ArticlePloS one2020
How often do leading biomedical journals use statistical experts to evaluate statistical methods? The results of a survey.
Article in PloS one, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 25 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
25 citing papers in PubMed.
- Improving peer review of systematic reviews and related review types by involving librarians and information specialists as methodological peer reviewers: a randomised controlled trial.BMJ evidence-based medicine · 2025Trial
- Statistical Competence and Editorial Policies in Biomedical Publications.Journal of Korean medical science · 2026Review
- Statistical reviewing for a medical journal: summary of workshop proceedings.Research integrity and peer review · 2026Article
- Key statistical recommendations for medical journals: insights from the Global Burden of Disease Study Collaborators.International journal of medical sciences · 2026Article
- Article
- The present and future of peer review: Ideas, interventions, and evidence.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Clinical Research Primer for Medical Students: Behind the Curtain, a Framework on Peer Review for Trainees.Journal of neurological surgery reports · 2025Article
- Opening the black box of article retractions: exploring the causes and consequences of data management errors.Royal Society open science · 2024Article
- Article
- Peer review of clinical and translational research manuscripts: Perspectives from statistical collaborators.Journal of clinical and translational science · 2024Review
- PNAS establishes a Statistical Review Committee.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- ChatGPT's Skills in Statistical Analysis Using the Example of Allergology: Do We Have Reason for Concern?Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- Replication and Reproducibility and the Self-Correction of Science: What CanJID innovations : skin science from molecules to population health · 2023Article
- An Interactive Module to Teach Common Biostatistical Tests to Learners in the Health Professions.Cureus · 2023Article
- Thirty-year survey of bibliometrics used in the research literature of pain: Analysis, evolution, and pitfalls.Frontiers in pain research (Lausanne, Switzerland) · 2023Review
- Reconsidering evidence-based management of endometriosis.Facts, views & vision in ObGyn · 2022Article
- Statistical recomendations for the authors of manuscripts submitted to the Journal of Cancer Research and Clinical Oncology.Journal of cancer research and clinical oncology · 2022Article
- Article
- COVID-19 research: quality of biostatistics.Archives of medical science : AMS · 2022Article
- 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
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Scientific claims in biomedical research are typically derived from statistical analyses. However, misuse or misunderstanding of statistical procedures and results permeate the biomedical literature, affecting the validity of those claims. One approach journals have taken to address this issue is to enlist expert statistical reviewers. How many journals do this, how statistical review is incorporated, and how its value is perceived by editors is of interest. Here we report an expanded version of a survey conducted more than 20 years ago by Goodman and colleagues (1998) with the intention of characterizing contemporary statistical review policies at leading biomedical journals. We received eligible responses from 107 of 364 (28%) journals surveyed, across 57 fields, mostly from editors in chief. 34% (36/107) rarely or never use specialized statistical review, 34% (36/107) used it for 10-50% of their articles and 23% used it for all articles. These numbers have changed little since 1998 in spite of dramatically increased concern about research validity. The vast majority of editors regarded statistical review as having substantial incremental value beyond regular peer review and expressed comparatively little concern about the potential increase in reviewing time, cost, and difficulty identifying suitable statistical reviewers. Improved statistical education of researchers and different ways of employing statistical expertise are needed. Several proposals are discussed.
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.