Science by press conference or science by press release is the practice by which scientists put an unusual focus on publicizing results of research in the media, in the form of press conference events or press release statements. The term is usually used disparagingly. It is intended to associate the target with people promoting scientific "findings" of questionable scientific merit who turn to the media for attention when they are unlikely to win the approval of the professional scientific community. Premature publicity violates a cultural value of most of the scientific community, which is that findings should be subjected to independent review with a "thorough examination by the scientific community" before they are widely publicized. The standard practice is to publish a paper in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. This idea has many merits, including that the scientific community has a responsibility to conduct itself in a deliberative, non-attention seeking way; and that its members should be oriented more towards the pursuit of insight than fame. Science by press conference in its most egregious forms can be undertaken on behalf of an individual researcher seeking fame, a corporation seeking to sway public opinion or investor perception, or a political or ideological movement. History of the term The phrase was coined by Spyros Andreopoulos, a public affairs officer at Stanford University Medical School, in a 1980 letter which appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine. Andreopoulos was commenting specifically on the publicity practices of biotechnology startups, including Biogen and Genentech. The journal in which it appeared had implemented a long-standing policy under editor Franz J. Ingelfinger which prohibited seeking publicity for research prior to its submission or publication, informally called the Ingelfinger Rule. Notable examples of science by press conference In 1989, chemists Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann held a press conference to claim they had successfully achieved cold fusion. (Highlighting the complexity of defining the term, Pons and Fleischman technically had an accepted paper in press at a peer-reviewed journal at the time of their press conference, though that was not widely acknowledged at the time and the quality of the paper and its review were subsequently criticized.) In 1998, Andrew Wakefield held a press conference to claim that the MMR vaccine caused autism. In January 2011, an article by Brian Deer and its accompanying editorial in BMJ identified Wakefield's work as an "elaborate fraud". In 2002, a group called