Research methods and reporting

doi:10.1136/bmj.a2201

Published 22 October 2008, doi:10.1136/bmj.a2201
Cite this as: BMJ 2008;337:a2201

Editorials

Research methods and reporting

A new section of the BMJ about how to do and write up research

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

Nearly 15 years ago Doug Altman, the BMJ’s senior statisticaladviser and professor of medical statistics, asked in this journal,"What should we think about researchers who use the wrong techniques(either wilfully or in ignorance), use the right techniqueswrongly, misinterpret their results, report their results selectively,cite the literature selectively, and draw unjustified conclusions?We should be appalled. Yet numerous studies of the medical literature,in both general and specialist journals, have shown that allof the above phenomena are common."¹

Things may have improved somewhat since then, but we still havemuch to do. Like most other medical journal editors, we at theBMJ continue to be dismayed by submissions that describe poorlyconducted studies and by reports of apparently adequate studiesthat are so incomplete and confusingly written that they areimpossible to appraise. Many of these unsatisfactory articlescome from well resourced countries, and . . . [Full text of this article]

Trish Groves, deputy editor

¹ BMJ, London WC1H 9JR

tgroves@bmj.com

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