BMJ  2005;331:637-638 (17 September), doi:10.1136/bmj.331.7517.637-c

Letter

Review of publication bias in studies on publication bias

Studies on publication bias are probably susceptible to the bias they study

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Editor—The empirical evidence about the existence of publication bias is comparatively certain, although the direction and extent of specific types of publication related biases and the consequences of publication bias are much less convincing.¹

Questioning whether studies on publication bias themselves suffer from the bias they studied is reasonable. Dubben and Beck-Bornholdt used a funnel plot to tackle this issue and found no evidence of publication bias in studies of publication bias.² Although their short article is readable and interesting, they acknowledge that the analysis is handicapped by insufficient power (with only 26 included studies) and also by the diverse definitions of publication bias in the primary studies. However, the study has other, more important, limitations.

Firstly, the design may not be appropriate. The ideal and most robust design would be to directly compare the findings of published and unpublished studies on publication bias, although it may be difficult, if . . . [Full text of this article]

Institute of Health, University of East Anglia, Norwich, NR4 7TJ fujian.song@uea.ac.uk

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Systematic review of publication bias in studies on publication bias

Hans-Hermann Dubben and Hans-Peter Beck-Bornholdt
BMJ 2005 331: 433-434. [Extract] [Full Text] [PDF]

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