Statistical Errors in Medical Publication

Abstract

While errors can be application-related, they can also occur at different stages of the study such as planning, implementation, analysis, interpretation, and presentation, all of which are related to the statistical topics. The statistical errors in the study process can be categorized as the ones that occur (i) In the research process (before reporting) (ii) In presentations or publications. Some statistical errors in a publication can be assessed, while some others cannot be. In publications, not all of the statistical quantities can be checked; it is only possible to check the accuracy of some of the statistics via reported descriptive values. In addition, some terminology, demonstration and interpretation errors can be identified. As such, discussions related to the statistical errors in publications are limited to errors that can possibly be determined. When we evaluate the statistical errors that are committed in published articles in terms of their effects on the study results, we need to acknowledge the fact that some of the errors a) Are directly pertinent to the results, some of them, b) Occur in demonstration and terminology only and do not affect the results. Reviewers are expected to take part in the task of prevention of statistical errors in publications. The reviewer of a manuscript, who is an expert in the subject matter areas related to the evaluation, should request from the editor that the manuscript be reviewed by a biostatistics specialist. The most important factor in preventing statistical errors in publications is having the editor submit all manuscripts for a statistical review. Nothing can be done for errors that cannot be detected in the process of publication; nevertheless, prospectively speaking, it is important that the journal editors publish papers that carry educational qualifications on statistical topics, and are oriented towards statistical errors committed in research studies, in the sense of informing the researchers and drawing attention to the topic.