Many Health News Articles Ignore Funding

News articles about medical research often don’t mention who paid for it, a new study has found. And most articles use brand names more than generic names for drugs, the study said. Researchers looked at 306 articles from U.S. newspapers and online sites. About 4 out of 10 articles did not mention funding. About 2 out of 3 articles used brand names for drugs at least half of the time. The authors also interviewed 100 editors from large newspapers. The vast majority thought their papers always revealed funding sources and used generic drug names. HealthDay News wrote about the study September 30. It was in the Journal of the American Medical Association.