Thread by @bengoldacre

I am very pleased to say that TWO NEW PAPERS are out TODAY from my group.

They represent one of the most challenging, interesting, and exciting projects I have ever been involved in, across my entire 44 years of nerdy life-course.

Ladies and gentlemen: @COMPare_Trials is out..

@COMPare_Trials We sent correction letters on every misreported clinical trial in the world's biggest medical journals, to see how the editors - and the trialists - would react.

What happened next?

trialsjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.11…

trialsjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.11…

...

@COMPare_Trials Let me give some context.

There has been a run of "prankster" research on journals, trying to see if ludicrous papers are accepted for publication by questionable journals (and indeed they are).

Our project was the precise opposite...

.. We set out to test whether the processes of science are working as advertised in the world's biggest, most respected, most serious medical journals.

These journals are all listed as endorsing the CONSORT guidelines, describing how clinical trials should be reported...

.. Our project was simple.

"When a journal is listed as endorsing CONSORT, but publishes a trial report that breaches CONSORT, will they publish a correction letter setting out the breach?"

...

..Post-publication peer review is an important component of the scientific process. There have been previous anecdotal reports of shortcomings around how journals handle individual items of critical correspondence...

But @COMPare_Trials is the first ever study to explore this systematically, a standardised cohort of correction letters on a large systematic sample of misreported scientific studies, assessing how scientific journals curate critical post-publication peer review.

@COMPare_Trials It is also, I would note, the first to systematically assess whether journals will permit open discussion of possible editorial shortcomings.

So: I invite you to please read these papers. They're the best thing I have been involved in this year. They are relevant to researchers in all fields. They are read-able and intelligible to all. And they cover fundamental issues.

trialsjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.11…

trialsjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.11…