In article <119D55D6D69FD011AB9B000092966BB4AABD13@EXCHANGE2>, Simon,
Steve, PhD <[log in to unmask]> writes
>Mark Fenton writes:
>
>>Much of the statistics are presented confusingly. For
>>example, in graphs which don't say anything and don't
>>allow you to extract data from them; in trials where
>>the drop out rate is greater than 50% and then don't
>>report on which group they were in; trials which don't
>>report on patients they randomised. I think what I'm
>>getting at is any confusion is not all yours. Trialist's
>>and Journals print articles which are confusing, (albeit
>>some are improving)
>
>In a journal club article that I recently read, I noticed some similar
>problems.
>
>
Large cut
>
>I hope this is not too far off-topic. If you send me examples privately, I
>will summarize them for this list.
>
Dear All,
>From the perspective of author, such apparent inconsistencies can arise
when attempting to squeeze a lot of study into a little paper! The
temptation is to avoid any repetition between tables and text, and even
to put another variant of the summary statistics in the abstract. Major
journals seem to be pushing authors to shorter and shorter papers,
making it very difficult to put all the findings in one paper. This
also causes difficulties for reviewers.
Does anyone agree?
--
Ian Bowns
Senior Research Fellow
Health Policy and Management
School of Health and Related Research (ScHARR)
University of Sheffield
Regent Court
30 Regent Street
Sheffield
S1 4DA
Tel; +44 (0)114 2220742
Fax; +44 (0)114 2220798
E-mail; [log in to unmask] (work)
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