Trial reportBMJ open2017
Influence of overstated abstract conclusions on clinicians: a web-based randomised controlled trial.
Trial report in BMJ open, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers.
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
7 citing papers in PubMed.
- Trial
- Effect of Recruitment Methods on Response Rate in a Web-Based Study for Primary Care Physicians: Factorial Randomized Controlled Trial.Journal of medical Internet research · 2018Trial
- Misleading readers without lies: understanding spin and its relevance to acupuncture research.Integrative medicine research · 2026Article
- Article
- Adaptation of the Japanese Version of the 12-Item Attitudes Towards Artificial Intelligence Scale for Medical Trainees: Multicenter Development and Validation Study.JMIR medical education · 2026Article
- Translating and Validating the Japanese Version of the Tolerance for Ambiguity Scale.Medical science educator · 2025Article
- Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectivesTo investigate whether overstatements in abstract conclusions influence primary care physicians' evaluations when they read reports of randomised controlled trials (RCTs)
designRCT setting: This study was a parallel-group randomised controlled survey, conducted online while masking the study hypothesis.
participantsVolunteers were recruited from members of the Japan Primary Care Association in January 2017. We sent email invitations to 7040 primary care physicians. Among the 787 individuals who accessed the website, 622 were eligible and automatically randomised into 'without overstatement' (n=307) and 'with overstatement' (n=315) groups.
interventionsWe selected five abstracts from published RCTs with at least one non-significant primary outcome and overstatement in the abstract conclusion. To construct a version without overstatement, we rewrote the conclusion sections. The methods and results sections were standardised to provide the necessary information of primary outcome information when it was missing in the original abstract. Participants were randomly assigned to read an abstract either with or without overstatements and asked to evaluate the benefit of the intervention. OUTCOME MEASURES: The primary outcome was the participants' evaluation of the benefit of the intervention discussed in the abstract, on a scale from 0 to 10. A secondary outcome was the validity of the conclusion.
resultsThere was no significant difference between the groups with respect to their evaluation of the benefit of the intervention (mean difference: 0.07, 95% CI -0.28 to 0.42, p=0.69). Participants in the 'without' group considered the study conclusion to be more valid than those in the 'with' group (mean difference: 0.97, 95% CI 0.59 to 1.36, P<0.001).
conclusionThe overstatements in abstract conclusions did not significantly influence the primary care physicians' evaluations of the intervention effect when necessary information about the primary outcomes was distinctly reported. TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER: UMIN000025317; Pre-results.
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What 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.