As a person who’s worked in the field of public relations for decades, I can usually smell a spin a mile away. Take the classic Torches of Liberty parade in 1929 in which a crowd of women marched through Manhattan smoking Lucky Strike cigarettes. The spin? A Big Tobacco-funded women’s rights event that ‘proved’ women could be liberated enough to smoke in public – as long as they smoked Luckies.

Or the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty ads, featuring plus-size models shilling Dove’s skin creams. The spin? We’re beautiful just the way we are (except, of course, for all that ugly cellulite that Dove products can help us get rid of!)

According to a study presented at the International Congress on Peer Review and Biomedical Publication in Vancouver, it seems Big Pharma has been equally busy doing its own creative spinning of its research results published in medical journals. Continue reading →