Review of publication bias in studies on publication bias: Mandatory publication of data may help

doi:10.1136/bmj.331.7517.638-b

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

Letter

Review of publication bias in studies on publication bias

Mandatory publication of data may help

The first 100% of the full text of this article appears below.

Editor—Glymour and Kawachi suggest a modest proposal toreduce publication bias, reviewed by Dubben and Beck-Bornholdt.¹Their suggestion is indeed modest because many statisticallyinsignificant or negative studies are not necessarily submittedto a medical journal for publication.

The only effective solution would be mandatory registrationof all trials in a centralised website before the trial starts,with mandatory publication of the raw data on that centralisedwebsite irrespective of whether the trialists submit their resultsto a medical journal for publication. That solution would allowmeta-analysts to collect data from all relevant studies andnot only studies published in medical journals.

Jeffrey Mann, retired physician

Salt Lake City, UT 84103, USA jmannemg@earthlink.net

Competing interests: None declared.

Dubben HH, Beck-Bornholdt HP. Systematic review of publication bias in studies on publication bias. BMJ 2005; 331: 433-4. (20-27 August.)[Free Full Text]

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Systematic review of publication bias in studies on publication bias: Hans-Hermann Dubben and Hans-Peter Beck-Bornholdt
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