The new normal? Redaction bias in biomedical science

A concerning amount of biomedical research is not reproducible. Unreliable results impede empirical progress in medical science, ultimately putting patients at risk. Many proximal causes of this irreproducibility have been identified, a major one being inappropriate statistical methods and analytica...

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Autores principales:	David Robert Grimes, James Heathers
Formato:	article
Lenguaje:	EN
Publicado:	The Royal Society 2021
Materias:	redaction bias biomedical replication statistics hypothesis testing Science Q
Acceso en línea:	https://doaj.org/article/63eed035398243f2bf1ef5acb8ce3073
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spelling	oai:doaj.org-article:63eed035398243f2bf1ef5acb8ce30732021-12-01T08:05:33ZThe new normal? Redaction bias in biomedical science10.1098/rsos.2113082054-5703https://doaj.org/article/63eed035398243f2bf1ef5acb8ce30732021-12-01T00:00:00Zhttps://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.211308https://doaj.org/toc/2054-5703A concerning amount of biomedical research is not reproducible. Unreliable results impede empirical progress in medical science, ultimately putting patients at risk. Many proximal causes of this irreproducibility have been identified, a major one being inappropriate statistical methods and analytical choices by investigators. Within this, we formally quantify the impact of inappropriate redaction beyond a threshold value in biomedical science. This is effectively truncation of a dataset by removing extreme data points, and we elucidate its potential to accidentally or deliberately engineer a spurious result in significance testing. We demonstrate that the removal of a surprisingly small number of data points can be used to dramatically alter a result. It is unknown how often redaction bias occurs in the broader literature, but given the risk of distortion to the literature involved, we suggest that it must be studiously avoided, and mitigated with approaches to counteract any potential malign effects to the research quality of medical science.David Robert GrimesJames HeathersThe Royal Societyarticleredactionbiasbiomedicalreplicationstatisticshypothesis testingScienceQENRoyal Society Open Science, Vol 8, Iss 12 (2021)
institution	DOAJ
collection	DOAJ
language	EN
topic	redaction bias biomedical replication statistics hypothesis testing Science Q
spellingShingle	redaction bias biomedical replication statistics hypothesis testing Science Q David Robert Grimes James Heathers The new normal? Redaction bias in biomedical science
description	A concerning amount of biomedical research is not reproducible. Unreliable results impede empirical progress in medical science, ultimately putting patients at risk. Many proximal causes of this irreproducibility have been identified, a major one being inappropriate statistical methods and analytical choices by investigators. Within this, we formally quantify the impact of inappropriate redaction beyond a threshold value in biomedical science. This is effectively truncation of a dataset by removing extreme data points, and we elucidate its potential to accidentally or deliberately engineer a spurious result in significance testing. We demonstrate that the removal of a surprisingly small number of data points can be used to dramatically alter a result. It is unknown how often redaction bias occurs in the broader literature, but given the risk of distortion to the literature involved, we suggest that it must be studiously avoided, and mitigated with approaches to counteract any potential malign effects to the research quality of medical science.
format	article
author	David Robert Grimes James Heathers
author_facet	David Robert Grimes James Heathers
author_sort	David Robert Grimes
title	The new normal? Redaction bias in biomedical science
title_short	The new normal? Redaction bias in biomedical science
title_full	The new normal? Redaction bias in biomedical science
title_fullStr	The new normal? Redaction bias in biomedical science
title_full_unstemmed	The new normal? Redaction bias in biomedical science
title_sort	new normal? redaction bias in biomedical science
publisher	The Royal Society
publishDate	2021
url	https://doaj.org/article/63eed035398243f2bf1ef5acb8ce3073
work_keys_str_mv	AT davidrobertgrimes thenewnormalredactionbiasinbiomedicalscience AT jamesheathers thenewnormalredactionbiasinbiomedicalscience AT davidrobertgrimes newnormalredactionbiasinbiomedicalscience AT jamesheathers newnormalredactionbiasinbiomedicalscience
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The new normal? Redaction bias in biomedical science

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