Does television reflect the evolution of scientific knowledge? The case of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder coverage on French television

BOURDAA, Mélanie; KONSMAN, Jan Pieter; SÉCAIL, Claire; VENTURINI, Tommaso; VEYRAT-MASSON, Isabelle; GONON, François

doi:10.1177/0963662513484842

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http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/

BOURDAA, Mélanie
Médiation, Information, Communication, Art [MICA]

KONSMAN, Jan Pieter
Médiation, Information, Communication, Art [MICA]

SÉCAIL, Claire
Laboratoire de communication politique [LCP]

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Article de revue

Ce document a été publié dans

Public Understanding of Science. 2015, vol. 24, n° 2, p. 200-209

SAGE Publications

Résumé en anglais

Biomedical findings mature from uncertain observations to validated facts. Although subsequent studies often refute initial appealing findings, newspapers privilege the latter and often fail to cover refutations. Thus, biomedical knowledge and media reporting may diverge with time. Here we investigated how French television reported on three scientific questions relative to attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) from 1995 to 2010: i) is ADHD mainly genetic in origin, ii) does methylphenidate treatment decrease the risk of academic underachievement, and iii) are brain imaging techniques able to reveal ADHD in individual patients? Although scientific evidence regarding these questions has evolved during these 16 years, we observed that nine out of ten TV programs broadcast between 2007 and 2010 still expressed only opinions against the current scientific consensuses. The failure of TV programs to reflect the evolution of the scientific knowledge might be related to a biased selection of medical experts.< Réduire

Mots clés

ADHD

Health and media

Media and science

Medical expert

Mental health

Television

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