Sloppy studies'wasting time'

摘要

The battle against antibiotic resistance is being hampered by the grossly inadequate analytical techniques used by some medical researchers. After reviewing research on antibiotic resistance from 1980 onwards, a team led by Peter Davey at the University of Dundee has concluded that many researchers fail to meet even the minimum standards required to make their research useful. "Seventy per cent of what is published is a waste of time," says Davey. To test whether medical intervention or a new way of dealing with antibiotic resistance lowers the rate of infection or antibiotic resistance, researchers plot their results on a graph. But before they begin they need to collect a minimum of three previous data points, so that they have a baseline against which they can measure the effectiveness of their intervention.