Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Infodemiology
Date Submitted: Jul 28, 2023
Open Peer Review Period: Jul 27, 2023 - Sep 21, 2023
Date Accepted: Jul 15, 2024
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Descriptions of scientific evidence and uncertainty of unproven Covid-19 therapies in U.S. News
ABSTRACT
Background:
Politicization and mis(dis)information of unproven Covid-19 therapies has resulted in communication challenges in presenting science to the public, especially in times of heightened public trepidation and uncertainty.
Objective:
To examine how scientific evidence and uncertainty were portrayed during the Covid-19 pandemic prior to the development of proven therapeutics and vaccines on three specific unproven Covid-19 products of interest in the U.S. news media.
Methods:
We conducted a media analysis of unproven Covid-19 therapeutics in early 2020. A total of 479 discussions of unproven Covid-19 therapeutics (hydroxychloroquine, remdesivir, and convalescent plasma) in traditional and online U.S. news reports from January 1 to July 30, 2020 were systematically analyzed for theme, scientific evidence, evidence details and limitations, safety, efficacy, and sources of authority.
Results:
The majority of discussions included scientific evidence (67%) although only 24% mentioned publications. ‘Government’ was the most frequently named source of authority for safety and efficacy claims on remdesivir (35%) while ‘expert’ claims were mostly mentioned for convalescent plasma (38%). Most claims on hydroxychloroquine (79%) were offered by a ‘prominent person,’ of which 97% were from former U.S. President Trump. Despite the inclusion of scientific evidence, many claims of safety and efficacy were made by non-experts. Few news reports expressed scientific uncertainty in discussions of unproven Covid-19 therapeutics as limitations of evidence were infrequently included in the body of news reports (26%) and rarely found in headlines (2%) or lead paragraphs (9%) (P<.001).
Conclusions:
These results highlight multiple opportunities to improve science communication to the public surrounding novel therapeutics.
Citation
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Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.