There was, to be sure, a press release. "In one of the largest studies on the long-term health effects of silicone breast implants, researchers from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) in Bethesda, Md., found no association between breast implants and the subsequent risk of breast cancer," it began.

But even if you have breast implants, you undoubtedly haven't heard about this study -- unless you somehow stumbled across the release buried in the NCI Web site. NCI press officer Brian Vastag says that -- in a peculiar deviation from normal procedures -- he was "forbidden" from alerting journalists to the online release. In an up-yours gesture to his superiors (motivated, perhaps, by the fact that he'd already given notice to quit), Vastag last week forwarded the link for the press release to a listserv for members of the National Association of Science Writers.

"It makes me crazy when tax-funded public health research doesn't make it to the public," Vastag wrote in his e-mail. "So here's the lead from the press release for anyone who's interested."

According to Vastag, NCI would routinely notify about 500 science writers about such studies by faxing or -- with a few keystrokes -- e-mailing them a press release. "These are the results of eight years of research," Vastag explained about the $4 million study conducted by Dr. Louise Brinton, the principal investigator from NCI's Division of Epidemiology and Genetics. "Brinton's is the definitive study."

Other researchers may or may not agree with that assessment, but science writers who received Vastag's e-mail also found NCI's behavior highly perplexing. "It's very odd for a public agency to know about a major, publicly-funded study and choose not to release it in the normal manner," noted science writer and NASW listserv coordinator Robert Finn. "What's strangest is not the results of the study but that the NCI went to the trouble of preparing a press release -- and then they were not allowed to release it to journalists."