ArticleTrials2018
Caveat emptor: the combined effects of multiplicity and selective reporting.
Article in Trials, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers, 1 of them a synthesis 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
7 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Digital Devices for Assessing Motor Functions in Mobility-Impaired and Healthy Populations: Systematic Literature Review.Journal of medical Internet research · 2022Pooled it
- Advances in clinical and translational research in endodontics: A comprehensive overview.Brazilian dental journal · 2025Review
- Conducting separate reviews of benefits and harms could improve systematic reviews and meta-analyses.Systematic reviews · 2023Article
- Moving Toward Transparent, Open, and Reproducible Prevention Science: Introduction to the Special Issue.Prevention science : the official journal of the Society for Prevention Research · 2022Article
- Harms in Systematic Reviews Paper 3: Given the same data sources, systematic reviews of gabapentin have different results for harms.Journal of clinical epidemiology · 2022Article
- Harms in Systematic Reviews Paper 1: An introduction to research on harms.Journal of clinical epidemiology · 2022Article
- Investigation of Risk Of Bias due to Unreported and SelecTively included results in meta-analyses of nutrition research: the ROBUST study protocol.F1000Research · 2019Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Clinical trials and systematic reviews of clinical trials inform healthcare decisions. There is growing concern, however, about results from clinical trials that cannot be reproduced. Reasons for nonreproducibility include that outcomes are defined in multiple ways, results can be obtained using multiple methods of analysis, and trial findings are reported in multiple sources ("multiplicity"). Multiplicity combined with selective reporting can influence dissemination of trial findings and decision-making. In particular, users of evidence might be misled by exposure to selected sources and overly optimistic representations of intervention effects. In this commentary, drawing from our experience in the Multiple Data Sources in Systematic Reviews (MUDS) study and evidence from previous research, we offer practical recommendations to enhance the reproducibility of clinical trials and systematic reviews.
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.