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Publication bias in situ
BACKGROUND: Publication bias, as typically defined, refers to the decreased likelihood of studies' results being published when they are near the null, not statistically significant, or otherwise "less interesting." But choices about how to analyze the data and which results to report...
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Formato: | Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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BioMed Central
2004
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Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC514545/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15296515 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2288-4-20 |
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author | Phillips, Carl V |
author_facet | Phillips, Carl V |
author_sort | Phillips, Carl V |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: Publication bias, as typically defined, refers to the decreased likelihood of studies' results being published when they are near the null, not statistically significant, or otherwise "less interesting." But choices about how to analyze the data and which results to report create a publication bias within the published results, a bias I label "publication bias in situ" (PBIS). DISCUSSION: PBIS may create much greater bias in the literature than traditionally defined publication bias (the failure to publish any result from a study). The causes of PBIS are well known, consisting of various decisions about reporting that are influenced by the data. But its impact is not generally appreciated, and very little attention is devoted to it. What attention there is consists largely of rules for statistical analysis that are impractical and do not actually reduce the bias in reported estimates. PBIS cannot be reduced by statistical tools because it is not fundamentally a problem of statistics, but rather of non-statistical choices and plain language interpretations. PBIS should be recognized as a phenomenon worthy of study – it is extremely common and probably has a huge impact on results reported in the literature – and there should be greater systematic efforts to identify and reduce it. The paper presents examples, including results of a recent HIV vaccine trial, that show how easily PBIS can have a large impact on reported results, as well as how there can be no simple answer to it. SUMMARY: PBIS is a major problem, worthy of substantially more attention than it receives. There are ways to reduce the bias, but they are very seldom employed because they are largely unrecognized. |
format | Text |
id | pubmed-514545 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2004 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-5145452004-08-27 Publication bias in situ Phillips, Carl V BMC Med Res Methodol Debate BACKGROUND: Publication bias, as typically defined, refers to the decreased likelihood of studies' results being published when they are near the null, not statistically significant, or otherwise "less interesting." But choices about how to analyze the data and which results to report create a publication bias within the published results, a bias I label "publication bias in situ" (PBIS). DISCUSSION: PBIS may create much greater bias in the literature than traditionally defined publication bias (the failure to publish any result from a study). The causes of PBIS are well known, consisting of various decisions about reporting that are influenced by the data. But its impact is not generally appreciated, and very little attention is devoted to it. What attention there is consists largely of rules for statistical analysis that are impractical and do not actually reduce the bias in reported estimates. PBIS cannot be reduced by statistical tools because it is not fundamentally a problem of statistics, but rather of non-statistical choices and plain language interpretations. PBIS should be recognized as a phenomenon worthy of study – it is extremely common and probably has a huge impact on results reported in the literature – and there should be greater systematic efforts to identify and reduce it. The paper presents examples, including results of a recent HIV vaccine trial, that show how easily PBIS can have a large impact on reported results, as well as how there can be no simple answer to it. SUMMARY: PBIS is a major problem, worthy of substantially more attention than it receives. There are ways to reduce the bias, but they are very seldom employed because they are largely unrecognized. BioMed Central 2004-08-05 /pmc/articles/PMC514545/ /pubmed/15296515 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2288-4-20 Text en Copyright © 2004 Phillips; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0) ), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
spellingShingle | Debate Phillips, Carl V Publication bias in situ |
title | Publication bias in situ |
title_full | Publication bias in situ |
title_fullStr | Publication bias in situ |
title_full_unstemmed | Publication bias in situ |
title_short | Publication bias in situ |
title_sort | publication bias in situ |
topic | Debate |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC514545/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15296515 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2288-4-20 |
work_keys_str_mv | AT phillipscarlv publicationbiasinsitu |