by
(? 1997 Robert Finn)
(Issue 2; posted February 20 1997; archived March 6)
The embargo has to be the most curiously counterintuitive convention of science journalism. An embargo is an agreement among journalists, scientists, journal editors, and institutional public relations people in which the journalists agree not to publish or broadcast a story until a designated time in return for advance notice from the others on important science stories.
In my callow youth, influenced by Clark Kent, Perry White, and the characters in "The Front Page," - not to mention the real-life journalists Woodward and Bernstein of Watergate fame - I assumed that all journalism was a rush for the scoop, a mad dash to beat the competition to the story. Imagine my surprise when I realized that virtually all journalists - the ones on the science beat, anyway - are perfectly willing to sit on a hot story for a week or more, all poised to publish it in unison.
Watch the evening news on Tuesdays: You'll almost always see a story based on a new finding published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Look in your morning paper on Fridays: You'll almost always see articles based on that week's Science. The reason is the embargo. Editors of the top journals, including JAMA, Science, Nature, the New England Journal of Medicine, Cell, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, allow reliable journalists to see tables of contents, abstracts, and often even entire articles, about a week before the journals hit the street. But they set a specific embargo day and time before which the news must not be printed or broadcast.
Journalists love embargoes. They get a week to research and write their stories, to interview the authors of the journal articles and other scientists in the field, and to produce more thoughtful, more accurate articles. And they get to do this without having to worry that their editors are going to come stomping up red-faced, shaking a copy of the competitor's paper and hollering, "Why aren't we out with this story yet?"
Journal editors love embargoes too, because they keep their journals in the news. Reporters are usually very busy, and sometimes very lazy. They often don't have the time or the initiative to dig out unique stories. It's easy to get spoiled and used to searching for the hot stories in every Tuesday's JAMA. Even when JAMA isn't carrying an article about the cure of a major disease, reporters will find something of interest, and the journal will get its weekly dose of national publicity.
Institutional PR people also love embargoes, since embargoes help them manage publicity. They can write and mail news releases in advance, predigesting the story for journalists, adding a certain measure of responsible hype and institutional spin, and ensuring that reporters know the correct spelling and full names of all the scientists involved, their exact titles, and the contributions of all donors and public agencies who supported the research.
Scientists, however, generally have mixed feelings about embargoes. While I argue that on balance scientists should support the institution of the embargo, embargoes often place them in awkward positions.
The culprit is not the embargo itself. It's the "Inglefinger Rule," promulgated by (and named after) a former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine. According to the Inglefinger Rule, a version of which most top journals have adopted, the journal will not publish scientific articles that describe results that have been previously published elsewhere including the popular press. In some cases, articles that were set in type, ready to be printed in the next issue of the journal, have been yanked out when a journalist, perhaps unknowingly, broke an embargo. The rule punishes the scientist for the journalist's act.
Medical journals say that the reason for the rule is to give physicians a chance to see the original paper before patients, alerted by the media, inundate them with questions about a new discovery. This argument may make some kind of sense for medical journals, but I don't see how it applies to other journals, such as Science and Nature.
Fear of the Inglefinger Rule often makes scientists skittish around journalists. The rules of the embargo allow journalists to publish articles about scientific advances whenever they wish if they have uncovered the story on their own initiative. If, for example, the journalist attends a scientific meeting at which Dr. Smith discusses her latest work, he can write a story about the meeting presentation. This often causes scientists great consternation: If I present this result at the meeting, wonders Dr. Smith, and if a reporter writes about it, will that keep Science from publishing it?
Unfortunately, those fears are not groundless. Here's an excerpt of Science's "Important Submission Information" (January 3, 1997, p. 99):
In most cases, Science will consider a manuscript for publication only if its main findings have not been reported elsewhere, including in the mass media. However, authors are permitted to present their data at open meetings but are asked to refrain from overtly seeking media attention. Specifically, authors are asked to decline participation in news briefings or coverage in press releases and to refrain from giving interviews or copies of their data or paper to reporters unless the reporters agree to abide by our press embargo. If a reporter attends the author's session at a meeting and writes a story based on the presentation, such coverage will not affect Science's consideration of the author's paper.
So what's Dr. Smith to do if the reporter comes up to her after the presentation, requests an interview, and gives an indication that he has completely misinterpreted her data and its import? Does she grant the interview to set him straight, and in so doing dash her hopes of publishing in Science? Or does she decline the interview and risk that the article in tomorrow's paper will distort her work and subject her to derision?
Inglefinger-type rules sometimes keep scientists from discussing their work at meetings. These rules sometimes even encourage attempts by scientific societies to exclude reporters from otherwise open scientific conferences.
As a former institutional PR person and a current freelance science journalist, I'm a strong supporter of the embargo. A journalist will simply produce a better, more accurate article about complex scientific concepts if he's given seven days rather than seven hours to write it.
But I think science would be better served if Science and the other top journals relaxed their various formulations of the Inglefinger Rule. These rules often place scientists in very difficult positions. They threaten to punish the scientist if a journalist reports the story on his own initiative or breaks an embargo. They inhibit the free flow of information on the latest research, both within the scientific community and to the public that pays for that research. And it seems to me that their primary purpose is a hidden one: to keep the journal's brand name in the public eye.
Next month: Will the Internet Kill the Embargo?
Robert Finn is a contributing editor for The Scientist who has written for many publications including Discover, Science Digest, and the Los Angeles Times.
