Category Archives: News & research

Reproducibility: The Transparency and Openness Promotion Guidelines

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In a previous post, we profiled the EQUATOR network and reporting guidelines. These guidelines stress transparency in reporting study methods, and most are relevant to study designs in clinical research, such as randomised controlled trials, epidemiological studies and systematic reviews. Taking a different vein, the Transparency and Openness Promotion (TOP) Guidelines were developed to enhance transparency in reporting of study

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Fixing statistics

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Statistics are not broken. The problem lies with how scientists use, interpret and report them. At the end of 2017, Nature asked five influential statisticians to recommend a key change that would improve science. Adjust for human cognition The first change was proposed by Jeff Leek of the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, and it is based on the

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The dark side of competition in science

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Competition in science is ever increasing. Research funds are harder to come by and positions have increasing number of applicants. Being the first to publish a result has a disproportionately large impact on prestige and advancement. These problems were already present a decade ago when Anderson et al. (2007) published their paper entitled The perverse effects of competition on scientists’

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Reproducible research practices are underused in systematic reviews of biomedical interventions

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Researchers are increasingly encouraged to implement reproducible research practices in their work. These practices include describing the data collected and used for analysis in detail, clearly reporting the analysis method and results, and sharing the dataset and statistical or analysis code. To determine how well reproducible research practices are implemented, Page and colleagues (2017) investigated their implementation in systematic reviews

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The Critical thinking and Appraisal Resource library (CARL) to understand and assess treatment claims

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Every day, we are confronted by claims about effects of treatments, many of which are not supported by evidence and are misleading. It is easy to overestimate the benefits of treatments and to underestimate their potential risks, without knowing how to accurately assess claims about treatments. To address these problems, Castle and colleagues developed the Critical thinking and Appraisal Resource

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