We would all like to believe that research studies that have been successfully published in highly regarded medical and scientific journals have been so thoroughly vetted prior to publication, that we can readily accept their findings and conclusions. However, as with any other endeavor that is undertaken by humans, flaws in research hypotheses or methodologies, errors in the actual conduct of research, and erroneous conclusions drawn from the resulting research data can all lead research scientists and clinicians astray. It is because of these inherent weaknesses associated with research that standardized checks and balances are supposed to be observed in the conduct of all research studies, in an effort to reduce the risk of bias and error in the conduct of research, and in the analysis of the data that they generate.
Despite all of the safeguards that are supposed to be observed while conducting research, and with research studies involving human subjects in particular, bias and error cannot be completely eliminated in every case, and this reality must be accepted. However, a more worrisome cause of erroneous conclusions in health-related research has been of growing concern to medical journal editors and medical ethicists, lately. While many clinical research studies produce important new findings that improve our understanding of the diagnosis and treatment of human disease, many other studies result in non-significant findings that do not really advance our understanding in any meaningful way. In view of the enormous pressure upon research scientists and clinicians to publish clinically meaningful and statistically significant research findings, it is probably not too surprising to learn that some researchers can succumb to the pressure of fudging their conclusions when their research data fails to yield any clinically (or statistically) significant findings. Although the overly optimistic interpretation of research results by researchers is a well-known phenomenon, the extent to which this routinely occurs has been unclear. Now, a newly published study in the Journal of the American Medical Association reveals the apparent extent to which this disturbing trend contaminates the published findings of clinical research studies.
