Evaluation of spin within abstracts in obesity randomized clinical trials: A cross‐sectional review

Abstract

This is a cross-sectional analysis of spin in randomized controlled trial (RCT) abstracts published in top-ranked obesity and general medicine journals. The top seven obesity and four general medicine journals were searched from 1 January 2016 to 31 December 2017. To be included in this study, a trial must be an RCT with non-significant primary endpoint (P > 0.05), exclusively randomize subjects with overweight or obesity or have a primary endpoint of weight loss. These studies were analysed by two reviewers for spin in the abstract.The primary endpoint of our investigation was the frequency and type of spin. The secondary endpoint was to assess whether funding source was associated with the presence of spin. Our PubMed search yielded 1143 articles. Primary screening excluded 992 articles, and fulltext evaluation excluded an additional 106. Overall, 45 articles were included. Spin was identified in 21 of the 45 (46.7%) abstracts analysed. Evidence of spin was found in 17 (37.8%) abstract result sections and 11 (24.4%) abstract conclusion sections. Of the 39 RCTs reporting a clinical trial registry, 6 (15.4%) had evidence of selective reporting bias. Our study found that obesity medicine RCTs from top-ranked journals with non-significant primary endpoints published in 2016 and 2017 frequently have spin in their abstracts. Abstracts with evidence of spin may influence a reader's perception of new drugs or procedures. These results warrant a careful review of future RCTs, but may not be generalizable to RCTs published in lower-ranked journals. K E Y W O R D S bariatric surgery, cross-sectional review, obesity, weight loss therapy

Reporting quality and spin in abstracts of randomized clinical trials of periodontal therapy and cardiovascular disease outcomes

“…Our results agreed with other studies in the medical literature that investigated spin strategies and misrepresentation of RCT results with various methodologies [4,5,[51][52][53][54]. Austin et al [5] reported some form of spin to exist in 47% of the included RCT abstracts while Cooper et al [53] reported spin to be as high as 70% of the included articles.…”

“…Our results agreed with other studies in the medical literature that investigated spin strategies and misrepresentation of RCT results with various methodologies [4,5,[51][52][53][54]. Austin et al [5] reported some form of spin to exist in 47% of the included RCT abstracts while Cooper et al [53] reported spin to be as high as 70% of the included articles. Interestingly, Pitkin et al [8] compared data reported in the abstract of a random sample of RCTs published in 6 major medical journals to the data presented in the full-text manuscripts and found that inconsistencies at variable levels (18%-68%) existed between data reported in the abstract compared to the full text.…”

“…The tool for spin assessment in publication abstracts [4] identifies reporting practices that constitute an intentional or unintentional attempt to spin the results and/or conclusions leading to misreporting and bias. Despite the development of reporting and spin guidelines, abstracts in biomedical literature are often characterized by poor reporting quality and biased finding interpretation [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12].…”

Using the CONSORT statement to evaluate the completeness of reporting of addiction randomised trials: a cross-sectional review

“…Two investigators (SJ and HW) screened all studies for eligibility in an independent, blinded fashion which is consistent with our previous investigations 12–14. We used Rayyan, an online systematic review application, to screen PubMed records for eligibility with the blinding feature turned on.…”

Level and Prevalence of Spin in Published Cardiovascular Randomized Clinical Trial Reports With Statistically Nonsignificant Primary Outcomes

“…This is important because it goes against a commonly expressed view that industry funding may have a direct or indirect effect on an investigator to explicitly describe nonsignificant results. 19 , 20 , 21 , 22 However, a 2009 report 23 highlighted high rates of underreporting of financial conflicts of interest by investigators. It is possible that researchers who are prone to spin may intentionally or unintentionally underreport their financial relationships.…”