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medpundit |
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Tuesday, April 13, 2004When they are reporting the so-called relative risk at 15%, why is this type of misrepresentation accepted? I have been studying the rules of epidemiology for the last 4 months to try and get an understanding, but is seems the rules if risk factors are to be interpreted according to who benefits from the results and whether the subject matter is politically correct. I have examined many types of studies and have found relative risk factors of 1.60 or more that were dismissed as not significant. It may have been that the results would have affected large, essential corporations and thus would not have been in the best interests of the people doing the study. It would be nice if someone would produce a set of guidelines on interpreting studies that would provide some consistency. Amazingly, someone did produce guidelines for interpreting data. Even more amazingly, the guidelines have been endorsed by all the major medical journals. Here's what the guidelines say about relative risk (emphasis mine): The sample size per group (the denominator when reporting proportions) should be given for all summary information. This information is especially important for binary outcomes, because effect measures (such as risk ratio and risk difference) should be interpreted in relation to the event rate. Expressing results as fractions also aids the reader in assessing whether all randomly assigned participants were included in an analysis, and if not, how many were excluded. It follows that results should not be presented solely as summary measures, such as relative risks. Those guidelines were written in 1996 and revised in 1999. And yet, as of 2002, most of the endorsing medical journals were still ignoring them. Why? posted by Sydney on 4/13/2004 07:36:00 AM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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