ArticlePloS one2018
Poor statistical reporting, inadequate data presentation and spin persist despite editorial advice.
Article in PloS one, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 42 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
42 citing papers in PubMed.
- Statistical Reporting Quality in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Journals: A Comparative Analysis of SCI-E and TR Indexed Publications.The Eurasian journal of medicine · 2026Article
- TernTables: A Statistical Analysis and Table Generation Web Interface for Clinical and Biomedical Research.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Key statistical recommendations for medical journals: insights from the Global Burden of Disease Study Collaborators.International journal of medical sciences · 2026Article
- Statistical Gems and Cautions From the Statistical Advisory Board of Clinical Oral Implants Research.Clinical oral implants research · 2025Article
- BiInferApp: A Shiny Application for Bidirectional Inference between P-values and Confidence Intervals for epidemiological measures of effects in R software.Malawi medical journal : the journal of Medical Association of Malawi · 2025Article
- The graph construction competency model for biology (GCCM-Bio): A framework for instruction and assessment of graph construction.Bioscience · 2025Article
- Reporting the standard error of the mean: a critical analysis of three journals in manual medicine.Chiropractic & manual therapies · 2025Article
- Spin in the Titles and Abstracts of Allergy and Immunology Randomized Controlled Trials With Nonsignificant Outcomes.Cureus · 2025Review
- Implementation of SAMPL Guidelines in articles submitted to the International Urology and Nephrology: 6 years of experience.International urology and nephrology · 2024Article
- Meta-research on reporting guidelines for artificial intelligence: are authors and reviewers encouraged enough in radiology, nuclear medicine, and medical imaging journals?Diagnostic and interventional radiology (Ankara, Turkey) · 2024Article
- Reviewing research reporting in randomised controlled trials: Confidence andIndian journal of anaesthesia · 2024Article
- Enhancing biostatistics education for medical students in Poland: factors influencing perception and educational recommendations.BMC medical education · 2024Article
- Behind the screen: drug discovery using the big data of phenotypic analysis.Frontiers in education · 2024Article
- ChatGPT's Skills in Statistical Analysis Using the Example of Allergology: Do We Have Reason for Concern?Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- Responsible research practices could be more strongly endorsed by Australian university codes of research conduct.Research integrity and peer review · 2023Article
- A change to Experimental Physiology's statistics policy.Experimental physiology · 2023Article
- Consistency between trials presented at conferences, their subsequent publications and press releases.BMJ evidence-based medicine · 2023Article
- Foundations of plasma standards.Plasma sources science & technology · 2023Article
- Poor statistical reporting, inadequate data presentation and spin persist despite Journal awareness and updatedF1000Research · 2023Article
- 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
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The Journal of Physiology and British Journal of Pharmacology jointly published an editorial series in 2011 to improve standards in statistical reporting and data analysis. It is not known whether reporting practices changed in response to the editorial advice. We conducted a cross-sectional analysis of reporting practices in a random sample of research papers published in these journals before (n = 202) and after (n = 199) publication of the editorial advice. Descriptive data are presented. There was no evidence that reporting practices improved following publication of the editorial advice. Overall, 76-84% of papers with written measures that summarized data variability used standard errors of the mean, and 90-96% of papers did not report exact p-values for primary analyses and post-hoc tests. 76-84% of papers that plotted measures to summarize data variability used standard errors of the mean, and only 2-4% of papers plotted raw data used to calculate variability. Of papers that reported p-values between 0.05 and 0.1, 56-63% interpreted these as trends or statistically significant. Implied or gross spin was noted incidentally in papers before (n = 10) and after (n = 9) the editorial advice was published. Overall, poor statistical reporting, inadequate data presentation and spin were present before and after the editorial advice was published. While the scientific community continues to implement strategies for improving reporting practices, our results indicate stronger incentives or enforcements are needed.
Indexed as
Identifiers
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.