Is the research published? If so, where?
When looking at a cancer story in the media, it’s good idea to see if the research has been published in a scientific journal - this will often be mentioned in the report.
Scientists share their results with the world by publishing them in scientific journals - periodical magazines filled with technical papers detailing the precise methods and data from their research.
When a researcher wants to publish a paper, they will send it to a journal. A number of experts in that research field will scrutinise the data - this process is known as peer review. If the reviewers are happy that the results are reliable, then the paper will be published.
But this doesn’t always happen. Often, the reviewers will suggest further experiments, or point out flaws in the data or methods. So the scientist will do more experiments, rewrite the paper and send it back to the same journal, or try a different publication. And if the research isn’t of a sufficiently high standard, it may not be published at all.
There are thousands of different journals produced around the world, but they are not all equal. Some have very stringent peer review processes, while others are less strict. And the top journals will only publish papers that are truly innovative and groundbreaking.
The importance of a journal can be roughly measured by its “impact factor” - how often other scientists refer to papers published in it. As a general rule of thumb, papers published in journals with a high impact factor are more likely to be significant.
Another way that researchers share their results is by presenting them at scientific conferences through talks or poster presentations. Sometimes these stories are picked up by the media, especially in the summer - the main season for scientific meetings.
It’s important to remember that conference presentations aren’t subjected to the same rigorous peer review process that journals use. So it can be difficult to tell how reliable the research is.
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