JAMA : the journal of the American Medical Association
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Cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factors are higher among ethnic minority women than among white women in the United States. However, because ethnic minority women are disproportionately poor, socioeconomic status (SES) may substantially explain these risk factor differences. ⋯ These findings provide the greatest evidence to date of higher CVD risk factors among black and Mexican American women than among white women of comparable SES. The striking differences by both ethnicity and SES underscore the critical need to improve screening, early detection, and treatment of CVD-related conditions for black and Mexican American women, as well as for women of lower SES in all ethnic groups.
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This study examined the impact of retracted articles on biomedical communication. ⋯ Retracted articles continue to be cited as valid work in the biomedical literature after publication of the retraction; these citations signal potential problems for biomedical science.
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Editorial management of articles on health economics may benefit from guidelines for peer review and revision. ⋯ Publication of the guidelines helped the BMJ editors improve the efficiency of the editorial process but had no impact on the quality of economics evaluations submitted or published.
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Randomized Controlled Trial Clinical Trial
Does masking author identity improve peer review quality? A randomized controlled trial. PEER Investigators.
All authors may not be equal in the eyes of reviewers. Specifically, well-known authors may receive less objective (poorer quality) reviews. One study at a single journal found a small improvement in review quality when reviewers were masked to author identity. ⋯ Masking reviewers to author identity as commonly practiced does not improve quality of reviews. Since manuscripts of well-known authors are more difficult to mask, and those manuscripts may be more likely to benefit from masking, the inability to mask reviewers to the identity of well-known authors may have contributed to the lack of effect.
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Studies with positive results are more likely to be published in biomedical journals than are studies with negative results. However, many studies submitted for consideration at scientific meetings are never published in full; bias in this setting is poorly studied. ⋯ Positive-outcome bias was evident when studies were submitted for consideration and was amplified in the selection of abstracts for both presentation and publication, neither of which was strongly related to study design or quality.