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Contradictions in Highly Cited Clinical Research—Reply
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In Reply: I fully agree with Dr West that misinterpretation of P values may be at the root of several contradictions of postulated research findings. Indeed, medical research is increasingly conducted with very low prestudy odds of a true finding. This is a major problem in the molecular era of biomedicine that has been pointed out by several methodologists.1-2 I recently extended this framework3 to conclude that, under the current circumstances (considering typical prestudy odds, bias, number of teams working on a topic, and study design features), most published research findings are probably false.
In considering Dr Heckerling's circular arguments about undecidable scientific propositions, it should be acknowledged that there is no perfect gold standard against which to compare any research claim. We simply trust larger and better conducted studies with less bias, but even these may be refuted in the future. The important issue is that we need to . . . [Full Text of this Article]
John P. A. Ioannidis, MD
jioannid@cc.uoi.gr
Department of Hygiene and Epidemiology
University of Ioannina School of Medicine
Ioannina, Greece
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