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http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/05/health/05PEER.html

Journal Sees Fault in Studies

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

HICAGO, June 4 — Having put itself and its competitors under a microscope, The Journal of the American Medical Association is reporting that published studies are sometimes misleading and often fail to mention weaknesses.

In a special issue this Wednesday that is devoted to peer review — the practice of submitting scientific research to outside reviewers to determine whether it should be published — the journal reports that some of the problem can be traced to biases and conflicts of interest among peer reviewers.

Dr. Catherine D. DeAngelis, the editor of the journal, said problems were most likely to occur in research financed by drug companies, which have a vested interest in findings that make their products look good.

Many top journals require researchers to disclose any ties to drug companies. Dr. Jeffrey M. Drazen, editor of The New England Journal of Medicine, said that editors relied on researchers to be truthful about such ties but that he suspected the matter was bungled "from time to time."

One report in the special issue found that studies on new treatments often made misleading use of statistics. The author, Dr. Jim Nuovo of the University of California at Davis, reviewed 359 studies published from 1989 to 1998 in The Journal of the American Medical Association, The New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet, The British Medical Journal and Annals of Internal Medicine.

Dr. Nuovo found that in comparing two sets of patients — those who received a treatment and those who received a placebo — the studies were overwhelmingly more likely to report the relative reduction in risk, rather than the absolute reduction.

For example, if 8 of 100 drug patients had heart attacks compared with 10 of 100 in the placebo group, the absolute reduction would be 2 people, or 2 percent. But the relative risk reduction — 2 from 10 — would be a far more impressive 20 percent.

In another report, Dr. Richard Horton, The Lancet's editor, analyzed 10 research articles published in his journal in 2000 and found that some authors appeared to have censored critical comments from their co-authors.

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