OBJECTIVES To determine the effectiveness of interventions designed to prevent or reduce publication and related biases. STUDY DESIGN AND SETTING We searched multiple databases and performed manual searches using terms related to publication bias and known interventions against publication bias. We dually reviewed citations and assessed risk of bias. We synthesized results by intervention and...

BACKGROUND Health professionals and policymakers aspire to make healthcare decisions based on the entire relevant research evidence. This, however, can rarely be achieved because a considerable amount of research findings are not published, especially in case of 'negative' results - a phenomenon widely recognized as publication bias. Different methods of detecting, quantifying and adjusting for...

BACKGROUND Randomised controlled trials (RCTs) represent the gold standard methodological design to evaluate the effectiveness of an intervention in humans but they are subject to bias, including study publication bias and outcome reporting bias. National and international organisations and charities give recommendations for good research practice in relation to RCTs but to date no review of th...

BACKGROUND Funnel plots are widely used to investigate possible publication bias in meta-analyses. There has, however, been little formal assessment of whether a visual inspection of a funnel plot is sufficient to identify publication bias. METHODS Visual assessment of bias in a funnel plot is quantified using two new statistics: the Imbalance and the Asymmetry Distance, both intended to repl...

normal 0 false false false en-us x-none ar-sa previous studies have inspected the associations between adiponectin (adipoq) 276g/t polymorphisms and atherosclerosis, but the results are inconclusive. the aim of this study was to explore the relationship between polymorphism +276 g > t (rs1501299) in adipoq and atherosclerosis. a widespread search was directed to identify all studies on the asso...

BACKGROUND Despite efforts to assure high methodological standards, systematic reviews may be affected by publication bias. The objective of this study was to evaluate the occurrence of publication bias in a collection of high quality systematic reviews on reproductive health. METHODS Systematic reviews included in the Reproductive Health Library (RHL), issue No 9, were assessed. Funnel plot ...

Publication bias is prevalent within the scientific literature. Whilst there are multiple ideas on how to reduce publication bias, only a minority of journals have made substantive changes to address the problem. We aimed to explore the perceived feasibility of strategies to reduce publication bias by gauging opinions of journal editors (n = 73) and other academics/researchers (n = 160) regardi...

Systematic reviews are used to assess and summarize research, and therefore are instrumental to decision-making in public health and health promotion policy and practice. The validity of the results of a systematic review is highly dependent on the data collection methods used. This includes a systematic search to locate all relevant studies, which is often a difficult and challenging task. A g...

Publication bias may exist when nonsignificant findings remain unpublished, thereby artificially inflating the apparent magnitude of an effect. This concern is not new, but it is particularly current in relation to genetic association studies. Data from a recent meta-analysis of association studies of personality were used to assess the potential of different graphical and statistical methods f...