• Eur. J. Obstet. Gynecol. Reprod. Biol. · Jun 2020

    Editorial

    Data integrity of 35 randomised controlled trials in women' health.

    • Esmée M Bordewijk, Rui Wang, Lisa M Askie, Lyle C Gurrin, Jim G Thornton, Madelon van Wely, Wentao Li, and Ben W Mol.
    • Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Monash University, Clayton, Australia; Centre for Reproductive Medicine, Amsterdam UMC, Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Electronic address: e.m.bordewijk@amsterdamumc.nl.
    • Eur. J. Obstet. Gynecol. Reprod. Biol. 2020 Jun 1; 249: 72-83.

    AbstractWhile updating a systematic review on the topic of ovulation of induction, we observed unusual similarities in a number of randomised controlled trials (RCTs) published by two authors from the same institute in the same disease spectrum in a short period of time. We therefore undertook a focused analysis of the data integrity of all RCTs published by the two authors. We made pairwise comparisons to find identical or similar values in baseline characteristics and outcome tables between trials. We also assessed whether baseline characteristics were compatible with chance, using Monte Carlo simulations and Kolmogorov-Smirnov test. For 35 trials published between September 2006 and January 2016, we found a large number of similarities in both the baseline characteristics and outcomes of 26. Analysis of the baseline characteristics of the trials indicated that their distribution was unlikely to be the result of proper randomisation. The procedures demonstrated in this paper may help to assess data integrity in future attempts to verify the authenticity of published RCTs.Copyright © 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

      Pubmed     Full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…