Biomedical journals lack a consistent method to detect outcome reporting bias: a cross-sectional analysis
Bibliographic record
Abstract
WHAT IS KNOWN AND OBJECTIVE: An increasing amount of recently published literature has implicated outcome reporting bias (ORB) as a major contributor to skewing data in both randomized controlled trials and systematic reviews; however, little is known about the current methods in place to detect ORB. This study aims to gain insight into the detection and management of ORB by biomedical journals. METHODS: This was a cross-sectional analysis involving standardized questions via email or telephone with the top 30 biomedical journals (2012) ranked by impact factor. The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews was excluded leaving 29 journals in the sample. RESULTS: Of 29 journals, 24 (83%) responded to our initial inquiry of which 14 (58%) answered our questions and 10 (42%) declined participation. Five (36%) of the responding journals indicated they had a specific method to detect ORB, whereas 9 (64%) did not have a specific method in place. The prevalence of ORB in the review process seemed to differ with 4 (29%) journals indicating ORB was found commonly, whereas 7 (50%) indicated ORB was uncommon or never detected by their journal previously. The majority (n = 10/14, 72%) of journals were unwilling to report or make discrepancies found in manuscripts available to the public. Although the minority, there were some journals (n = 4/14, 29%) which described thorough methods to detect ORB. WHAT IS NEW AND CONCLUSION: Many journals seemed to lack a method with which to detect ORB and its estimated prevalence was much lower than that reported in literature suggesting inadequate detection. There exists a potential for overestimation of treatment effects of interventions and unclear risks. Fortunately, there are journals within this sample which appear to utilize comprehensive methods for detection of ORB, but overall, the data suggest improvements at the biomedical journal level for detecting and minimizing the effect of this bias are needed.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Direct model labels (unvalidated)
Per-model category and study-design labels from the labeling rounds. They are machine output, unvalidated, and the disagreement between models ships as data. No study design here is MEDLINE-validated yet.
| Model arm | Categories | Study design | Confidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| gemma | Metaresearch Domain: Reporting · Genre: Empirical About the Canadian research system: no · About a Canadian topic: no | Observational | low |
| gpt | MetaresearchResearch integrity Domain: Reporting · Genre: Empirical About the Canadian research system: no · About a Canadian topic: no | Observational | high |
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.301 | 0.476 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.008 | 0.009 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.006 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedLabeled directly by 2 models reading the full record.
The models disagree on parts of this classification; every voice is preserved in the section at the end of the page.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".