Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Citations

Saracco, Alberto

doi:10.1007/s00283-021-10146-x

Cited by 4 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 49 publications

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“…While governmental and health agencies such as the World Health Organization, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Food and Drug Administration, and European Medicines Agency have their internal evaluation committees dedicated to ensuring the clinical efficacy of treatments and drugs, these widespread errors and uncertainties in the field of clinical research can not only propagate a marked infodemic – as often witnessed during the COVID-19 pandemic – but also result in a wastage of resources, such as the prolonged funding for studies with exaggerated outcomes [16, 17]. In fact, sensationalistic expressions are aimed at increasing the perception of the study’s relevance beyond its actual findings, i.e., to boost the number of citations and success, a crucial factor in securing research funding and even institutional roles [18]. For instance, the scientific community has been decrying the widespread practice of p-hacking for decades, although the consequences of this misconduct are a subject of debate [19, 20].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Statistical significance misuse in public health research: an investigation of the current situation and possible solutions

Rovetta

2023

Preprint

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Background. Despite the efforts of leading statistical authorities and experts worldwide and the inherent dangers of interpretative errors in clinical research, misuses of statistical significance remain a common practice in the field of public health. Currently, there is a need to attempt to quantify this phenomenon. Methods. 100 studies were randomly selected within the PubMed database. An evaluation system for the interpretation, presentation, and communication of results (IPC) was adopted, which provided for a maximum of 11 points and a minimum acceptability threshold of 5 points. Results. The median of the results was 2 points out of the available 11 (IQR = 1). The difference from the minimum acceptable IPC score of 5 was substantial (90|95|99-% CI: [2; 4]) and, assuming all the Wilcoxon test requirements have been sufficiently met, highly surprising at the statistical level (P-value < .001, S-value > 10). In total, 13 out of 100 studies achieved the minimum score of 5 points. Conclusion. These findings provide solid evidence of widespread and severe methodological shortcomings in the use of statistical significance measures in clinical and public health research during 2023. Therefore, it is essential for academic journals to compulsorily demand higher scientific quality standards.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Statistical significance misuse in public health research: an investigation of the current situation and possible solutions

Rovetta

2023

Preprint

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“…Finally, we believe that this is only a first step towards the qualitative improvement of scientific evidence. Specifically, academia too often pushes researchers into dishonesty in order to obtain relevant funding or positions [19]. Ergo, as a scientific community, we must rethink this system in order to prevent such inadmissible situations.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…8,36.8,37.5,44.2,41.7,36.7,35.2,32.7,25.9,26.6,29.0,25.4,23.3,28.2,31.0,38.2,56.5,73.3,80.2,80.4,64. 6,76.1,99.1,100.0,85.3,71.7,48.3,31.3,21.6,16.5,11.7,9.9,8.0,6.6,4.6,4.2) y2 <c (32,30,28,32,31,42,46,50,50,51,67,48,51,48,50,38,66,53,50,35,26,40,27,26,23,17,11,18,11,7,7,12,8,7,15,23,26,23,31,26,39,36,42,25,19,15,5,6,2,5,4,3,1,2,2) z2 <c(29, 21,27,31,36,45,44,52,49,55,78,100,5...…”

Section: X2mentioning

confidence: 99%

A New Paper Framework to Increase Reproducibility: Example Relating to Web Pharmacovigilance During COVID-19 in Italy

Rovetta¹,

Castaldo²

2022

Preprint

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Reproducibility and transparency represent some of the main problems of scientific publishing. Currently, the editorial requests of academic journals and peer reviewers can divert the authors’ attention from an accurate description of the methods adopted, thus compromising these fundamental scientific aspects. This paves the way for the voluntary falsification of data to obtain striking results. Furthermore, the excessive expansion of introduction and discussion sections increases the likelihood of introducing evaluation bias. Since peer reviewers are generally unpaid for their work, they are not required to reproduce the analysis of the studies they review but only to assess methodological accuracy, reproducibility, and plausibility. Therefore, this paper aims to emphasize that the methods and results sections are the central parts of quantitative analysis. In this regard, we firmly believe that the peer review process should, whenever possible, reproduce the analysis from scratch. Consequently, authors must be required to provide a simple and straightforward tutorial to reproduce the analysis as it was conceived both methodologically and chronologically. Ideas, insights, and discussions among the authors must also be reported. This complete description can be provided as integrative material published with the main manuscript, which is nothing more than a summary of methods and results. Such a procedure would represent the first step to improving the quality of scientific publications, waiting for unscientific concepts such as “publish or perish” to be eradicated from the academic world. In this manuscript, we provide a framework that can serve as a fully reproducible and transparent example of analysis. The aim is to investigate the Italian netizens’ web interest in paracetamol, ibuprofen, and nimesulide from 2015 to 2022, searching for causal associations with the fever symptom and COVID-19. The infodemiological tool “Google Trends” has been used to collect the data. Correlational analysis showed plausible causal associations between paracetamol, ibuprofen, and fever due to seasonal flu and COVID-19 and, although to a minor extent, COVID-19 vaccines side effects. Paracetamol was the most historically searched substance. However, the trend of ibuprofen has caught up with that of paracetamol in 2022. Interest in paracetamol, ibuprofen, and nimesulide increased substantially during the COVID-19 pandemic period. We conclude that web pharmacovigilance via Google Trends can provide relevant evidence for monitoring drug intake in relation to epidemiologically significant events such as epidemics and mass vaccination campaigns.

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“…According to our best knowledge, we tried to give the most comprehensive bibliography, in the spirit of [110]. Any suggestion on missing relevant papers is welcomed.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Cheeger problem in abstract measure spaces

Franceschi¹,

Pinamonti²,

Saracco³

et al. 2022

Preprint

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We consider non-negative σ-finite measure spaces coupled with a proper functional P that plays the role of a perimeter. We introduce the Cheeger problem in this framework and extend many classical results on the Cheeger constant and on Cheeger sets to this setting, requiring minimal assumptions on the pair measure space-perimeter. Throughout the paper, the measure space will never be asked to be metric, at most topological, and this requires the introduction of a suitable notion of Sobolev spaces, induced by the coarea formula with the given perimeter.

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Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Citations

Cited by 4 publications

References 49 publications

Statistical significance misuse in public health research: an investigation of the current situation and possible solutions

Statistical significance misuse in public health research: an investigation of the current situation and possible solutions

A New Paper Framework to Increase Reproducibility: Example Relating to Web Pharmacovigilance During COVID-19 in Italy

The Cheeger problem in abstract measure spaces

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