Bias

Association between trial registration and treatment effect estimates: a meta-epidemiological study

To increase transparency in research, the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors required, in 2005, prospective registration of clinical trials as a condition to publication. However, many trials remain unregistered or retrospectively …

COMPare: a prospective cohort study correcting and monitoring 58 misreported trials in real time

Discrepancies between pre-specified and reported outcomes are an important source of bias in trials. Despite legislation, guidelines and public commitments on correct reporting from journals, outcome misreporting continues to be prevalent. We aimed …

Data overuse in aging research: Emerging issues and potential solutions

Aging and lifespan development researchers have been fortunate to have public access to many longitudinal datasets. These data are valuable and see high utilization, yet this has a considerable downside. Many of these are heavily overused. Overuse of …

Disclosing and Managing Non-Financial Conflicts of Interest in Scientific Publications

In the last decade, there has been increased recognition of the importance of disclosing and managing non-financial conflicts of interests to safeguard the objectivity, integrity, and trustworthiness of scientific research. While funding agencies and …

Discrepancies in the Registries of Diet vs Drug Trials

This cross-sectional study examines discrepancies between registered protocols and subsequent publications for drug and diet trials whose findings were published in prominent clinical journals in the last decade. ClinicalTrials.gov was established in …

Does use of the CONSORT Statement impact the completeness of reporting of randomised controlled trials published in medical journals? A Cochrane reviewa

Background The Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT) Statement is intended to facilitate better reporting of randomised clinical trials (RCTs). A systematic review recently published in the Cochrane Library assesses whether journal …

Making ERP research more transparent: Guidelines for preregistration

A combination of confirmation bias, hindsight bias, and pressure to publish may prompt the (unconscious) exploration of various methodological options and reporting only the ones that lead to a (statistically) significant outcome. This undisclosed …

Meta-assessment of bias in science

Numerous biases are believed to affect the scientific literature, but their actual prevalence across disciplines is unknown. To gain a comprehensive picture of the potential imprint of bias in science, we probed for the most commonly postulated …

More than meets the ITT: A guide for anticipating and investigating nonsignificant results in survey experiments

Survey experiments often yield intention-to-treat effects that are either statistically and/or practically “non-significant.” There has been a commendable shift toward publishing such results, either to avoid the “file drawer problem” and/or to …

Peer Review: Decisions, decisions

Journals are exploring new approaches to peer review in order to reduce bias, increase transparency and respond to author preferences. Funders are also getting involved. If you start reading about the subject of peer review, it won't be long before …