Anatomical discoveries often draw interest not only from the scientific community but also from the general public. The lay audience usually does not obtain information about these developments through the academic literature, but through the popular press. Therefore, there is an important role for popular science journalism to correctly inform the public about new advances in the field of anatomy and its subdisciplines. This means that, on one side, technical language can be transformed into information that everybody can digest, opening up research to the general public. On the other hand, there is also the risk of misrepresenting the research findings and, therefore, misinformation about the discoveries that were made.
As a small case study, the Dutch-speaking literature from Belgium (Flanders) and the Netherlands was searched regarding three different recent anatomical studies: (1) the description of the anterolateral ligament of the knee (Claes et al., 2013), (2) the description of the re-classification of the mesentery as an organ (Coffey and O’Leary, 2016); (3) the description of the interstitium (Benias et al., 2018). For each of these cases, a brief comparison was made between the original publication and relevant popular reports of the findings. Where relevant, academic replies by other authors are discussed.
