Letter

Confidence intervals should be used in reporting trials

BMJ 2000; 321 doi: 10.1136/bmj.321.7272.1351 (Published 25 November 2000)
Cite this as: BMJ 2000;321:1351.1

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  1. Martin Bland, professor of medical statistics
  1. Department of Public Health Sciences, St George's Hospital Medical School, London SW17 0RE

    EDITOR—The dispute between Barber and Thompson,1 who are advocating a t test, and Williams, Cohen, and Russell, who are advocating a Mann-Whitney U test,2 has its roots in the use of P values rather than confidence intervals. If Williams et al had reported their results as a confidence interval for the difference in mean cost, as recommended for the results of clinical trials published in the BMJ, the question would not have arisen. The sample …

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