Not at all surprising, but I'm very glad someone did this work, if only to generate more discussion and some real data to put to this. I know from chatting with colleagues both inside and outside my institution that we all have at least one of these stories.
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Andrew D. Althouse, PhD
Assistant Professor of Medicine
Center for Research on Health Care Data Center (CRHC-DC)
Center for Clinical Trials & Data Coordination (CCDC)
University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine
200 Meyran Avenue, Suite 300
Pittsburgh, PA 15213
Email:
ada62@pitt.eduTwitter: @ADAlthousePhD
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Original Message:
Sent: 10-10-2018 21:05
From: Francois Dion
Subject: Survey from Annals of Internal Medicine
"Of 522 consulting biostatisticians contacted, 390 provided sufficient responses: a completion rate of 74.7%. The 4 most frequently reported inappropriate requests rated as "most severe" by at least 20% of the respondents were, in order of frequency, removing or altering some data records to better support the research hypothesis; interpreting the statistical findings on the basis of expectation, not actual results; not reporting the presence of key missing data that might bias the results; and ignoring violations of assumptions that would change results from positive to negative. These requests were reported most often by younger biostatisticians."
Link to full article:
Researcher Requests for Inappropriate Analysis and Reporting: A U.S. Survey of Consulting Biostatisticians
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Francois Dion
Chief Data Scientist
Dion Research LLC
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