S.O.T.T: Not all patient drug trials published in even the most prestigious of medical journals can be taken as gospel, say researchers, who have found a high proportion of "spin and bias" in the reporting of results.
In a review of 164 breast-cancer trials, researchers at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre in Toronto found that reports of almost two-thirds of the studies that showed no real benefit of treatment focused on less important outcomes to give a more positive spin to results. "Sometimes studies that are basically negative studies are a little bit dressed up to look as though they may be positive," said Dr. Ian Tannock, a medical oncologist who led the study published this week in the journal Annals of Oncology. "It's like the politicians. Trying to make things look better than they are."...read more>>>...
