ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2020
P-hacking in clinical trials and how incentives shape the distribution of results across phases.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 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
16 citing papers in PubMed.
- Use of Bayesian Statistics to Reanalyze Data From the Pragmatic Randomized Optimal Platelet and Plasma Ratios Trial.JAMA network open · 2023Trial
- Covariate adjustment in randomized clinical trials: From general theory to practical insights.Clinical trials (London, England) · 2026Review
- A literature review and reflection on clinical trials: current challenges, future directions, and potential strategies to overcome practical barriers.AME clinical trials review · 2026Article
- What is critical metascience and why is it important?Frontiers in psychology · 2026Review
- Treatment allocation in ophthalmological randomised-control trials (TAO-RCT): A cross-sectional meta-research study.Eye (London, England) · 2025Article
- Discrepancies in reported results between trial registries and journal articles for AI clinical research.EClinicalMedicine · 2025Article
- The null hypothesis significance test and the dichotomization of the p-value: Errare Humanum Est.Revista peruana de medicina experimental y salud publica · 2025Review
- Advances, Overuse, and Shared Decision-Making in Abdominal Wall Surgery.Journal of abdominal wall surgery : JAWS · 2025Article
- Algorithmic emergence? Epistemic in/justice in AI-directed transformations of healthcare.Frontiers in sociology · 2025Review
- Article
- Evidence of questionable research practices in clinical prediction models.BMC medicine · 2023Article
- Ensconcing a biostatistics clinic in tertiary care research institute of India: A descriptive study.Journal of family medicine and primary care · 2022Article
- Analysis of 567,758 randomized controlled trials published over 30 years reveals trends in phrases used to discuss results that do not reach statistical significance.PLoS biology · 2022Article
- Article
- P-hacking in clinical trials and how incentives shape the distribution of results across phases.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2020Article
- Assessing the Utility of artificial intelligence in endometriosis: Promises and pitfalls.Women's health (London, England)Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Clinical research should conform to high standards of ethical and scientific integrity, given that human lives are at stake. However, economic incentives can generate conflicts of interest for investigators, who may be inclined to withhold unfavorable results or even tamper with data in order to achieve desired outcomes. To shed light on the integrity of clinical trial results, this paper systematically analyzes the distribution of
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.