REVIEWERS’ BIAS AGAINST THE NULL HYPOTHESIS: THE REPRODUCTIVE HAZARDS OF BINGE DRINKING
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Keywords
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Abstract
We examined whether scientific reviewers exhibit bias in scoring a simulated “positive” study (i.e. showing adverse fetal effects) as compared to a simulated “negative” study on the fetal effects of binge drinking. The reviewers of the “negative” study tended to reject it more commonly, to give it lower scores, and there was significantly more variability from the median in their scores. Scientific journals should make an effort to eliminate this source of bias against negative results.
References
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2. Koren G, Pastuszak A, Ito S. Drugs in Pregnancy. N Engl J Med 1998; 338: 1128-37.
3. Easterbrook PJ, Berlin JA, Gopalan R, Matthews DR. Publication bias in clinical research. Lancet 1991; 337: 867-72.
4. Hendersen J, Kesmodel U, Gray R. Systematic review of the fetal effects of prenatal bingedrinking. J Epidemiol Community Health 2007;61:1069-73
5. Koren G, Klein N. Bias against negative studies in newspaper reports of medical research. JAMA 1991; 266: 1824-6.
6. Koren G, Graham K, Shear H, Einarson T. Bias against the null hypothesis: the reproductive hazards of cocaine. Lancet 1989; 2: 1440-2.