BMJ papers could include honesty box for research warts
BMJ 2004; 328 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.328.7451.1320-c (Published 27 May 2004) Cite this as: BMJ 2004;328:1320
- William T Hamilton, research fellow (w.hamilton{at}bristol.ac.uk),
- David Kessler, research fellow
- Division of Primary Health Care, Department of Community-based Medicine, University of Bristol, Bristol BS6 6JL
EDITOR——The BMJ includes a small box with each paper, summarising the prior knowledge and what the study adds. This is laudable, but inevitably overlaps with the abstract. We suggest an alternative use for a box. We are torn between calling it an honesty box or a confessional box.
The idea is that all research has warts, some ugly, others less so. The ugly ones should be picked up by peer review. The less ugly ones are never seen, remaining only as a twinge of guilt in the researcher's conscience.
Possible examples are:
“Our power calculation—though justified by the literature—wasoptimistic”
“Reference 13 covers similar ground to our study, and we did not know it was in progress when we planned ours”
“We didn't expect finding B, and did the literature search on it after it was discovered.”
Declaration of competing interests does not serve the purpose. We believe that an honesty or a confessional box is in the spirit of genuine scientific inquiry, and it may act as an antidote to spin. It may even help to restore public faith in science.
Confessional/honesty box
This letter may improve our CVs
Footnotes
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Competing interests None declared.