from 20 different academic medical centers.
The findings are disturbing. Of the 200 press releases randomly selected for analysis
• 19 presented unpublished results, but only one of these stories cautioned the reader that the research was unpublished
• 53 reported on correlational studies (e.g., “x is linked with y”), but only 6 of the releases included a caution about possible confounding variables
• 6 press releases reported on uncontrolled studies, but only one included a caution about the lack of controls
• 195 press releases included a direct quote from the investigator, but in many cases (51 press releases) the quote was “overly enthusiastic” about the study’s implications
Overall, about 30% of the press releases overstated the validity or scientific importance of the original research.
You might wonder if these results reflect a skewed sample. But Woloshin and colleagues limited their study to press releases from institutions that made the top 52 (of 125) rankings in U.S. News and World Reports. As a result, they suspect their findings represent a “best case scenario” (Woloshin et al 2009).
What we can do
Clearly, the people who tell us about science need to be more cautious.
• Press officers need to be more selective and critical of the research they promote.
• Researchers need to be more circumspect about what they say to the press.
• Journalists need to do their jobs, and not simply pass along information without checking the facts.
But readers have to be critical, too. In general, you should be skeptical about any science that is presented as “breaking news” in the popular press. Real analysis—by researchers and by journalists--takes time.
More information about the development of empathy
Want to know the real (evidence-based) story about empathy? Check out
these articles, which feature my analysis of the published research:
• Empathy and the brain
• The empathy gap: Why people have trouble anticipating how they--or someone else--will feel in the future
• The case for teaching empathy and empathic concern
• Tips for teaching empathy
Blakemore S-J, den Ouden H, Choudhury S, and Frith C. 2007. Adolescent developments of the neural circuitry for thinking about intentions. SCAN 2: 130-139.
Burnett S and Blakemore S-J. 2009. The development of adolescent social cognition. Ann NY Acad Sci 1167: 51-56.
Woloshin S and Schwartz LM. 2002. Press releases: Translating research into news. JAMA 287(21):2856-8.
Woloshin S, Schwartz LM, Casella SL, Kennedy AT, Larson RJ. 2009. Press releases by academic medical centers: not 