ArticleCurrent oncology reports2001
Acknowledgment of uncertainty: a fundamental means to ensure scientific and ethical validity in clinical research.
Article in Current oncology reports, 2001. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 32 papers, 7 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
32 citing papers in PubMed, 7 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Pooled it
- Treatment success in cancer: industry compared to publicly sponsored randomized controlled trials.PloS one · 2013Pooled it
- Optimism bias leads to inconclusive results-an empirical study.Journal of clinical epidemiology · 2011Pooled it
- Are experimental treatments for cancer in children superior to established treatments? Observational study of randomised controlled trials by the Children's Oncology Group.BMJ (Clinical research ed.) · 2005Pooled it
- Evaluation of new treatments in radiation oncology: are they better than standard treatments?JAMA · 2005Pooled it
- Pharmaceutical industry sponsorship and research outcome and quality: systematic review.BMJ (Clinical research ed.) · 2003Pooled it
- Erythropoietin, uncertainty principle and cancer related anaemia.BMC cancer · 2002Pooled it
- Epistemic compression in large language model explanations of the gut-liver axis.Frontiers in cellular and infection microbiology · 2026Article
- Can Prostate Cancer Screening Reduce Mortality in Men Aged 75-79 Years? A Protocol for Target-trial Emulation.European urology open science · 2025Article
- New drugs and stock market: a machine learning framework for predicting pharma market reaction to clinical trial announcements.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- How to Make Life and Death Medical Decisions? On the Occasion of Play/Drama as Health Care Protection Method of Decision Making Using by Patients with Pancreatic Cancer.Medical archives (Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina) · 2023Article
- Many trials of hydroxychloroquine for SARS-CoV-2 were redundant and potentially unethical: an analysis of the NIH clinical trials registry.Journal of clinical epidemiology · 2022Article
- Article
- The ethics of innovation for Alzheimer's disease: the risk of overstating evidence for metabolic enhancement protocols.Theoretical medicine and bioethics · 2020Article
- Why 'understanding' of research may not be necessary for ethical emergency research.Philosophy, ethics, and humanities in medicine : PEHM · 2020Review
- Article
- Review
- Comparator bias: why comparisons must address genuine uncertainties.Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine · 2013Article
- New treatments compared to established treatments in randomized trials.The Cochrane database of systematic reviews · 2012Article
- When is it rational to participate in a clinical trial? A game theory approach incorporating trust, regret and guilt.BMC medical research methodology · 2012Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Recognition of the importance of uncertainty in the design of randomized, controlled trials (RCT) has reached the status of a principle. The "uncertainty principle," or less ambiguously, equipoise, holds that a patient should be enrolled in an RCT only if there is substantial uncertainty about which of the trial treatments would benefit the patient most. In fact, the "uncertainty principle" addresses the most important issue of a clinical trial--the choice of an adequate comparative control. Studies in which intervention and control group are believed to be non-equivalent violate the uncertainty principle. Therefore, one would expect that both editors and authors would be particularly careful to include a statement concerning prior beliefs of the investigator(s) about the uncertainty of the treatments that are reported. However, we found no evidence of such a policy in the randomized, controlled trials we examined. We also show that there is a predictable relationship between the uncertainty principle, that is, the moral principle upon which trials are based, and the ultimate outcomes of clinical trials. We postulate that about 50% of innovations are successful, leading to the conclusion that preserving the ethics of clinical research may be the best investment strategy available.
Indexed as
Identifiers
11489238What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.