PubMed is not for beginners... well, OK, maybe. Making sense of medical research.

Recently I've seen this image (from BasicBiologyBabe on Facebook) crop up a fair bit on 'skeptic Twitter' (of which I'm a member). We are the people who argue with those who claim that [X] can diagnose or cure [Y] despite no good evidence that it can. We also report misleading advertising to Advertising Standards Authority or Trading Standards etc and sometimes get claims removed and dodgy websites closed. As skeptic blogger Guy Chapman once put it we're at the intersection between science advocacy and consumer protection.

While I do try to be polite to people whose opinion differs from mine I find it pretty difficult not to be terse with people who are putting others' health at risk with their bad advice!

Transcript: "PUBMED IS NOT FOR BEGINNERS. Browsing abstracts on PubMed does not take the place of a university education in a scientific field. Experience and knowledge of context are essential to comprehension as well as reading the WHOLE GODDAMNED PAPER. Stop being dicks. - Scientists Everywhere [fb.com/BasicBiologyBabe]"

Clearly there's a big element of truth to this 'PubMed is not for beginners' idea,  but I'm not sure that this sort of advice will convince the people who might need to be convinced.

People who are promoting dangerous or ridiculous treatments or diagnostic tests (think antivaxxers, homeopathy shills, live blood analysis, tuning fork therapy etc) occasionally cherry-pick a PubMed abstract and promote the idea that it supports their favoured treatment or test. I've collected a few examples in this Storify, some are pretty funny but it's sad to think people are being so badly misled. They seem a lost cause to be honest ;)

But what about non-specialist people who have a health condition, or care for someone who does, who want to find out more? 

I'm hoping to go to an event on 'Communicating risk in health information' (London, Tue 26 Jan) which is for the subgroup of science communicator types who communicate health information. This is partly about helping non-specialist people to make sense of statistical information by helping those communicating it to express it more clearly.

A straightforward translation of 'science' to 'plain English' for an abstract (even for a whole article) will never be sufficient because an abstract or article cannot be read in isolation. Readers need to consider how it fits in with what's already known on a topic and also to know what conclusions can reasonably be drawn from a particular type of study design (how many people were involved, were they randomised etc) and just knowing lots about 'biology', for example, isn't enough. In fact it might give people a false impression of knowing / understanding.

A 2011/12 project, 'Patients Participate!', looked at ways in which patients could be more involved with health information providers (for example, medical research charities) and found that patients and the public wanted the following, which are all very reasonable -

• To find out about the latest medical research and how it relates to their health
• Accessible, plain English, searchable summaries of research articles that clearly communicate the implications and limitations of the research findings
• Information they can trust (credible, reliable and unbiased)
• To engage with researchers and research funders
• To be involved
• To learn more about research because theyare interested and they want to be better informed about the latest developments
• To help researchers be better communicators

It's hard enough to provide a dedicated abstract translation service, let alone one that takes all this into account and I don't think we've comprehensively solved that problem sustainably, though different health charities do this in their own ways.

Here's a comment I left under the picture on Facebook in response to people asking 'well OK, but where can we find this info then?' -

"Where possible I'd suggest, for medical articles, asking reputable health charities for their take on a study. Many of them have dedicated science communicators (of varying job titles) whose job it is to (a) explain the content of new studies AND (b) put it in context with other information known about the topic, as well as highlighting what conclusions can reasonably drawn from a particular study design etc.

There are certainly many efforts made to 'translate' scientific abstracts into plain English but by itself this might not be very useful, as there is usually a requirement for some background information needed, in order to know how much weight to give to some new finding."

 To which I'd add this patient-facing resource (there are other suggestions in this PDF (also linked above))

NHS Choices' Behind the Headlines - stories covered in the press might be spot on but often the end result can be that the study is a bit overhyped. The text of the newspaper article can be very good and clear, but let down by a dramatic headline. While we might all hope that everyone ignores the headline and reads the entire article I think we'd agree that's unlikely. Behind the Headlines considers the context of the story and explains the science for a non-specialist audience. It's fab.

Communicating Risk in Health Information (London) - Tues 26 Jan 2016

ZOMG this sounds amazing.

Copied and pasted from their event registration website (from which you can buy a ticket, £240 max, cheaper for members): http://www.pifonline.org.uk/pif/?ee=73

 

 

 

Communicating Risk in Health Information

We are delighted to announce that bookings are now open for the 'Communicating Risk in Health Information' event on Tuesday 26 January 2016, to be held in London.

Risks and statistics are an essential part of patient information.  What is a person’s risk of developing a particular condition in their lifetime, or of having a certain symptom? What is the chance of a treatment or procedure working? What are the risks of getting different side-effects? And can people change these risk factors?

However, many patients are unable to comprehend basic statistics, never mind navigate their way through the reams of data that may come with health information comparing treatment options. As information and support professionals, our job is to make sure we can guide patients through the minefield of data and figures to help them feel confident in making their own decisions.

This one day event will: look at the challenges many patients experience when trying to understand risk; hear from experts in the field of communicating risk; and share case studies from health information producers who have addressed this in their work.

Presentations will include:

• Health literacy and numeracy in the UK (Community Health & Leaning Foundation)
• How can we clearly communicate risk information? (David Spiegelhalter, Winton Professor for the Public Understanding of Risk in the Statistical Laboratory, Centre for Mathematical Sciences, University of Cambridge)
• Factors influencing the perception of side-effect risk information (Peter Gardner, Head of School of Psychology, University of Leeds)
• TBC Shared decision making and risk communication (Richard Thompson, Professor of Epidemiology & Public Health, Newcastle University)
• Best practice for clearly communicating risk (PiF, based on PiF Toolkit best practice)
• Using data visualisation to explain risks (Eluned Hughes, Breast Cancer Now)

The event will close with a practical group session that allows delegates to discuss the key challenges they face and how they can apply the findings or recommendations from the presentations in their work.
A full agenda is being developed and will be available here soon.

Through attending the event we hope delegates will develop:

• Increased awareness of numeracy and health literacy issues, and their impact on individuals’ everyday life
• Increased awareness of risk communication issues and impacts on individuals’ health and experiences of care
• Increased understanding of how to communicate risk clearly in health information
• Increased awareness of how other health information professionals and organisations approach communicating risk

This one day event costs £125+VAT to attend for PIF members (please login to the website before making your booking to receive the members rate), and £200+VAT for non-members.

We hope you can join us!

If you have any queries about this event please contact admin@pifonline.org.uk.

The PIF Team

[Free] Me, on Mondays - can I help your medical research charity?

Edit: 17 May 2013

Originally written in September 2012, but activated again as I have more Mondays free!
For the foreseeable future I have Mondays free as I work a four day week. But I rather miss being part of the medical research charity world and while I might like to take up paid employment in that world again at some point, at the moment I'm thinking more in terms of something voluntary.

Basically, if you're from a medical research charity in London and think that I might be able to help you or just bounce ideas around please get in touch. Just on Mondays though ;)

It's free, you don't have to pay me - I already have a job from Tue - Friday.

My areas of particular interest and reasonable competence are:

Science / health / medical communications
For example the ways in which charities talk / write about the research that they fund, but also they way they comment on health stories in the news and how they write information leaflets for people or carers.

Social media, mostly Twitter (not so much Facebook)
I've been using Twitter for four years and have dipped my toes in most of the online tools. However I've never used these to engage with large groups of people, or for fundraising purposes. But I have some ideas about how they can be used well.

Also I'm pretty good with computers in general, although I'm not sure how much use that would be.

Over the years a fair few people from other charities, and elsewhere, have got in touch for advice, info or feedback from me and I enjoy sharing ideas, and also hearing about how others do things.

Edit: 4 September 2012
Statistics! 
Can't believe I forgot that. I'm really quite good at finding data from a variety of sources and created this Diabetes Statistics site for myself and a couple of colleagues. In terms of mathematical wrangling and p-values... not that sort of statistics.


Edit: 14 May 2013
I've got a few more Mondays free for the foreseeable, except first week of June. I also like teaching people how to use computers / intranets and I'm really good at keyboard shortcuts :)

The deal

• You need to be registered with the Charity Commission and support people with a health condition and their carers. You don't have to fund medical research but those are my favourites.
• Probably best to email or tweet me first (see top bit of this blog) to see if I can actually be of any use - you might have very specific needs that I simply can't help with so best to check first and save time.
• Only on Mondays - and never before 10am ;) Needs to be in London obviously, although Skype's a possibility I suppose .
• It's free, and I already have a travelcard so don't need expenses, or lunch for that matter - tea always welcome though.
• If something interesting crops up I might blog about it but will run it past you of course!

So you want to be a medical research charity science communicator

Scope of this post
This is about people working in medical research charities or patient groups who communicate health information and / or results from clinical research. There are of course people who work in charities that use non-health scientific information (eg climate science, marine conservation etc) but that's not covered here.

Charity science or health communication covers quite a few different types of information as well as different audiences and different means of communication.

I'm going to be adding to this periodically - this is a 'stub' for now. Anyone who works as a charity science communicator is very welcome to add their own thoughts in comments or by email jo DOT brodie AT gmail DOT com - thanks. Also that email is good for anyone who has questions that I've not thought of that should be in this post.

Some examples
Someone might write an article for a charity's website or their magazine about a piece of research the charity has funded, putting it in context with previous research findings and what the results might mean for someone with a particular medical condition. Or they might give a talk on research that's being funded to companies or local support groups - to raise funds, to thank people for funds raised or just to raise awareness and keep people updated.

They might be required to do a literature search on a particular topic to help develop a policy statement, or for the organisation to contribute to NICE guidelines on treatment.

Some people will answer a wide range of science questions directly from the public on all matters relating to the condition and its treatment, drawing on published resources and databases.

They might fact check externally written articles, or any text that the charity wants to publish. Note that most text is edited in several ways - fact checking and sense-making, typos, and house-style - this might be done by the same person or different ones.

Putting together statistical information for use across the charity - snappy facts are often required when putting out a press release. Journalists writing for a local paper are naturally keen to put a local perspective on things.

What's required
I've collected several hundred job descriptions over the last three years or so and many of them are from charities.

I'm going to start putting them in some sort of order (by salary) here but in the meantime just use Google to search the database, using the site: advanced search.

For example, google for site:scicommjobs.posterous.com diabetes to find all jobs that mention diabetes (eg from Diabetes UK or JDRF etc).

The information in job descriptions and person specifications gives some indication of what employers expect. 

Where are jobs advertised?
Guardian Jobs / psci-com mailing list, sometimes on ABSW (Association of British Science Writers), Charity Comms (which provides all manner of comms jobs in the charity sector that include non scicomm jobs)...

But I don't have enough experience
This is a perennial problem of course and you may find that you have to do some other jobs before you can move into your dream charity scicomm job. Some suggestions 

In larger charities there will be more people doing these different roles but in smaller charities one person might take on more tasks.

Being able to explain complex information in a clear way is essential in any role and in a charity setting avoiding hype is also essential, as is being very careful not to give medical advice.

Alice Bell gives some good advice for anyone wanting to be a science communicator, in her post "Working in science communication" and one of those suggestions is to start a blog, which I'd wholeheartedly agree with. It's fun, you get to interact with a wide variety of people online, your views may well be challenged forcing you to reflect and you get the opportunity to write regularly on topics you're interested in. All of this happened too in my work at Diabetes UK and I think the discipline of having a blog and being part of the scicomm world helped me do my job better.

Who / what are the charities?
All UK charities must be registered with the Charity Commission. Some health charities don't fund research but still provide information to patients and advocacy and there's plenty of science communication going on there. Charities that do fund medical research may be members of the Association of Medical Research Charities, which has over 100 members - note that there are very relevant charities that aren't members of the AMRC.

I've been collecting a list of suitable charities here (and some here) but the merest google will of course find many more.

• Action Medical Research • Vacancies
• Action on Addiction • Jobs 
• Action on Hearing Loss (see RNID below; this is their new name)
• Age UK (formerly Research Into Ageing) • Work for us
• Alcohol Education and Research Council, The • None (very small charity)
• Alzheimer's Research UK • Careers (formerly Alzheimer’s Research Trust)
• Alzheimer's Society • Job vacancies
• Arthritis Research UK (Chesterfield) • Work for us
• Association for International Cancer Research • Vacancies
• Association for Spina Bifida and Hydrocephalus • Recruitment
• Asthma UK • Jobs
• Ataxia UK • Jobs
• Ataxia-Telangiectasia Society • Couldn't find
• Autistica • Jobs / Recruitment
• BackCare • Vacancies
• Bardhan Research and Education Trust of Rotherham
  Email >> bardhanresearch@tiscali.co.uk
• Beit Memorial Fellowships for Medical Research • Couldn't find
• Blackie Foundation Trust, The • it's a homeopathy research charity so probably not much science to be communicated
• Blond McIndoe Research Foundation, The • Current Vacancies
• Brain Research Trust • Vacancies
• Breakthrough Breast Cancer • Jobs
• Breast Cancer Campaign • Jobs
• See also 'Breast Cancer Care' below (not AMRC charity)
• British Council for Prevention of Blindness • Didn't find
• British Heart Foundation • Vacancies menu
• British Liver Trust • Vacancies
• British Lung Foundation • Working for the BLF 
• British Neurological Research Trust, The • did not find, see also
• British Occupational Health Research Foundation • did not find
• British Orthopaedic Association
• British Pain Society, The • did not find
• British Retinitis Pigmentosa Society • Work for us
  Unusually this website includes a small list containing useful info about previously filled posts!
• British Scoliosis Research Foundation • did not find, but note that there are two websites to search on that page as two charities have combined.
• British Sjögren's Syndrome Association • did not find
• British Skin Foundation • did not find
• Bupa Foundation • did not find
• Cancer Research UK • Jobs 
• CFS Research Foundation • Didn't find
• Chest, Heart and Stroke Scotland • Jobs (in Scotland)
• Children with Cancer UK (formerly Children with Leukaemia) • Job opportunities
• See also 'Leukaemia & Lymphoma Research' below (not an AMRC charity)
• Children's Liver Disease Foundation • Jobs
• Chronic Disease Research Foundation • Didn't find
• Chronic Granulomatous Disorder Research Trust • Didn't find but see... Who we are
• Circulation Foundation • Couldn't find
• See also 'Coeliac UK' below (not an AMRC charity)
• Core (The Digestive Disorders Foundation) • Couldn't find
• Crohn's & Colitis UK • Jobs
• Crohn's in Childhood Research Association •
• Cystic Fibrosis Trust • Vacancies
• Deafness Research UK • Vacancies
• See also 'NDCS' (National Deaf Children's Society?) below - not an AMRC charity
• DebRA • Jobs & Vacancies
• Diabetes Research & Wellness Foundation • Working at DRWF
• Diabetes UK • Jobs
• Dunhill Medical Trust • Couldn't find
• EMF Biological Research Trust • Couldn't find
• Epilepsy Action • Vacancies
• Epilepsy Research UK (incorporating Epilepsy Research Foundation and Fund for Epilepsy) • Job vacancies
• Fight for Sight • Jobs/Job opportunities
• Foundation for Liver Research • http://www.liver-research.org.uk/jobopportunities/rs6jd.html possibly a jobs board rather than a vacancies page
• Foundation for the Study of Infant Deaths • Jobs
• Furlong Research Charitable Foundation
• Great Ormond Street Hospital Children's Charity
• Guy's and St Thomas' Charity • Couldn't find
• Healing Foundation • Didn't find (but did find staff page)
• Heart Research UK (formerly National Heart Research Fund) • Jobs / join our team
• Huntington's Disease Association • Couldn't find
• Hypertension Trust • Couldn't find
• Inspire Foundation • Didn't find, not based in London
• International Spinal Research Trust • Did not find
• Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation • Job vacancies
• Kidney Research UK • Careers
• Kids Kidney Research • None (volunteers only)
• Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine • Couldn't find
• Little Foundation • Couldn't find
• Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research • Employment
• See also 'Leukaemia & Lymphoma Research' below (not an AMRC charity)
• Marie Curie Cancer Care • Jobs
• Mason Medical Research Foundation Email >> stuart.robb@bakertilly.co.uk
• Medical Research Scotland (formally Scottish Hospital Endowments Research Trust)
• Meningitis Research Foundation • Job opportunities
• Meningitis Trust • Jobs/Vacancies
• Meningitis UK (registered as Spencer Dayman Meningitis UK) • Working for us/Vacancies
• Migraine Trust • Did not find
• Motor Neurone Disease Association MNDA • Job vacancies
• Multiple Sclerosis Society of Great Britain and Northern Ireland • Jobs
• Muscular Dystrophy Campaign • Jobs
• Myeloma UK • Employment opportunities
• National Association for Colitis & Crohn's Disease • Jobs
• National Eye Research Centre • Did not find
• National Osteoporosis Society • Vacancies
• Neuro-Disability Research Trust • Job opportunities
• Neurosciences Research Foundation • Did not find
• North West Cancer Research Fund • Did not find
• Northern Ireland Chest, Heart and Stroke Association • Jobs
• Northern Ireland Leukaemia Research Fund • Did not find
• Novo Nordisk UK Research Foundation • Did not find
• Nuffield Foundation • Jobs
• Ovarian Cancer Action • Did not find
• Pancreatic Cancer UK • not found yet
• Parkinson's UK • Current vacancies (formerly Parkinson's Disease Society)
• PBC Foundation (UK) Ltd, The •
• Pelican Cancer Foundation, The •
• Pharmacy Practice Research Trust •
• Primary Immunodeficiency Association • did not find
• Progressive Supranuclear Palsy Association, The • Vacancies
• Prostate Action • Work for us
• Prostate Cancer Charity, The • Vacancies and general Working for us
• Prostate Cancer Research Foundation • Work for us <-- now Prostate Action (merged with Prostate UK)
• Psoriasis Association, The • Email mail@psoriasis-association.org.uk
• RAFT - The Restoration of Appearance and Function Trust • Staff vacancies
• Remedi • did not find
• Research into Ageing • did not find <-- now known as Age UK
• Restore - Burn and Wound Research
• RNID • Work with us and Current Vacancies
• Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation, The • Working with us / Current vacancies
• Royal College of Surgeons of England • Working at the College
• Samantha Dickson Brain Tumour Trust •
• Sir Jules Thorn Charitable Trust • did not find
• Society for Endocrinology •
• South West Thames Kidney Fund •
• SPARKS - The Children’s Medical Research Charity • Vacancies
• St Peter's Trust for Kidney, Bladder & Prostate Research •
• Stroke Association, The • Jobs
• Tenovus • Current vacancies
• Tommy's The Baby Charity • Working for Tommy's / New positions
• Tuberous Sclerosis Association • Did not find, try Contact us
• Ulster Cancer Foundation • Job vacancies
• Wellbeing of Women • Email: wellbeingofwomen@rcog.org.uk
• WellChild (Registered as The WellChild Trust) • Job vacancies
• Wellcome Trust, The • Jobs and e-recruitment (see also Sanger Institute)
• Wessex Medical Research • Didn't spot vacancies page.
• William Harvey Research Foundation • Email: main-contact@whrf.org.uk
• World Cancer Research Fund • Jobs info - current vacancies
• Yorkshire Cancer Research • Work for us / Job opportunities

Non-AMRC charities

• Addaction • Work for us
• Arthritis Care • Current vacancies
• Breast Cancer Care • Jobs • 
• Coeliac UK • Vacancies • See also Working for Coeliac UK
• CRY (Cardiac Risk in the Young) • haven't found vacancies page, but they do list who's working for them and their job title, which is amazing.
• Eve Appeal (Gynaecological Cancer Research)
• Genetic Alliance • Vacancies
• Leukaemia & Lymphoma Research aka Beating Blood Cancers • Jobs
• Linc (Leukaemia & Intensive Chemotherapy Fund, Cheltenham) • did not find
• ME Association •
• MEND (London, obesity) • Work with us
• National Autistic Society • Jobs
• The Neurological Society • Our vacancies
• NDCS (National Deaf Children's Society) • Jobs
• Pancreatic Cancer Research Fund
• Pituary Foundation •
• RNIB • Jobs / Current vacancies
• MPS (Society for Mucopolysaccharide Diseases)
• Understanding Animal Research • Current vacancies

Further reading
Becoming a science communicator - general advice from the British Science Association

Healthy Journalism: challenges and solutions - seminar from Patient Information Forum, at Wellcome Trust

On Tuesday (20 April 2010) I went to the Healthy Journalism event from the Patient Information Forum (PiF), hosted at the Wellcome Trust. There were delicious cheese straws. On Wednesday I started writing this post on the little Notes app that comes bundled with iPhone, and then emailed it to myself. It's rather useful but my touch typing on iPhone isn't as accurate
as on a full sized keyboard so the fiddly bit is in rectifying the typos, apologies if some are missed.

-------------
Seminar - Healthy Journalism: challenges and solutions
20 April 2010, 6pm, Wellcome Trust, London.

* Understand the challenges facing healthcare journalists
* Gain deeper understanding of what constitutes evidence
* Identify ways to avoid misreporting
* Meet up to share and learn from each other’s experiences

Sessions include:
* Making healthcare reporting more accurate - Jacqui Thornton, Former Health Editor, The Sun
* How scientists can help journalists- Ginny Barbour, Chief Editor PLoS Medicine, Public Library of Science
* Evidence: understanding it and reporting it - Andrew Booth, Head of Information Services at the School of Health and Related Research (ScHARR), University of Sheffield
-------------

The Patient Information Forum, or PiF, is an organisation that isn't actually public facing. It works with organisations (thinking about it now, I suppose it's like one of those 'business to business' orgs) which produce their own consumer information in a health context. That can include pharmaceutical companies producing Patient Information Leaflets (PILs), the NHS which produces great quantities of patient info, and medical charities / patient groups which focus on particular conditions.

About PiF
http://www.pifonline.org.uk/about-pif/

• Do you produce information for patients and the public about their health?
• Do you want to keep up to date with new developments in this area, develop your skills and feel supported in your work?
• Is your organisation passionate about the benefits of high quality health information for everyone?
• Then the Patient Information Forum (PiF) is your organisation.

We were a nicely mixed bag of folk: journalists & freelancers (possibly even some bloggers?), press officers, researchers, people like me from medical research charities who answer public queries etc.

Our task was to look for solutions to the perceived problem that health information, for example how risk of developing a condition or appropriateness of spending money on a drug, isn't always presented in the news media in the most appropriate way. But mostly it was to find a bit of 'common ground', hear others' perspectives and generally try a bit of engagement.

Having an interest in this sort of thing, and an obvious bias - I notice the bad stories more because they generate the calls and emails - I was pleased to get a place.

Firstly, some observations of my own. Often a story is perfectly clearly written but the headline lets it down. Or there's a throwaway brief para which contains an otherwise minor error but in context gives the wrong impression. I don't think that view is going to startle anyone.

What you *might* be less aware of is how wrongly people can apprehend, or remember, a story they've read in the newspapers - although if you think about it, not really that much of a surprise. Probably someone's done some research on this but I confess I am ignorant of it.

People have rung in wanting to know about something they read "last month in the papers", only for me to find that it was actually *months* ago, my record for the longest gap is three and a half years. Memories - not so reliable.

Even where the article is recent, and clear, I've found that some people just get the wrong end of the stick - they seem to misread the article or see something that isn't there. Clearly newspapers and journalists can't be blamed for everything.

Others have written very well on some of the minor and the more serious challenges facing science journalism, looking at 'internal' faults, 'systemic' faults (and the relationship between the two) and outside pressures.

The format was a series of presentations followed by being split into discussion groups - where I had an opportunity to mention these thoughts and hear from others.

Quite a lot of interesting info was generated in this discussion and I'm glad someone else was 'scribing' it for us. Then we returned to our seats, and it was in this interval that we discovered the cheese straws so the second half was slightly munchier than the first.

I'm not going to write about the individual presentations because (a) I think PiF are going to report on them anyway and (b) I've not written them up yet, but I might in future.

In summing up Mark Duman said he felt we'd all raised plenty of issues and problems, but not so much by way of solutions, but this is what he considered to be the key points for consideration and addressing.

1. Quality of press releases
This is where scientists and press offices can make sure that stories are not presented misleadingly at source, avoiding claiming more for the evidence than is warranted. For every example of dodgy reporting it seems there's an example of a dodgy press release.

2. Science training for journalists
This refers to money (possibly) being made available to train new journalists in how science works, following Fiona Fox's report (one of several reports arising from BIS's investigatiin of science and society). There's also the possibility of science training for current journalists but I think it was determined that this might be met with low enthusiasm - it's potentially a bit insulting but few who are on a busy news desk have the luxury of time to get involved with Continuing Professional Development.

3. Self-policing
The example was given of the PMCPA which monitors pharmaceutical companies' infractions of the ABPI code. This sets pharmaceutical company agsinst pharmaceutical company as they try to do each other over, for being a bit naughty in their advertising etc. Doctors can make complaints about pharma reps and advertising too. Ought papers to snitch on one another
when they spot mistakes? Do they do this? Seems a bit unworkable to me.

4. Develop a relationship - take them to lunch
This one is aimed at press folk in charities - make sure you're developing your working relationships with journalists; be available. Having never worked in a press office I've no idea what goes on so can't comment usefully here.

5. Assisting the public in critical appeaisal
This one is probably the most 'deficit model' of the lot, but I'd always thought the deficit model was more about the mistaken belief that if people know more about, or understand, science better then they will like and support it more. In the case of critical appraisal I can't help thinking that this would be a useful skill for more people and I wouldn't bleat too
much if this was implemented.

Suggestions included charities' websites having information on things to watch out for (I'm a fan of this and mentioned Cancer Research UK's ace science blog which does have a section on this) such as 'be wary when you see the word 'cure'. As a corollary there was also the suggestion that journalists might have a list of words to avoid, similar to the highly amusing list of words and phrases local government is not supposed to use when presenting info to the public, including wise avoidance of the phrase 'predictors of beaconicity'. I don't think forbidding words will help and I think 'cure' has a place in discussions on how a therapycould develop, but context is everything.

6. Encourage feedback
If you spot a good article, say so. If you see something less good, say so too. The first presentation, by a journalist, also raised this as being useful. If you're disappointed that an article gives too much weight to one side etc you may find that the journalist who wrote it is on your side and found themselves saying the same thing to their editor, who overruled them.

Your complaint might be a little ammunition against this in future.

7. Asking for links to primary sources - build a demand
There's already been some online discussion on the benefits of linking to primary sources, but it may not get very far if people don't keep up the support for this. It's good if people can check the story behind the story themselves, and if the story is very speculative and hasn't actually been published anywhere then this can be useful info (a 'primary source unavailable' sort of thing).

Living in Blackheath, and loathing the underground, I generally scarper sharpish once evening events finish so I didn't do much in the way of networking but it was nice to see old pals (@ayasawada) and meet new ones (Jen).