457: Small Cell Studies: Superior Scoops

Published: June 28, 2021, 5 a.m.

This episode: Newspapers report on scientific studies about microbiomes a fair amount, but certain kinds of studies are more likely than others to show up in the news!

Download Episode (5.7 MB, 8.3 minutes)

Show notes:
Microbe of the episode: Cafeteriavirus-dependent mavirus

 
Takeaways
Research into the human microbiome has generated a lot of interest, even among non-scientists. This is especially true since the beginning of the Human Microbiome Project in 2007. But sometimes things are lost in translation from published studies into general news.
 
This study is a survey of microbiome studies reported in six different news sources from three different countries, either general news or business news. General news did a better job reporting on different kinds of microbiome studies proportionally, but certain kinds of studies were reported on proportionally more or less frequently than they were published.
 
Journal Paper:
Prados-Bo A, Casino G. 2021. Microbiome research in general and business newspapers: How many microbiome articles are published and which study designs make the news the most? PLOS ONE 16:e0249835.

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