Publication bias and clinical trials

Dickersin, Kay; Chan, Simon; Tc, Chalmers; Hs, Sacks; Smith, Harry

doi:10.1016/0197-2456(87)90155-3

Cited by 598 publications

(318 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…Just how destructive this need to perform "excellence" is can be illustrated by the wellknown bias towards positive results in scientific publication (for example, Dickersin et al, 1987Dickersin et al, , 2005Sterling, 1959;Kennedy, 2004;Young and Bang, 2004;Bertamini and Munafò, 2012;Rothstein, 2014;Psych Filedrawer, 2016). Thus, for example, Fanelli (2011) demonstrated a 22% growth between 1990 and 2007 in the "frequency of papers that, having declared to have 'tested' a hypothesis, reported a positive support for it".…”

Section: What Is "Excellence"?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“Excellence R Us”: university research and the fetishisation of excellence

et al. 2017

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The rhetoric of "excellence" is pervasive across the academy. It is used to refer to research outputs as well as researchers, theory and education, individuals and organizations, from art history to zoology. But does "excellence" actually mean anything? Does this pervasive narrative of "excellence" do any good? Drawing on a range of sources we interrogate "excellence" as a concept and find that it has no intrinsic meaning in academia. Rather it functions as a linguistic interchange mechanism. To investigate whether this linguistic function is useful we examine how the rhetoric of excellence combines with narratives of scarcity and competition to show that the hyper-competition that arises from the performance of "excellence" is completely at odds with the qualities of good research. We trace the roots of issues in reproducibility, fraud, and homophily to this rhetoric. But we also show that this rhetoric is an internal, and not primarily an external, imposition. We conclude by proposing an alternative rhetoric based on soundness and capacity-building. In the final analysis, it turns out that that "excellence" is not excellent. Used in its current unqualified form it is a pernicious and dangerous rhetoric that undermines the very foundations of good research and scholarship. This article is published as part of a collection on the future of research assessment.

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Section: What Is "Excellence"?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“Excellence R Us”: university research and the fetishisation of excellence

et al. 2017

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“…Such studies tend to take longer to find their way into the published literature, or remain unpublished. The consequence is that it is difficult to find and include them in a meta-analysis when compared with studies producing statistically significant results [5]. If a study is not published on the basis of its results (publication bias), the omission of negative unpublished trials can lead to an over-inflation of intervention effects [6].…”

Section: Publication Biasmentioning

confidence: 99%

Selective outcome reporting: telling and detecting true lies. The state of the science

Macura

Abraha²,

Kirkham

et al. 2010

Intern Emerg Med

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“…Les essais aux r6sultats positifs avaient significativement plus de chances d'etre publi6s que ceux aux r6sultats n~ga-tifs (77% vs 42% ; p<0,001). Dickersin et al [10] ont interrog6 318 auteurs d'essais publi6s. Les 156 r6pondants rapport~rent 271 essais non publi6s et 1041 essais publi6s.…”

Section: Rechercheunclassified