In my experience researchers are being very clear, but the context of this is super important.

When researchers publish in journals, their target audience is other people in their field. In this case other researchers and doctors. With that in mind, they choose words and phrases very specific to their field that have agreed-on definitions inside that field. Their obligation (amongst others) is to communicate to their field about their findings, as accurately as possible. They obviously have to publish their research so that science can move forward too.

But then when they publish it, people outside the field can also read it, and this is where the problem starts creeping in.

There are no qualifications required to be a “science reporter”. Unlike the researchers, those reporters aren’t required to have experience in the niche they’re writing about. They’re not required to have any knowledge of the wider field or subspecialty. They don’t necessarily know which of the words are specific and which are common use words. They don’t have to declare their conflicts of interest. They aren’t required to quote the researchers in full. If you’re lucky, they might have a science-related undergrad degree, but that’s only a taste of what is needed.

And researchers almost always say a hell of a lot, knowing that they’re trying to translate their everyday jargon to someone who doesn’t know it.

So in better examples of this problem, nuance gets lost. In worse examples, words are substituted that fundamentally change the meaning of the work. You can see this happen in the abstract here, emphasis mine:

“We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials (RCTs) testing the efficacy and safety of cannabinoids as the primary treatment for mental disorders or SUDs.”

In common speech, “primary treatment” sounds like it could just mean “biggest help”, but in medicine it holds a lot more meaning. “Primary treatment” in medicine means the absolute first thing you do that has the least destructive side effects and cures the patient, or if there is no cure, it is the thing that has the best quality evidence to help the patient as much as possible with the least destructive side effects. It’s the silver bullet you reach for before all other things, or as close as you can get to it.

And so sciencedaily, not appreciating (or actively disregarding) that there was significant meaning in those two words, chose the word “helps” for the title. The title differs from the body, which comes closer with “does not treat”, but that’s still not the same thing. The difference between title and body is part of why I lean towards classing this as wilful misrepresentation. The other part is where they’re pushing discussion about regulation, which has no relation to the contents of the paper.

The abstract could have been better, I did have to read some of the methodology to confirm what I suspected, but as far as I can tell, they did use the correct terminology for their target audience. And you’re not supposed to only read the abstract anyway.

Ultimately the responsibility for the accuracy of reporting about a research paper outside of a scientific journal comes down to the reporter and their employer. The researcher can only do so much to explain their work to that reporter, they can’t be responsible for teaching that reporter their entire field of knowledge, or knowing which parts the reporter is ignorant of. They probably also aren’t given the opportunity to suggest edits for the article before release and they probably don’t know to ask for the opportunity because they don’t work in the media.

Tl;dr sciencedaily needs to do better