International journal of epidemiology
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A previous Australian population-based breast cancer case-control study found indirect evidence that control participation, although high, was not random. We hypothesized that unaffected sisters may provide a more appropriate comparison group than unrelated population controls. ⋯ Since participation of population controls might be unintentionally related to some risk factors, we hypothesize that sister controls could provide more valid relative risk estimates and be recruited at lower cost. Given declining study participation by population controls, this contention is highly relevant to epidemiologic research.
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Prestigious journals select for publication studies that are considered most important and informative. We aimed to examine whether high-impact general (HIG) medical journals systematically demonstrate more favourable results for experimental interventions compared with the rest of the literature. ⋯ Small trials published in the most prestigious journals show more favourable effects for experimental interventions, and this is most prominent for early-published trials in such journals. No effect inflation is seen for large trials.