BMJ : British medical journal
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To compare the frequency of discrepancies in retracted reports of clinical trials with those in adjacent unretracted reports in the same journal. ⋯ Discrepancies in published trial reports should no longer be assumed to be unimportant. Scientists, blinded to retraction status and with no specialist skill in the field, identify significantly more discrepancies in retracted than unretracted reports of clinical trials. Discrepancies could be an early and accessible signal of unreliability in clinical trial reports.
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To assess the waste of research related to inadequate methods in trials included in Cochrane reviews and to examine to what extent this waste could be avoided. A secondary objective was to perform a simulation study to re-estimate this avoidable waste if all trials were adequately reported. ⋯ An important burden of wasted research is related to inadequate methods. This waste could be partly avoided by simple and inexpensive adjustments.
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To determine the diagnostic and triage accuracy of online symptom checkers (tools that use computer algorithms to help patients with self diagnosis or self triage). ⋯ Symptom checkers had deficits in both triage and diagnosis. Triage advice from symptom checkers is generally risk averse, encouraging users to seek care for conditions where self care is reasonable.