Objective To identify the source (press releases or news) of distortions, exaggerations, or changes to the main conclusions drawn from research that could potentially influence a reader’s health related behaviour.Design Retrospective quantitative content analysis.Setting Journal articles, press releases, and related news, with accompanying simulations.Sample Press releases (n=462) on biomedical and health related science issued by 20 leading UK universities in 2011, alongside their associated peer reviewed research papers and news stories (n=668).Main outcome measures Advice to readers to change behaviour, causal statements drawn from correlational research, and inference to humans from animal research that went beyond those in the associated peer reviewed papers.Results 40% (95% confidence interval 33% to 46%) of the press releases contained exaggerated advice, 33% (26% to 40%) contained exaggerated causal claims, and 36% (28% to 46%) contained exaggerated inference to humans from animal research. When press releases contained such exaggeration, 58% (95% confidence interval 48% to 68%), 81% (70% to 93%), and 86% (77% to 95%) of news stories, respectively, contained similar exaggeration, compared with exaggeration rates of 17% (10% to 24%), 18% (9% to 27%), and 10% (0% to 19%) in news when the press releases were not exaggerated. Odds ratios for each category of analysis were 6.5 (95% confidence interval 3.5 to 12), 20 (7.6 to 51), and 56 (15 to 211). At the same time, there was little evidence that exaggeration in press releases increased the uptake of news.Conclusions Exaggeration in news is strongly associated with exaggeration in press releases. Improving the accuracy of academic press releases could represent a key opportunity for reducing misleading health related news.

Geographies of food banks have focused predominantly on issues of neoliberal politicaleconomy and food insecurity. In this paper, we trace alternative understandings of food bankingas spaces of care, and as liminal spaces of encounter capable of incubating political and ethical values, practices and subjectivities that challenge neoliberal austerity. Our aim is to develop a conceptual approach to voluntary welfare capable both of holding in tension the ambivalent and contradictory dynamics of care and welfare in the meantime(s), and of underlining some of the more hopeful and progressive possibilities that can arise in and through such spaces of care.

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BackgroundExaggerated or simplistic news is often blamed for adversely influencing public health. However, recent findings suggested many exaggerations were already present in university press releases, which scientists approve. Surprisingly, these exaggerations were not associated with more news coverage. Here we test whether these two controversial results also arise in press releases from prominent science and medical journals. We then investigate the influence of mitigating caveats in press releases, to test assumptions that caveats harm news interest or are ignored.Methods and FindingsUsing quantitative content analysis, we analyzed press releases (N = 534) on biomedical and health-related science issued by leading peer-reviewed journals. We similarly analysed the associated peer-reviewed papers (N = 534) and news stories (N = 582). Main outcome measures were advice to readers and causal statements drawn from correlational research. Exaggerations in press releases predicted exaggerations in news (odds ratios 2.4 and 10.9, 95% CIs 1.3 to 4.5 and 3.9 to 30.1) but were not associated with increased news coverage, consistent with previous findings. Combining datasets from universities and journals (996 press releases, 1250 news), we found that when caveats appeared in press releases there was no reduction in journalistic uptake, but there was a clear increase in caveats in news (odds ratios 9.6 and 9.5 for caveats for advice and causal claims, CIs 4.1 to 24.3 and 6.0 to 15.2). The main study limitation is its retrospective correlational nature.ConclusionsFor health and science news directly inspired by press releases, the main source of both exaggerations and caveats appears to be the press release itself. However we find no evidence that exaggerations increase, or caveats decrease, the likelihood of news coverage. These findings should be encouraging for press officers and scientists who wish to minimise exaggeration and include caveats in their press releases.

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In the U K the current Coalition government has introduced an unprecedented set o f reforms to welfare, public services, and local governance under the rubric o f 'localism'. Conventional analytics o f neoliberalism have commonly portrayed the impacts o f these changes in the architectures o f governance in blanket terms: as an utterly regressive dilution o f local democracy; as an extension of conservative political technology by which state welfare is denuded in favour of market-led individualism; and as a further politicised subjectification o f the charitable self. Such seemingly hegemonic grammars o f critique can ignore or underestimate the progressive possibilities for creating new ethical and political spaces in amongst the neoliberal canvas. In this paper we investigate the localism agenda using alternative interpretative grammars that are more open to the recognition o f interstitial politics o f resistance and experimentation that are springing up within, across, and beyond formations o f the neoliberal. We analyse the broad framework o f intentional localisms laid down by the Coalition government, and then point to four significant pathways by which more progressive articulations o f localism have been emerging in amongst the neoliberal infrastructure. In so doing we seek to endorse and expand imaginations o f political activism that accentuate an interstitial political sensibility that works strategically, and even subversively, with the tools at hand.

This paper offers a critical reappraisal of the politics of food banking in the UK. Existing work has raised concerns about the institutionalisation of food banks, with charitable assistance apparently -even if inadvertentlyundermining collectivist welfare and deflecting attention from fundamental injustices in the food system. This paper presents original ethnographic work that examines the neglected politics articulated within food banks themselves.Conceptualising food banks as potential spaces of encounter where predominantly middle class volunteers come into contact with poor others Lawson and Elwood , weillustrate the ways food banks may both reinforce but also rework and generate new, ethical and political attitudes, beliefs and identities. We also draw attention to the limits of these progressive possibilities, and examine the ways in which some food banks continue to operate within a set of highly restrictive, and stigmatising, welfare technologies. By highlighting the contradictory dynamics at work in food bank organisations, and among food bank volunteers and clients, we suggest the political role of food banks warrants neither uncritical celebration nor outright dismissal. Rather, food banks represent a highly ambiguous political space still in the making and open to contestation.

This paper is founded on research funded by the EU 7th Framework Programme FACIT project (Faith-based organisations and exclusion in European cities, Grant agreement number 217314). We acknowledge the very helpful discussions on these issues with other FACIT researchers, especially the academic leader of the programme, Justin Beaumont of the University of Groningen, and with Jon May and two anonymous referees. A discussion of the definition of FBOs can be found in Beaumont and Cloke (2012).