We need more peer reviewers and editors willing to apply this kind of scrutiny. (But then I wonder if the journals would go broke through lack of papers to publish.) The other major issue is trial design itself. Many times the tested intervention isn’t compared with an informative control and/or unwarranted conclusions are drawn. A great example was a diet soda study which concluded that diet drinks make people fat. Another declared that CBT was an effective treatment, despite noting that half the participants had nil beneficial outcomes, and the remainder were insignificant or indeterminate. This stuff is unhinged but still gets published.
We need more peer reviewers and editors willing to apply this kind of scrutiny. (But then I wonder if the journals would go broke through lack of papers to publish.) The other major issue is trial design itself. Many times the tested intervention isn’t compared with an informative control and/or unwarranted conclusions are drawn. A great example was a diet soda study which concluded that diet drinks make people fat. Another declared that CBT was an effective treatment, despite noting that half the participants had nil beneficial outcomes, and the remainder were insignificant or indeterminate. This stuff is unhinged but still gets published.