ArticleBMC oral health2025
Some misinterpretations of Inferential statistics in dental public health literature.
Article in BMC oral health, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
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
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
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
objectivesInferential statistics such as p-values and confidence intervals (CIs) are ubiquitously used in research studies. Still, researchers can incorrectly interpret them, impacting the validity and utility of the respective results. The aim was to quantify how often studies commit one incorrect interpretation, dichotomization, in the dental public health literature.
methodsThe authors carried out an electronic search using PubMed to extract original papers published in 2018/2019/2023 (either online or in print) in five dental public health journals. Four trained and calibrated reviewers extracted information from the abstract and main text on the following: reporting any p-value (Yes/No), reporting p-value as inequality (Yes/No/NA), reporting non-significant p-value (Yes/No/Not applicable (NA)), reporting any confidence interval (Yes/No), reporting non-significant confidence interval (Yes/No/NA), and concluding there is no association because the p-value or confidence intervals were not-significant (Yes/No). In addition, investigators extracted if studies explicitly reported that p < 0.05 was considered significant.
resultsThe results indicate that p-values were reported more frequently than CIs in both the abstract and main text. The majority of studies interpreted non-significant p-values or CIs to mean no association or no effect in their main text. Also, non-significant p-values and CIs were less frequently reported in abstracts compared to the main text. These findings varied across the five dental public health journals, but were less notably changed by the print publication year.
conclusionThe results of this paper showed that some common misconceptions about p-values and CIs still linger in the dental public health literature after seven years had passed since warnings against such practices. More advanced training may be needed to overcome the issues with p-values, confidence interval reporting, and interpretation.
Indexed as
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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.