TY - JOUR
T1 - All that glitters isn't gold
T2 - A survey on acknowledgment of limitations in biomedical studies
AU - Ter Riet, Gerben
AU - Chesley, Paula
AU - Gross, Alan G.
AU - Siebeling, Lara
AU - Muggensturm, Patrick
AU - Heller, Nadine
AU - Umbehr, Martin
AU - Vollenweider, Daniela
AU - Yu, Tsung
AU - Akl, Elie A.
AU - Brewster, Lizzy
AU - Dekkers, Olaf M.
AU - Mühlhauser, Ingrid
AU - Richter, Bernd
AU - Singh, Sonal
AU - Goodman, Steven
AU - Puhan, Milo A.
PY - 2013/11/20
Y1 - 2013/11/20
N2 - Background: Acknowledgment of all serious limitations to research evidence is important for patient care and scientific progress. Formal research on how biomedical authors acknowledge limitations is scarce. Objectives: To assess the extent to which limitations are acknowledged in biomedical publications explicitly, and implicitly by investigating the use of phrases that express uncertainty, so-called hedges; to assess the association between industry support and the extent of hedging. Design: We analyzed reporting of limitations and use of hedges in 300 biomedical publications published in 30 high and medium -ranked journals in 2007. Hedges were assessed using linguistic software that assigned weights between 1 and 5 to each expression of uncertainty. Results: Twenty-seven percent of publications (81/300) did not mention any limitations, while 73% acknowledged a median of 3 (range 1-8) limitations. Five percent mentioned a limitation in the abstract. After controlling for confounders, publications on industry-supported studies used significantly fewer hedges than publications not so supported (p = 0.028). Limitations: Detection and classification of limitations was - to some extent - subjective. The weighting scheme used by the hedging detection software has subjective elements. Conclusions: Reporting of limitations in biomedical publications is probably very incomplete. Transparent reporting of limitations may protect clinicians and guideline committees against overly confident beliefs and decisions and support scientific progress through better design, conduct or analysis of new studies.
AB - Background: Acknowledgment of all serious limitations to research evidence is important for patient care and scientific progress. Formal research on how biomedical authors acknowledge limitations is scarce. Objectives: To assess the extent to which limitations are acknowledged in biomedical publications explicitly, and implicitly by investigating the use of phrases that express uncertainty, so-called hedges; to assess the association between industry support and the extent of hedging. Design: We analyzed reporting of limitations and use of hedges in 300 biomedical publications published in 30 high and medium -ranked journals in 2007. Hedges were assessed using linguistic software that assigned weights between 1 and 5 to each expression of uncertainty. Results: Twenty-seven percent of publications (81/300) did not mention any limitations, while 73% acknowledged a median of 3 (range 1-8) limitations. Five percent mentioned a limitation in the abstract. After controlling for confounders, publications on industry-supported studies used significantly fewer hedges than publications not so supported (p = 0.028). Limitations: Detection and classification of limitations was - to some extent - subjective. The weighting scheme used by the hedging detection software has subjective elements. Conclusions: Reporting of limitations in biomedical publications is probably very incomplete. Transparent reporting of limitations may protect clinicians and guideline committees against overly confident beliefs and decisions and support scientific progress through better design, conduct or analysis of new studies.
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U2 - 10.1371/journal.pone.0073623
DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0073623
M3 - Article
C2 - 24324540
AN - SCOPUS:84896718550
SN - 1932-6203
VL - 8
JO - PloS one
JF - PloS one
IS - 11
M1 - e73623
ER -