BMJ  2005;331:638 (17 September), doi:10.1136/bmj.331.7517.638

Letter

Review of publication bias in studies on publication bias

Meta-research on publication bias does not help transfer research results to patient care

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

Editor—Dubben and Beck-Bornholdt conclude that there is no evidence of publication bias in reports on publication bias.¹ Apart from the fact that funnel plots should be used only as a "tool" and not a "rule" in the evaluation of publication bias,² I question whether such "meta-research" really helps to improve patient care or facilitates the applicability of research results.

Systematic reviews help to improve patient care since pooling of appropriate data sometimes enables us to see the results without the noise of the random play of chance. All sources of bias are a potential threat to the credibility of meta-analyses. Despite efforts to ensure that the set of trials used in meta-analyses is a non-biased sample of all existing studies, a recent analysis on studies in the Cochrane database finds that publication bias may be present to some degree in about 50% of meta-analyses and strongly indicated in about 20%.³

. . . [Full text of this article]

Department of Anaesthesiology, University Hospital of Würzburg (Germany), Oberdürrbacher Strasse 6, D-97080 Würzburg, Germany kranke_p@klinik.uni-wuerzburg.de

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