Snafus at Stanford for a Stephen and a Steven on the Lemelson-MIT Prize embargo

A statue at Stanford, photo by Dave Kleinschmidt via Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/dklein/

When an Embargo Watch tipster sent this updated Stanford University press release yesterday, he topped it with a Reuters story that seemed to have broken an embargo Sunday on an award announcement embargoed until Monday:

EMBARGO BROKEN, NEW VERSION: STANFORD BIOENGINEER STEPHEN QUAKE WINS $500,000 LEMELSON-MIT PRIZE

NOTE TO MEDIA: The previous embargo was inadvertently broken and no longer applies. Below is an updated version of the release with comment from Nobel laureate and U.S. Secretary of Energy Stephen Chu.

The email made me grimace, since it’s not fun to see a colleague break an embargo, even inadvertently — plus it’s tricky to cover such situations on Embargo Watch.

But something didn’t smell right.

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:

Daily Telegraph reporter loses access to JAMA and Archives journals after breaking embargo on preemies-mental illness study

Following a break by the Daily Telegraph, the Archives of General Psychiatry, a member of the JAMA family of journals, has lifted the embargo early on a study of whether premature infants are more likely to develop mental illness. From a note to the JAMA/Archives press list this morning: