Twenty-year follow-up of promising clinical studies reported in highly circulated newspapers: a meta-epidemiological study

Abstract

Objectives Researchers have identified cases in which newspaper stories have exaggerated the results of medical studies reported in original articles. Moreover, the exaggeration sometimes begins with journal articles. We examined what proportion of the studies quoted in newspaper stories were confirmed.Methods We identified newspaper stories from 2000 that mentioned the effectiveness of certain treatments or preventions based on original studies from 40 main medical journals. We searched for subsequent studies until June 2022 with the same topic and stronger research design than each original study. The results of the original studies were verified by comparison with those of subsequent studies.Results We identified 164 original articles from 1298 newspaper stories and randomly selected 100 of them. Four studies were not found to be effective in terms of the primary outcome, and 18 had no subsequent studies. Of the remaining studies, the proportion of confirmed studies was 68.6% (95% CI 58.1% to 77.5%). Among the 59 confirmed studies, 13 of 16 studies were considered to have been replicated in terms of effect size. However, the results of the remaining 43 studies were not comparable.Discussion In the dichotomous judgement of effectiveness, about two-thirds of the results were nominally confirmed by subsequent studies. However, for most confirmed results, it was impossible to determine whether the effect sizes were stable.Conclusions Newspaper readers should be aware that some claims made by high-quality newspapers based on high-profile journal articles may be overturned by subsequent studies within the next 20 years.