Review and feature article
Statistical errors in immunologic research

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaci.2004.09.023Get rights and content

Medical research articles have always been subject to errors in reporting statistical results. Although most of these are minor, they raise questions about the integrity of medical research. Most of the errors come from a misunderstanding about the tools used in statistical analysis. This article discusses some of the most frequent errors and provides examples of how to deal with them correctly.

Section snippets

Basic definitions

A statistical test is a procedure to determine whether a defined quantity is larger (smaller) than you should expect by chance. The major effect of the test comes from the way in which the study is designed (ie, set up and executed) to get you to a point where you can do the test. Although readers might focus a great deal on whether a test result is significant, this is really not very important unless the study is designed properly in the first place. A statistical test is therefore somewhat

Examining the errors

It is quite true that some of the errors Olsen1 found, items 1 to 6 below, could be the result of editorial policies that restricted some of the detail given in the original articles. Because removing these errors is critical to the correct interpretation of statistical results, I hope that editorial problems are becoming less of an issue. Recent guidelines for publications in biomedical journals would suggest that the type of detail suggested in Olsen's article should be accepted in the future.

Recommendations on writing a statistical methods section

It is important to have the right perspective about correctly reporting statistical tests in the medical literature. It is very easy to think that because misreporting has been going on for so long without seeming to harm medical research, this is not a big issue. In the words of John Bailar,11 however. “… there may be greater danger to the public welfare from statistical dishonesty than from almost any other form of dishonesty.” This article is not about dishonesty but about carelessness in

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(Supported by a grant from GlaxoSmithKline, Inc, Research Triangle Park, NC) Series editor: Harold S. Nelson, MD

Disclosure of potential conflict of interest: J. R. Murphy—none disclosed.

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