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3 November 2006

Negative Results

Felix Elwert

In September, The Institute of Medicine released its report on “The Future of Drug Safety,” featuring some goodies on the dissemination of research findings.

One of the recommendations echoes one of the favorite hallway complaints at IQSS: that journals are perennially hung up on publishing *** alpha less than 0.05 yay-yay statistically significant results.

Says the Washington Post:

“[According to the report] manufacturers should also be required to register all clinical trials they sponsor in a government-run database to allow patients and physicians to see the outcome of all studies, not just those published in medical journals, the report said. Studies that show positive results for a drug are more likely to be published by journals than negative ones.”

Welcome to the world of publication bias. (The report is yours for a highly significant $44.)

Posted by Felix Elwert at 11:59 AM