Evidence map›Paper›PMID 24452418›Full record

ReviewJournal of general internal medicine2014

Six persistent research misconceptions.

Kenneth J Rothman

Abstract readReview
PubMed Full text at PMC Publisher
In one paragraph

Review in Journal of general internal medicine, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 213 papers, 5 of them syntheses that pooled it.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
213citing papers in PubMed, 5 pooled it
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from 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.

2 · The registry

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.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

213 citing papers in PubMed, 5 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.

  1. Pooled it
  2. Pooled it
  3. Pooled it
  4. Health literacy and vaccination: A systematic review.Human vaccines & immunotherapeutics · 2018
    Pooled it
  5. Pooled it
  6. Trial
  7. Red Blood Cell Polyunsaturated Fatty Acids and Mortality Following Breast Cancer.Cancer epidemiology, biomarkers & prevention : a publication of the American Association for Cancer Research, cosponsored by the American Society of Preventive Oncology · 2024
    Trial
  8. Trial
  9. Trial
  10. Trial
  11. Trial
  12. Trial
  13. Trial
  14. Trial
  15. Trial
  16. Trial
  17. Docosahexaenoic Acid and Arachidonic Acid Supplementation and Sleep in Toddlers Born Preterm: Secondary Analysis of a Randomized Clinical Trial.Journal of clinical sleep medicine : JCSM : official publication of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine · 2019
    Trial
  18. Trial
  19. Trial
  20. Stress and cardiovascular disease: Testing a vigilance pathway in two contemporary theories.Health psychology : official journal of the Division of Health Psychology, American Psychological Association · 2026
    Article

153 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.

4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

1 author.

Kenneth J RothmanResearch Triangle Institute, Research Triangle Park, NC, USA, KRothman@rti.org.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Scientific knowledge changes rapidly, but the concepts and methods of the conduct of research change more slowly. To stimulate discussion of outmoded thinking regarding the conduct of research, I list six misconceptions about research that persist long after their flaws have become apparent. The misconceptions are: 1) There is a hierarchy of study designs; randomized trials provide the greatest validity, followed by cohort studies, with case-control studies being least reliable. 2) An essential element for valid generalization is that the study subjects constitute a representative sample of a target population. 3) If a term that denotes the product of two factors in a regression model is not statistically significant, then there is no biologic interaction between those factors. 4) When categorizing a continuous variable, a reasonable scheme for choosing category cut-points is to use percentile-defined boundaries, such as quartiles or quintiles of the distribution. 5) One should always report P values or confidence intervals that have been adjusted for multiple comparisons. 6) Significance testing is useful and important for the interpretation of data. These misconceptions have been perpetuated in journals, classrooms and textbooks. They persist because they represent intellectual shortcuts that avoid more thoughtful approaches to research problems. I hope that calling attention to these misconceptions will spark the debates needed to shelve these outmoded ideas for good.

Indexed as

Research DesignBiomedical ResearchData Interpretation, StatisticalHumansReproducibility of ResultsSample Size

Identifiers

PMID24452418
PMCPMC4061362

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
LicenceCC BY
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

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.