Harvard hospital apologizes for promoting “weak” data on aspartame, cancer

Earlier this week, Brigham & Women’s Hospital sent out a press released titled, “The truth isn’t sweet when it comes to artificial sweeteners.” It’s the kind of release that was likely to grab lots of reporters’ attention.

But today, the hospital did something familiar during political season: They walked back that press release, apologizing for having sent it out.

Apparently, this was skeptical journalism in action. As NBC News’ Robert Bazell writes:

Confusion as JNCI yanks press release on embargoed breast density-cancer study after authors see error

An unusual note went out to reporters on the Journal of the National Cancer Institute (JNCI) press list yesterday:

Please disregard this MTM, which was sent out on Friday June 29, 2012.  The data in the study changed so we are no longer putting out a press release for the study.

The original release was headlined:

Percent Density May Be As Strong a Risk Factor as Variation in Breast Density for Breast Cancer

MTM stands for “memo to the media.” What wasn’t clear was whether the new notice meant the release was being pulled back, or the study itself, but the JNCI press office said it was just the release.

But the Mayo Clinic’s Celine Vachon told Embargo Watch:

ASCO lifts embargo early on study of breast cancer drug T-DM1 after break

In what has become an annual ritual, the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) meeting now underway in Chicago has been the subject of an embargo break. From a message sent by ASCO last night to reporters:

USPSTF takes another tack on announcing screening guidelines, this time on cervical cancer

Here’s an announcement from this week that marks an unusual move by a government-backed group that offers guidelines on various tests:

The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) will publish its final recommendations on screening for cervical cancer in the Annals of Internal Medicine and on their website on Wednesday, March 14th.

This announcement is currently public information.

The announcement then details how reporters can obtain embargoed copies of a USPSTF press release on the new guidelines, and the recommendations themselves.

I won’t be breaking the embargo by saying that this involves — wait for it — women. And the USPSTF published a draft version of the guidelines for public comment in October.

That move, however

AACR lifts diet-breast cancer study embargo early after MSNBC break

The American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) lifted the embargo early yesterday on a study of diet and breast cancer after MSNBC ran a story ahead of schedule. From the AACR press office:

The embargo on the Dr. Michelle Harvie study, “Intermittent, Low-Carbohydrate Diets More Successful Than Standard Dieting, Present Possible Intervention for Breast Cancer Prevention,” originally scheduled for 5 p.m. CT today has been lifted due to an embargo break by MSNBC this morning. All reporters are free to release their stories at this time.

Dr. Harvie is scheduled to present this study in a poster presentation at the 2011 CTRC-AACR San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium today at 5 p.m. CT.

I contacted the AACR to ask whether MSNBC would face any sanctions, but haven’t heard back.

One wonders if they will face the kind of sanctions another news outlet faced when they broke a Microsoft embargo earlier this week.

Elsevier obstetrics-gynecology journal “stunned” to learn embargoed cervical cancer screening study is already online

One of the services we offer readers at my day job as executive editor of  Reuters Health is links, whenever available, to our primary sources. We were doing it before Ben Goldacre asked why journalists don’t link to studies, but if you want to know why we do, read his column.

Many of the studies we cover are never embargoed. (Imagine that: I run a health news service that doesn’t rely solely on embargoed material.) So as per our practice, when a member of our staff was working on a story about excess cervical cancer screening from the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology (AJOG) embargoed for a minute after midnight this morning, she tried to find a digital object identifier (DOI) she could include in the piece. Turns out it was right in the press release:

The article is “Human papillomavirus and Papanicolaou tests screening interval recommendations in the United States” by Katherine B. Roland, MPH; Ashwini Soman, MBBS, MPH; Vicki B. Benard, PhD; Mona Saraiya, MD, MPH (doi: 10.1016/j.ajog.2011.06.001). It will appear in the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology, Volume 205, Issue 5 (November 2011) published by Elsevier.

She went to the DOI, to see if it said it would be live at a later date, or gave us an error, so we could decide what to put in the story. Then she had a surprise.

Bloomberg breaks AACR embargo on basal cell cancer study

From the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) this morning:

Due to an embargo break by Bloomberg News, the embargo on the paper “New Inhibitor Prevented Lesions, Reduced Tumor Size in Basal Cell Cancer,” (view the abstract) which had been previously set at 10:00 a.m. on Saturday April 2, 2011, is released. Reporters and editors planning to do the story can release their items at this time.

The study is being released at the AACR’s meeting in Orlando, which starts tomorrow.

Trade mag and blog break coffee-head and neck cancer study embargo

Minutes after I posted that I was putting Embargo Watch under embargo until June 30, we got this notice from the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR):

The embargo has been lifted on the AACR press release: “Coffee May Protect Against Head and Neck Cancers,” due to a violation by Drug Discovery and Development and the Sci-Tech Heretic blog. Reporters may post their stories effective immediately.

CNN breaks embargo on stress and breast cancer study in Clinical Cancer Research

The embargo should be lifting in two minutes, at 1 p.m. Eastern, on a study in Clinical Cancer Research which found that lowering stress among women with breast cancer was linked to better outcomes. But an item about the study went live on CNN’s Paging Dr. Gupta blog at 10 a.m. Eastern.

Jeff Grabmeier, director of research communications at Ohio State University, where the study’s lead researcher works, emailed me about the break a bit before noon. He said a local reporter had come across the CNN item. Jeff called the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), the journal’s publisher, and a press officer there told him that they’d contact CNN to see if they could take down the item.

Did Nick Kristof break an embargo on chemicals and cancer report?

The embargo has just lifted — at 12:01 a.m. Eastern, May 6 — on the President’s Cancer Panel’s new report, “Reducing Environmental Cancer Risk: What We Can Do Now.” You will probably be reading a lot about this report’s hard line on regulating chemicals in the coming days. You can start by reading Reuters’ version here.

But if you were one of Nick Kristof’s many loyal readers who checks for his new columns the night before they appear in print, you would have known about this report hours ago. Or at least two hours ago, when someone forwarded me a link to this column.  I’m not sure exactly what time it went up, but it was before 10 p.m. Eastern. Nick tweeted about it at 11:10 Eastern.

At least three possibilities, in order of what I find least to most likely: