Paper detail

Empirical estimates suggest most published medical research is true

The accuracy of published medical research is critical both for scientists, physicians and patients who rely on these results. But the fundamental belief in the medical literature was called into serious question by a paper suggesting most published medical research is false. Here we adapt estimation methods from the genomics community to the problem of estimating the rate of false positives in the medical literature using reported P-values as the data. We then collect P-values from the abstracts of all 77,430 papers published in The Lancet, The Journal of the American Medical Association, The New England Journal of Medicine, The British Medical Journal, and The American Journal of Epidemiology between 2000 and 2010. We estimate that the overall rate of false positives among reported results is 14% (s.d. 1%), contrary to previous claims. We also find there is not a significant increase in the estimated rate of reported false positive results over time (0.5% more FP per year, P = 0.18) or with respect to journal submissions (0.1% more FP per 100 submissions, P = 0.48). Statistical analysis must allow for false positives in order to make claims on the basis of noisy data. But our analysis suggests that the medical literature remains a reliable record of scientific progress.