annals of cheesy research - don't believe everything you read

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news.nature:

" 'The abysmal standard of statistical analysis in much of genetic

epidemiology is little short of scandalous,' says Balding,

professor of statistical genetics at Imperial College London, UK, who

was not involved in the study. 'This paper reveals an entire industry

of prominently reported results that are largely unjustified and

probably mostly false.'

" Ioannidis and his colleagues at the University of Ioannina

School of Medicine in Greece evaluated 432 claims in 77 research

papers (N. Patsopoulos et al. J. Am. Med. Assoc. 298, 880-893; 2007).

The team applied a set of criteria to determine whether the papers'

authors had performed the correct analysis, such as comparing like

with like, and had taken steps to show that the association was not

due to chance.

" Worryingly, only 12.7% of claims satisfied these criteria. " There is

quite a gap between what should have been done and what the journals

and reviewers should have asked for, compared with what the authors

did, " says Ioannidis. "