How and why we create the lay summaries for TONiC/FINDeRS papers

We provide lay summaries because we know that our research papers may be of great relevance and interest to people with the condition who do not have a scientific or medical background. The abstract for each paper, published by the journal and included for each entry at https://www.finders-study.org/research-papers, is a summary which has been peer reviewed, i.e. independent experts have checked that it is accurate and fair.  However, these abstracts are not written with the needs of lay people in mind.

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We think it is important for us to explain how these lay summaries are created.  This is because in science one is always watchful for ‘bias’, i.e. an error that distorts the results.  Creating lay summaries could be a cause of bias: we have free rein over what we select to include in the summary, could exaggerate our findings, or even misreport them, hoping that readers would not compare the lay summary to the full paper and spot the bias.

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Therefore for interested readers, we explain below exactly how we create the lay summaries, so you can judge our process for yourself.  And of course, having read the lay summary you can read the full paper and make your own conclusions.