Four Proposals to Help Improve the Medical Research Literature

摘要

Biomedical journals have existed for hundreds of years. They are still the most important conduit for researchers to report the methods and results of their research. However, published articles are fraught with problems [1–11]. For nearly a century, concerns have been raised about the prevalence of methodological errors in medical research, especially in relation to statistics [1–4]. More recently, numerous reviews have identified additional widespread deficiencies in the reporting of research. Crucial aspects of study methods and results are frequently missing [5–11]. Transparency and reproducibility of research are essential [12,13]. Making a major impact on the quality of reporting and mitigating deficiencies is a huge challenge because no one group has prime responsibility and no single action is likely to have a large impact.