Peter C Gøtzsche

..Concerns about over-diagnosis have not been addressed either and official documents still downplay this most important harm of breast cancer screening...

..Given that the size of the bias was similar to the estimated screening effect, screening appeared ineffective...

..14 to 2.14; p = 0.03) over the total course of the trials. Augmentation therapy with alpha-1 antitrypsin cannot be recommended in view of the lack of evidence of clinical benefit and the cost of treatment...

..To compare the distribution of P values in abstracts of randomised controlled trials with that in observational studies, and to check P values between 0.04 and 0.06...

..These facts were not noted in any of the trial reports. We found similar constraints on publication rights in 44 protocols from 2004. This tight sponsor control over industry-initiated trials should be changed...

..These drugs have likely caused the deaths of thousands of patients. The use of all NSAIDs should be restricted as much as possible. Drug trials should be a public enterprise...

..The prevalence and nature of ghost authorship in industry-initiated randomised trials is not known...

..This debate examines how best to tackle ghostwriting in the medical literature from the perspectives of a researcher, an editor, and the professional medical writer...

..The prevailing culture of secrecy and ownership to data is not in the best interests of patients...

..I propose the contents of such legislation and of appropriate sanctions to hold accountable those who refuse to share their data...

..To investigate whether substantive criticism in electronic letters to the editor, defined as a problem that could invalidate the research or reduce its reliability, is adequately addressed by the authors...

..We also believe it is more important to reduce the incidence of cancer than to detect it 'early.' Avoiding getting screening mammograms reduces the risk of becoming a breast cancer patient by one-third...

..It is not known how reliable such meta-analyses are...

..To investigate whether information on mammographic screening presented on websites by interest groups is balanced, is independent of source of funding, and reflects recent findings...

..We wanted to determine if a similar imbalance occurs in scientific articles on mammography screening and if it is related to author affiliation...

..We investigated sponsors' involvement in the conduct and reporting of industry-sponsored trials...

..We quantified overdiagnosis in the Danish mammography screening programme, which is uniquely suited for this purpose, as only 20% of the Danish population has been offered organised mammography screening over a long time-period...

..We investigated industry-supported trials' influence on journal impact factors and revenue...

..To compare the reporting on blinding in protocols and articles describing randomized controlled trials...

..To quantify the benefits and harms of general health checks in adults with an emphasis on patient-relevant outcomes such as morbidity and mortality rather than on surrogate outcomes...

..To compare the methodological quality and conclusions in Cochrane reviews with those in industry supported meta-analyses and other meta-analyses of the same drugs...

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..To estimate the extent of overdiagnosis (the detection of cancers that will not cause death or symptoms) in publicly organised screening programmes...

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..Also, screening leads to increased use of diagnostic and therapeutic interventions, which can be harmful as well as beneficial. It is, therefore, important to assess whether general health checks do more good than harm...

..Assessing the risk of bias in individual studies in a systematic review can be done using individual components or by summarizing the study quality in an overall score...

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..From the patient's point of view, both effects are important and should be investigated and reported similarly. We studied how they have been reported over time...

..To examine the extent of multiplicity of data in trial reports and to assess the impact of multiplicity on meta-analysis results...

..Selective reporting of positive outcomes is associated with bias...

..Placebo treatments have been reported to help patients with many diseases, but the quality of the evidence supporting this belief has not been rigorously evaluated...

..However, even trials in high impact journals may be small or may have inadequate quality. Critical appraisal of individual trials is always necessary, irrespective of the place of publication...

..We explored whether use of fungal infection-related mortality as outcome rather than total mortality leads to bias in trials of antifungal agents in cancer patients...

..However, these studies have been restricted to certain medical specialities. We compared all industry-supported meta-analyses of drug-drug comparisons with those without industry support...

..To study the analgesic effect of acupuncture and placebo acupuncture and to explore whether the type of the placebo acupuncture is associated with the estimated effect of acupuncture...

..95 (95% confidence interval = 0.88-1.02) versus odds ratio 0.99 (95% confidence interval = 0.81-1.23). Thus, B. E. Wampold et al.'s conclusion was not substantiated by their data, and is best characterized as powerful spin. ...

..To investigate whether Danish providers of general health checks present a balanced account of possible benefits and harms on their websites and whether the health checks are evidence-based...

..To study the inter-observer variation related to extraction of continuous and numerical rating scale data from trial reports for use in meta-analyses...

..The review fails to live up to the high standards required for Cochrane reviews...

..To assess if authors of randomised clinical trials convey the fact that they have used surrogate outcomes and discussed their validity...

..To study how composite outcomes, which have combined several components into a single measure, are defined, reported, and interpreted...

..aeruginosa lung infection improved with time (P = 0.008). Our study shows that CF patients who are treated intensively have lower antibody responses and longer survival after acquisition of chronic P. aeruginosa lung infection...

..61 (95% CI, 0.50-0.73). Because high-quality trials failed to demonstrate a reduction in mortality, polyclonal immunoglobulin should not be used for treatment of sepsis except in randomized clinical trials...

..However, not all conflicts of interest are disclosed. Using a public available disclosure list we determined the prevalence and underreporting of conflicts of interest among authors of clinical guidelines on drug treatments...

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..It is not known to which extent spontaneous improvement, effect of placebo and effect of active interventions contribute to the observed change from baseline, and we aimed at quantifying these contributions...

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