Why Most Published Research Findings Are False by John P. A. Ioannidis
A finding from a well-conducted, adequately powered randomized controlled trial starting with a 50% pre-study chance that the intervention is effective is eventually true about 85% of the time. A fairly similar performance is expected of a confirmatory meta-analysis of good-quality randomized trials: potential bias probably increases, but power and pre-test chances are higher compared to a single randomized trial.
September 2nd, 2007 at 3:06 pm
I am a fan of the Public Library of Science, as I have mentioned previous. Yesterday I donated some money to support their great efforts…