The Use of Statistics in Medical Research: A Comparison of “The New England Journal of Medicine” and “Nature Medicine”.

A study was conducted to examine the use of statistics in medical research. Data were obtained from analysis of original research articles in Nature Medicine, vol. 10, nos. 1–6, and The New England Journal of Medicine, vol. 350, nos. 1–26. Findings revealed that 94.5 percent of New England Journal...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	American Statistician Vol. 61; no. 1; pp. 47 - 56
Main Authors:	Strasak, Alexander M., Zaman, Qamruz, Marinell, Gerhard
Format:	Article
Published:	American Statistical Association February 2007
Subjects:	Nature Medicine (Periodical) New England Journal of Medicine, The (Periodical) Statistical errors Medical research methodology Statistical methods in medical research
Online Access:	View this record in EBSCOhost

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Summary:	A study was conducted to examine the use of statistics in medical research. Data were obtained from analysis of original research articles in Nature Medicine, vol. 10, nos. 1–6, and The New England Journal of Medicine, vol. 350, nos. 1–26. Findings revealed that 94.5 percent of New England Journal of Medicine and 82.4 percent of Nature Medicine articles incorporated inferential statistics. Furthermore, findings indicated that statistical errors occurred in a considerable proportion of articles, although they were not always serious in nature. Findings imply a need to pay closer attention to statistical methodology in order to raise standards.