[Updates 6/26 with BBC story and with American Chemical Society response. Corrects to say that the accuracy of the report is in question–it hasn't yet been disproven.]
When lead was said to be found in rice, Alexandra Sifferlin at Time magazine had the alarming story under the headline "Worrisome Levels of Lead Found In Imported Rice." Ryan Jaslow, CBSNews.com's health editor, wrote, "New Jersey researchers say they have discovered potentially dangerous levels of lead in white rice imported to the United States from across the globe." You could read the same news at ScienceDaily, and in many other places around the web.
It was a great story in every respect but one: It might not be true.
Jonathan Weiss of MedicalDaily also reported the story, but unlike many others, he followed it up with this report on April 24:
The first author of the study implicating that lead was prevalent in rice supplies released a statement on April 19. Dr. Tsanangurayi Tongesayi admitted he was having an "issue" with his measuring instruments and recalled his paper.
I couldn't find corrections at Time, CBS, or ScienceDaily. While many news outlets covered this report, it seems that the big papers didn't. That includes the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. Even so, the story seemed to make headlines all over.
Jason Palmer of the BBC wrote the story, and then followed with a correction. In the correction, he wrote that "attempts to replicate the results have found levels far below those initially reported – between 6 and 12 parts per million (6,000 to 12,000 parts per billion). Dr Tongesayi's team sent samples to another laboratory for analysis using a different technique – that study recorded levels below one part per million."
Palmer reported that "the team then put on hold planned publication of the findings in the Journal of Environmental Science and Health, for what Dr Tongesayi told BBC News was a 'data verification exercise'".
I wish I'd known about this so I could have posted on it in April, but coverage of the retraction was so minimal that I missed it. Even the stalwart RetractionWatch.com seems to have missed it, according to a search of the site. (That could be because the study hasn't yet appeared in a journal.)
The initial story came from an American Chemical Society press release on a study presented at the national ACS meeting in New Orleans in April (scroll down past other releases). "Rice imported from certain countries contains high levels of lead that could pose health risks, particularly for infants and children, who are especially sensitive to lead’s effects, and adults of Asian heritage who consume large amounts of rice, scientists said here today," the release began. That's enough to frighten any parent, not only those of "Asian heritage." The study was done by Tongesayi and colleagues at Monmouth University in New Jersey.
I was unable to find an ACS release correcting the news. The ACS said in an email that it is waiting until the questions about the data are resolved, and that it has removed the release that was origingally posted at eurekalert.org. Aside from Weiss's story at MedicalDaily, the most prominent corrections I found were in a press release from a food company and a story by Mike Adams at NaturalNews.com, which digs deeply into the details of measuring lead levels in rice.
And I would not have known anything about this if not for Emily Willingham's recap at Forbes.com, under the headline, "We need a recall system for bad science reporting." She correctly points out that reporters should have been more careful about noting that these were preliminary results, although, in my view, that would have done little to solve the problem. Preliminary findings can make headlines as easily as definitive findings, sadly.
She suggests reporters might have also added something along these lines: “Researchers presented their findings at a poster at a scientific meeting, which just about anyone can do as long as they’re willing to pay their own travel.”
Maybe we should commend the big papers for passing on this story. Qualifiers of the kind Willingham suggests are not likely to squelch headlines; choosing not to do the story at all is probably the best strategy.
But I don't mean to quibble with Willingham. Her point is sound: We need to do something about this. For starters, she says, those who wrote the original stories should "add a statement–at the beginning or end of the original article–tracking how the rest of the story unfolds and linking to follow-up articles." It's customary for a post to link to previous stories; she's suggesting forward tracking, in which it links to future stories.
I think that's a fine idea, as is the simpler idea of just appending a correction.
Either way, we should hold reporters and news outlets accountable for correcting their erroneous reports. Ignorance is no excuse.
-Paul Raeburn
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