How easily can omission of patients, or selection amongst poorly-reproducible measurements, create artificial correlations? Methods for detection and implications for observational research design in cardiology

International Journal of Cardiology

Volumn 167, Issue 1, 2013, Pages 102-113

  Francis, Darrel P ^a  

^a NATIONAL HEART AND LUNG INSTITUTE   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

Correlation coefficients; Observational studies; Prediction

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; CARDIOLOGY; CORRELATION COEFFICIENT; CORRELATION FUNCTION; INFORMATION PROCESSING; NORMAL DISTRIBUTION; OBSERVATIONAL STUDY; PRIORITY JOURNAL; REPRODUCIBILITY; SAMPLE SIZE; STATISTICAL SIGNIFICANCE;

CARDIOLOGY; HUMANS; PATIENT SELECTION; REPRODUCIBILITY OF RESULTS; RESEARCH DESIGN;

EID: 84878595900     PISSN: 01675273     EISSN: 18741754     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1016/j.ijcard.2011.12.018     Document Type: Article

References (41)

1. M. Ocrant Madoff tops charts; skeptics ask how MAR Hedge 89 May 2001
2. H. Markopolos The world's largest hedge fund is a fraud 7 November 2005 Submission to the Securities and Exchange Commission www.sec.gov/news/studies/ 2009/oig-509/exhibit-0293.pdf
3. Kotz H on behalf of the Securities Exchange Commission Investigation of failure of the SEC to uncover Bernard Madoff's Ponzi www.sec.gov/news/studies/ 2009/oig-509.pdf
4. Securities Exchange Commission application for an emergency court order SEC v. Madoff, 08 civ 10791, SD NY 2008 http://www.sec.gov/litigation/ complaints/2008/comp-madoff121108.pdf
5. The curious incident of the dog in the night-time Silver blaze The memoirs of Sherlock Holmes 1894 Doyle AC http://www.gutenberg.org/files/834/834- h/834-h.htm#2H-4-0001
6. R. Van Noorden Science publishing: the trouble with retractions Nature 478 2011 26 28 http://www.nature.com/news/2011/111005/full/478026a.html
7. J. Sudbø, J.J. Lee, and S.M. Lippman Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs and the risk of oral cancer: a nested case-control study Lancet 366 9494 2005 1359 1366
8. Service Robert F. Scientific misconduct. Bell Labs fires star physicist found guilty of forging data Science 298 5591 2002 30 31
9. G.D. Curfman, S. Morrissey, and J.M. Drazen Expression of concern N Engl J Med 354 6 2006 Feb 9 638
10. A.M. Michalek, A.D. Hutson, C.P. Wicher, and D.L. Trump The costs and underappreciated consequences of research misconduct: a case study PLoS Med 7 8 2010 e1000318
11. M.H. MacRoberts, and B.R. MacRoberts The negational reference: or the art of dissembling Soc Stud Sci 14 1984 91 94
12. R.A. Fisher Frequency distribution of the values of the correlation coefficient in samples of an indefinitely large population Biometrika 10 4 1915 507 521
13. N. Wade IQ and heredity: suspicion of fraud beclouds classic experiment Science 194 1976 916 919
14. C. Tavris, and E. Aronson Mistakes were made (but not by me) 3rd ed. 2008 Pinter and Martin UK
15. D. Fanelli How many scientists fabricate and falsify research? A systematic review and meta-analysis of survey data PLoS One 4 5 2009 e5738
16. R.A. Millikan On the elementary electric charge and the Avogadro constant Phys Rev 2 2 1913 109 143
17. W. Broad, and N. Wade Betrayers of the truth: fraud and deceit in the halls of science Physiol Chem Phys Med NMR 15 5 1983 365 367
18. R.P. Feynman, R. Leighton, and E. Hutchings "Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman!": adventures of a curious character 1997 W W Norton New York
19. B. Iglewicz, and D.C. Hoaglin How to detect and handle outliers 1993 American Society for Quality Control Milwaukee, WI
20. S. Walfish A review of statistical outlier methods Pharm Technol 30 11 2006 82 88
21. A. Hadi, A. Rahmatullah, and M. Werner Detection of outliers Wiley Interdiscip Rev Comput Stat 1 2009 57 70
22. D. Fanelli "Positive" results increase down the hierarchy of the sciences PLoS One 5 4 2010 e10068
23. "Engauge" Open-Source Digitizer Software http://digitizer. sourceforge.net/
24. "OpenOffice.Org" Open-Source Spreadsheet Software http://www.openoffice.org/
25. Testimony of Harry Markopolos to House Committee on Financial Services on 4 February 2009 http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Files. View&FileStore-id=aa1959d5-fe72-40f8-a812-3b79fd8e8637
26. J.P.A. Ioannidis Why most published research findings are false PLoS One 2 8 2005 e124
27. W.W. Park A review of research on groupthink J Behav Decis Mak 3 1990 229 245
28. J. Shau, and H. Shen The outflow of academic papers from China: why is it happening and can it be stemmed? Learned Publishing 24 2 2011 95 97
29. F.C. Fang, and A. Casadevall Retracted science and the retraction index Infect Immun 79 10 2011 3855 3859
30. R.G. Steen Retractions in the scientific literature: do authors deliberately commit research fraud? J Med Ethics 37 2011 113 117
31. Report of the investigation committee on the possibility of scientific misconduct in the work of Hendrik Schön and coauthors 2002 American Physical Society and Lucent Technologies http://publish.aps.org/reports/ lucentrep.pdf
32. R.L. Engler, J.W. Covell, P.J. Friedman, P.S. Kitcher, and R.M. Peters Misrepresentation and responsibility in medical research N Engl J Med 317 1987 1383 1389
33. Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. Proposals for Safeguarding Good Scientific Practice http://www.dfg.de/download/pdf/dfg-im-profil/reden- stellungnahmen/download/self-regulation-98.pdf
34. S. Hopewell, M. Clarke, and D. Moher CONSORT for reporting randomized controlled trials in journal and conference abstracts: explanation and elaboration PLoS Med 5 1 2008 e20
35. E. von Elm, D.G. Altman, M. Egger, S.J. Pocock, P.C. Gøtzsche, and J.P. Vandenbroucke STROBE initiative. The Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology (STROBE) statement: guidelines for reporting observational studies PLoS Med 4 10 2007 e296
36. I. Semmelweis The etiology, concept and prophylaxis of childbed fever, 1850 transl. K Codell Carter 1983 University of Wisconsin Press Madison
37. D.P. Francis, A.J.S. Coats, and D.G. Gibson How high can a correlation coefficient be? Effect of limited reproducibility on common cardiological variables Int J Cardiol 69 1999 185 199
38. E.C. Fieller, H.O. Hartley, and E.S. Pearson Tests for rank correlation coefficients Biometrika 44 1957 470 481
39. F.J. Anscombe, and W.J. Glynn Distribution of the kurtosis statistic b2 for normal statistics Biometrika 70 1 1983 227 234
40. S.S. Shapiro, and M.B. Wilk An analysis of variance test for normality (complete samples) Biometrika 52 3-4 1965 591 611
41. J.P. Royston Approximating the Shapiro-Wilk W-Test for non-normality Stat Comput 2 1992 117 119