More inadvertent embargo breaks at AHA, this time of JAMA studies, again not by journalists

Yesterday, the American Heart Association (AHA), whose annual meeting is going on in Los Angeles this week, had to lift an embargo early after they broke it themselves — or at least the vendor they hired did. Today, JAMA, which is publishing several studies coinciding with AHA presentations, had to do the same for two studies originally embargoed until tomorrow.

From an email sent out this afternoon:

A shot in the embargo: In which I politely call bullshit on the journal Pediatrics

NPR’s Shots blog — full disclosure, the guy who runs it is a good friend of mine — has a smart post up today about how embargoes, in the hands of stubborn journals who want media coverage, can be bad for the public health.

Reporter David Schultz writes that in an October 31st post pegged to a New England Journal of Medicine study about a mumps outbreak in New York, he wanted to include a study appearing this week in the journal Pediatrics, embargoed for first thing Monday morning of this week:

FREEDOM! AHA lifts embargo on bypass vs. stent study after its vendor breaks it

The American Heart Association (AHA) has lifted the embargo early on a study being presented at their annual meeting in Los Angeles after their own vendor accidentally sent out a release early.

From an email that went out at 7:46 p.m. Eastern tonight — just 12 minutes before the scheduled lift:

NEJM clarifies: Yes, saying journal is about to publish is breaking an embargo

If someone who has agreed to an embargo policy publishes a story about a paper that’s still under embargo — or tweets specifics about it — it’s hard to argue that’s anything other than a break. But what if said person just says something’s about to published?

The answer, from an email about embargoed material from the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) today (bolding was NEJM’s):

Take that, Ingelfinger! eLife announces its media policy, sans embargoes and Ingelfinger

eLife, the new open-access journal funded by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Max Planck Society, and the Wellcome Trust, announced its media policy earlier this week. (I was hoping to jump on this Monday, but despite being remarkably unaffected personally by Hurricane Sandy in midtown Manhattan, there were of course other considerations this week involving my family, my Reuters Health staff, and others — many of whom are still coping with the effects of the storm.)

The short version of this post: I love this policy.

From the policy’s preamble:

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:

Quote my report, but don’t quote me: Why don’t some biotech analysts give interviews?

Today, I’m pleased to offer a guest post by Kathleen Raven — @sci2mrow on Twitter — an up-and-coming science writer and recent graduate of the University of Georgia, where she earned a graduate degree in conservation ecology and is scheduled to complete one health and medical journalism in May 2013. A freelancer, Raven just completed an internship at Nature Medicine. While working on a piece for the journal, she had a vexing experience that gave rise to this post.

Kathleen Raven

In July, an Associated Press story—posted on Bloomberg/Businessweek—quoted a research report written by pharmaceutical analyst Jeffrey Holford at Jefferies & Co., who predicted that Eli Lilly’s Alzheimer’s drug would fail in its late-stage trials before the company released the final results. (It did.) So this summer, while I was reporting a quick Nature Medicine story about the Indianapolis-based drug giant’s five recent phase 3 trial failures, I wanted to get Holford’s take.

I called the investment company’s New York office as a member of the media and was promptly given Holford’s phone number. I dialed and Holford picked up: