Nature vs. hype.

From today’s Nature, an editorial entitled Mind the spin:

Scientists — and their institutions — should resist the ever-present temptation to hype their results.

[skipping to the money quote…]

…the temptation for scientists and their institutions to spin their research to the media, or to go publicity-mongering, is always there. And — as illustrated by the excessive public-relations campaign surrounding Ida, a fossil presented as a missing link in human evolution — too many in the media will buy into the initial hype.

Such behaviour is corrosive to the process of scholarly scientific communication. Research institutions must not allow it to become the norm.