Javier Benitez points us to this paper, “COMPare: Qualitative analysis of researchers’ responses to critical correspondence on a cohort of 58 misreported trials,” by Ben Goldacre, Henry Drysdale, Cicely Marston, Kamal Mahtani, Aaron Dale, Ioan Milosevic, Eirion Slade, Philip Hartley and Carl Heneghan, who write:
Discrepancies between pre-specified and reported outcomes are an important and prevalent source of bias in clinical trials. COMPare (Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine Outcome Monitoring Project) monitored all trials in five leading journals for correct outcome reporting, submitted correction letters on all misreported trials in real time, and then monitored responses from editors and trialists. . . .
Trialists frequently expressed views that contradicted the CONSORT (Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials) guidelines or made inaccurate statements about correct outcome reporting. Common themes were: stating that pre-specification after trial commencement is acceptable; incorrect statements about registries; incorrect statements around the handling of multiple time points; and failure to recognise the need to report changes to pre-specified outcomes in the trial report. We identified additional themes in the approaches taken by researchers when responding to critical correspondence, including the following: ad hominem criticism; arguing that trialists should be trusted, rather than follow guidelines for trial reporting; appealing to the existence of a novel category of outcomes whose results need not necessarily be reported; incorrect statements by researchers about their own paper; and statements undermining transparency infrastructure, such as trial registers.
In short: It’s not just Wansink. Pizzagate’s the tip of the iceberg.
Tomorrow’s post: “Persistent metabolic youth in the aging female brain”??