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EDITORIALS: Trish Groves Enhancing the quality and transparency of health research BMJ 2008; 337: a718 [Full text]

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Can better reporting prevent publication bias and improve quality of trials?

Timur Y. Aripov   (20 July 2008)

Can better reporting prevent publication bias and improve quality of trials? 20 July 2008
Timur Y. Aripov, Senior teacher of Health management department Tashkent Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education, Tashkent 700007, Uzbekistan Send response to journal: Re: Can better reporting prevent publication bias and improve quality of trials?	One can say a lot about the quality of published trials and the ways of improving it. Unifying criteria for authors worldwide by CONSORT guide or another is high-minded idea. Today we know that eighty reporting guidelines were presented since 1970s (http://www.equator- network.org/index.aspx?o=1177) and all with own weakness. The evolution of reporting, stated in EQUATOR, resulted in creating better guidelines but, if so, can we say that it will prevent bias in publishing and/or improve the quality of trials? The problem of bias in publishing positive, significant results is documented (1,2) though, hope so, none of checklists included “has your study found the positive or significant effect of intervention” item. The CONSORT definitely does not, bias most likely exists. This state motivate authors submit only significant, even fabricated, results that, in turn, lead to increasing the journal citation impact factor. This “circulus vicious” demolition is seems to be over the power of good reporting. So the main issue of resource such EQUATOR should not be in improving reporting by collecting guidelines in biased environment. In CONSORT checklist’s item 7a (http://www.consort-statement.org/index.aspx?o=1024) is said: “Reports of studies with small samples frequently include the erroneous conclusion that the intervention groups do not differ, when too few patients were studied to make such a claim”. It seems to be “good” reason for authors to make sample small and, conforming the bias, to show more significant results. The danger of “internal bias” in any guide is still preserved. The role of EQUATOR in this time should be in integrating the world research area with the target to improve true, not only reported, quality of researches. The guides can be changed, the methodology of trial does not. Often authors, especially from developing countries, need in detailed describing of trials steps and using the tools, i.e. to have “cook book”, but do not know how to get. The ignorance of makes them potential “victims” of all sort biases. Reporting guides cannot provide all this information, the EQUATOR could. In this context one can raise another point concerning the lower proportion of articles from low income countries than from developed ones (3) that seems to come from view that research methods there are unsystematic and not transparent. In many ways it was true in past but raising the “evidence-based medicine” is making positive impact, so articles of authors from those countries should have the equal chance to be published. References 1.Easterbrook PJ, Berlin JA, Gopalan R, Matthews DR: Publication bias in clinical research. Lancet 1991, 337:867-872 2.Ioannidis JP. Some main problems eroding the credibility and relevance of randomized trials. Bull NYU Hosp Jt Dis. 2008;66(2):135-9. 3.Yousefi-Nooraie R, Shakiba B, Mortaz-Hejri S. Country development and manuscript selection bias: a review of published studies. BMC Med Res Methodol. 2006 Aug 1;6:37. Competing interests: None declared