Today’s On the Radar column by me mentions a story about chocolate boosting your skin’s protection against UV light.

It came to my attention as it was over-reported a tad in some media outlets – chocolate can now banish wrinkles etc – even though the study authors pointed out this was a specially formulated chocolate packed with flavanols, and they just looked at changes in the skin’s photoprotection, not whether this stuff would keep you looking like Racquel Welch into your twilight years.

For a more measured critique of the study see this overview from the NHS.

In another example of media jumping aboard an accessible story, a recent food-related study on the action of a curry spice on cancer cells in the lab also set the headlines buzzing – I have no doubt that the research itself was fine and worthy and well done to the team involved, but the widespread media coverage was startling in the context of a compound that was already known to have anti-cancer effects.

At a workshop with scientists during the week I stressed the need for scientists to pitch their stories in an accessible way to journalists, producers and editors.

One scientist raised an excellent point: if you are talking the story up to get it noticed by the gatekeepers, how do you stop it then being oversold by the media?

I guess one way around this is for scientists to use social media to share the ‘minor victories’ in their research. The ‘moving in the right direction’ steps. In a blog a scientist can themselves couch the finding in all the necessary softening terms.

Then when a bigger event is on the horizon, or there has been a major breakthrough, that could be time go the whole hog and flag it as a Big Story to the world.

Just a thought!