{"id":852,"date":"2015-05-22T14:57:09","date_gmt":"2015-05-22T14:57:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmjopen\/?p=852"},"modified":"2015-05-22T14:57:09","modified_gmt":"2015-05-22T14:57:09","slug":"should-we-stop-talking-about-negative-results","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmjopen\/2015\/05\/22\/should-we-stop-talking-about-negative-results\/","title":{"rendered":"Should we stop talking about \u2018negative\u2019 results?"},"content":{"rendered":"

 <\/p>\n

BMJ Open<\/em> recently published the results of a major EU-funded project (OPEN)<\/a> investigating the problem of dissemination bias. Also know as publication bias, this is the distortion of the evidence base caused by selective or non-reporting of results. The authors concluded:<\/p>\n

\u2018Despite various recent examples of dissemination bias and several initiatives to reduce it, the problem of dissemination bias has not been resolved.\u2019<\/p>\n

Many journals, including BMJ Open<\/a><\/em>, have peer review processes that don\u2019t judge importance, novelty or impact, making publishing so-called negative studies easier.<\/p>\n

Still, the perception remains that authors find it harder to publish these studies or remain reluctant to do so. If this is true, how important is the terminology we use? Would more ‘negative’ results be published if we called them something else?<\/p>\n

The term \u2018negative result\u2019 is used widely.\u00a0 The EU OPEN project used it (OPEN Stands for ‘Overcome failure to Publish nEgative findings’). It appears in journal titles, such as the Journal of Negative Results in Biomedicine<\/a><\/em>. There\u2019s a PLOS negative results collection<\/a>. Professor Stephen Curry from Imperial College wrote about the importance of negative results for UK newspaper The Guardian<\/a>.<\/p>\n

BMJ Open<\/em> encourages researchers to publish their studies, especially trials, regardless of results. It\u2019s a premise of the AllTrials campaign<\/a>, initiated by BMJ.\u00a0In this spirit, we recently promoted this paper<\/a> on Twitter. In it, Andrew Wilson and colleagues at the University of East Anglia report a\u00a0randomised controlled study of maintenance sessions following pulmonary rehabilitation in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. They concluded \u201cWe do not recommend that our maintenance programme is adopted.\u201d<\/p>\n

To promote the paper and our willingness to consider this kind of study, we tweeted the paper with the comment that it was great that the authors were publishing their RCT \u2018despite [a] negative result\u2019.<\/p>\n

The feedback from researchers was interesting. \u201cDon\u2019t talk about \u2018negative results\u2019 in trials\u201d said Ruairidh Milne (@ruairidhm<\/a>). \u201cBest not to talk about \u2018negative\u2019 and \u2018positive\u2019 results in trials\u201d said Shaun Treweek (@shauntreweek<\/a>); “An important result rather than negative.” Andrew Cook (@ajcook<\/a>) commented \u201cI meet people who think trials which show now [sic] effect are a waste – calling them negative doesn\u2019t help arguing how useful they are\u201d.<\/p>\n

All good points and we haven\u2019t even covered that there are different types of \u2018negative\u2019 result (papers showing evidence of the absence of an effect or papers reporting an absence of evidence can both be labelled \u2018negative\u2019).<\/p>\n

So \u2013 should we be thinking about what we call studies like these? Is the term \u2018negative result\u2019 just too… negative? Could it be influencing authors (or editors) unduly and if so what should we be calling these studies?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  BMJ Open recently published the results of a major EU-funded project (OPEN) investigating the problem of dissemination bias. Also know as publication bias, this is the distortion of the evidence base caused by selective or non-reporting of results. The authors concluded: \u2018Despite various recent examples of dissemination bias and several initiatives to reduce it, […]<\/p>\n

Read More…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":143,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nShould we stop talking about \u2018negative\u2019 results? - BMJ Open<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmjopen\/2015\/05\/22\/should-we-stop-talking-about-negative-results\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Should we stop talking about \u2018negative\u2019 results? - BMJ Open\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"  BMJ Open recently published the results of a major EU-funded project (OPEN) investigating the problem of dissemination bias. Also know as publication bias, this is the distortion of the evidence base caused by selective or non-reporting of results. 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