corner
Healthy Skepticism
Join us to help reduce harm from misleading health information.
Increase font size   Decrease font size   Print-friendly view   Print
Register Log in

Healthy Skepticism Library item: 19190

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

 

Publication type: Electronic Source

Grant RP
Never knowingly understated
The Scientist: Naturally Selected 2011 Feb 21
http://web.archive.org/web/20110222040258/http://blog.the-scientist.com/2011/02/21/never-knowingly-understated/

Keywords:
ethics, impact factor, Metrics.


Full text:

It’s no big secret that we’re not fans of the journal impact factor. So it’s possibly justified to feel a little smug that overstating conclusions of research is positively correlated with impact factor.

FIG 1, GONON ET AL.

F1000 Member Noam Ziv evaluates a paper on PLoS ONE that looks at the relationship between misleading conclusions as reported in the media and the misrepresentation or overstatement of the underlying data in the literature itself. It doesn’t make for pretty reading:

we speculate that data misrepresentation in the scientific literature might play a part in the distortion of data into misleading conclusions in the media.

With medical research, this isn’t just an intellectual exercise, of course. The authors look at attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and draw the following conclusion (my emphasis):

Unfortunately, data misrepresentation biases the scientific evidence in favor of the first position stating that ADHD is primarily caused by biological factors. Therefore, this misrepresentation does have social consequences regarding ADHD management: it favors medical interventions over prevention and psycho-social interventions.

This ties in with Sir Iain Chalmers’ attack on the way biomedical research is done. It goes beyond simple non-publication of negative (or ‘disappointing’) results, but into the territory of stretching data to say what they don’t want to say. Having said that, it is perhaps understandable, given the pressures of funding and to publish in as high profile journal as possible, that people will overstate their findings.

Understandable, possibly: but when the data so published have real effects on patients’ lives, then we have to ask whether striving to publish into high impact factor journals is in any way ethical.

I’m not convinced it is.

Gonon, F., Bezard, E., & Boraud, T. (2011). Misrepresentation of Neuroscience Data Might Give Rise to Misleading Conclusions in the Media: The Case of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder PLoS ONE, 6 (1) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0014618

 

  Healthy Skepticism on RSS   Healthy Skepticism on Facebook   Healthy Skepticism on Twitter

Please
Click to Register

(read more)

then
Click to Log in
for free access to more features of this website.

Forgot your username or password?

You are invited to
apply for membership
of Healthy Skepticism,
if you support our aims.

Pay a subscription

Support our work with a donation

Buy Healthy Skepticism T Shirts


If there is something you don't like, please tell us. If you like our work, please tell others.

Email a Friend








You are going to have many difficulties. The smokers will not like your message. The tobacco interests will be vigorously opposed. The media and the government will be loath to support these findings. But you have one factor in your favour. What you have going for you is that you are right.
- Evarts Graham
See:
When truth is unwelcome: the first reports on smoking and lung cancer.