John Ioannidis, the “scourge of sloppy science” has documented again and again that the safeguards being introduced into the biomedical literature against untrustworthy findings are usually inconsistent and ineffective. In Ioannidis’ most recent report , his group:
…Assessed the current status of reproducibility and transparency addressing these indicators in a random sample of 441 biomedical journal articles published in 2000–2014. Only one study provided a full protocol and none made all raw data directly available.
As reported in a recent post in Retraction Watch, Did a clinical trial proceed as planned? New project finds out, Psychiatrist Ben Goldacre has a new project with
…The relatively straightforward task of comparing reported outcomes from clinical trials to what the researchers said they planned to measure before the trial began. And what they’ve found is a bit sad, albeit not entirely surprising.
Ben Goldacre specifically excludes trials of psychotherapy from this project. But there are reasons to believe that the psychotherapy literature is less trustworthy than the biomedical literature because psychotherapy trials are less frequently registered, adherence to CONSORT reporting standards is less strict, and investigators more routinely refuse to share data when requested.
Untrustworthiness in the psychotherapy literature can have important consequences for patients, clinical practice, and public health and social policy.
[For more of this story go to http://blogs.plos.org/mindtheb...-intervention-trial/]
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