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Outcome Discrepancies and Selective Reporting: Impacting the Leading Journals?

BACKGROUND: Selective outcome reporting of either interesting or positive research findings is problematic, running the risk of poorly-informed treatment decisions. We aimed to assess the extent of outcome and other discrepancies and possible selective reporting between registry entries and publishe...

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Autores principales: Fleming, Padhraig S., Koletsi, Despina, Dwan, Kerry, Pandis, Nikolaos
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2015
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4440809/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25996928
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0127495
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author Fleming, Padhraig S.
Koletsi, Despina
Dwan, Kerry
Pandis, Nikolaos
author_facet Fleming, Padhraig S.
Koletsi, Despina
Dwan, Kerry
Pandis, Nikolaos
author_sort Fleming, Padhraig S.
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Selective outcome reporting of either interesting or positive research findings is problematic, running the risk of poorly-informed treatment decisions. We aimed to assess the extent of outcome and other discrepancies and possible selective reporting between registry entries and published reports among leading medical journals. METHODS: Randomized controlled trials published over a 6-month period from July to December 31(st), 2013, were identified in five high impact medical journals: The Lancet, British Medical Journal, New England Journal of Medicine, Annals of Internal Medicine and Journal of American Medical Association were obtained. Discrepancies between published studies and registry entries were identified and related to factors including registration timing, source of funding and presence of statistically significant results. RESULTS: Over the 6-month period, 137 RCTs were found. Of these, 18% (n = 25) had discrepancies related to primary outcomes with the primary outcome changed in 15% (n = 20). Moreover, differences relating to non-primary outcomes were found in 64% (n = 87) with both omission of pre-specified non-primary outcomes (39%) and introduction of new non-primary outcomes (44%) common. No relationship between primary or non-primary outcome change and registration timing (prospective or retrospective; P = 0.11), source of funding (P = 0.92) and presence of statistically significant results (P = 0.92) was found. CONCLUSIONS: Discrepancies between registry entries and published articles for primary and non-primary outcomes were common among trials published in leading medical journals. Novel approaches are required to address this problem.
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spelling pubmed-44408092015-05-29 Outcome Discrepancies and Selective Reporting: Impacting the Leading Journals? Fleming, Padhraig S. Koletsi, Despina Dwan, Kerry Pandis, Nikolaos PLoS One Research Article BACKGROUND: Selective outcome reporting of either interesting or positive research findings is problematic, running the risk of poorly-informed treatment decisions. We aimed to assess the extent of outcome and other discrepancies and possible selective reporting between registry entries and published reports among leading medical journals. METHODS: Randomized controlled trials published over a 6-month period from July to December 31(st), 2013, were identified in five high impact medical journals: The Lancet, British Medical Journal, New England Journal of Medicine, Annals of Internal Medicine and Journal of American Medical Association were obtained. Discrepancies between published studies and registry entries were identified and related to factors including registration timing, source of funding and presence of statistically significant results. RESULTS: Over the 6-month period, 137 RCTs were found. Of these, 18% (n = 25) had discrepancies related to primary outcomes with the primary outcome changed in 15% (n = 20). Moreover, differences relating to non-primary outcomes were found in 64% (n = 87) with both omission of pre-specified non-primary outcomes (39%) and introduction of new non-primary outcomes (44%) common. No relationship between primary or non-primary outcome change and registration timing (prospective or retrospective; P = 0.11), source of funding (P = 0.92) and presence of statistically significant results (P = 0.92) was found. CONCLUSIONS: Discrepancies between registry entries and published articles for primary and non-primary outcomes were common among trials published in leading medical journals. Novel approaches are required to address this problem. Public Library of Science 2015-05-21 /pmc/articles/PMC4440809/ /pubmed/25996928 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0127495 Text en © 2015 Fleming et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Fleming, Padhraig S.
Koletsi, Despina
Dwan, Kerry
Pandis, Nikolaos
Outcome Discrepancies and Selective Reporting: Impacting the Leading Journals?
title Outcome Discrepancies and Selective Reporting: Impacting the Leading Journals?
title_full Outcome Discrepancies and Selective Reporting: Impacting the Leading Journals?
title_fullStr Outcome Discrepancies and Selective Reporting: Impacting the Leading Journals?
title_full_unstemmed Outcome Discrepancies and Selective Reporting: Impacting the Leading Journals?
title_short Outcome Discrepancies and Selective Reporting: Impacting the Leading Journals?
title_sort outcome discrepancies and selective reporting: impacting the leading journals?
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4440809/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25996928
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0127495
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