Summary
Fourty-four multiple publications of 31 comparative trials of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs in rheumatoid arthritis were examined for mutual agreement. Thirty-two of the papers were published in the same language as the primary version. Important discrepancies were seen in 14 trials, involving description of the study design in two, exclusion of protocol violators in two, inconsistency in the number of effect variables in five, in the number of side-effects in five, and in the significance level in one. In three articles the conclusion became more favourable for the new drug with time.
Only half of the trials had the same first author and number of authors. For six trials, multiple publication was difficult to detect.
Adherence to the manuscript guidelines published by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors should diminish the risk of inflated meta-analyses, reference lists and curricula vitae, and inexplicable discrepancies in articles based on the same data.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (1988) Uniform requirements for manuscripts submitted to biomedical journals. Br Med J 296: 401–405
Gøtzsche PC (1987) Reference bias in reports of drug trials. Br Med J 295: 654–656
Institute for Scientific Information. Science Citation Index. Journal Citation Reports (1986) ISI, Philadelphia
Gøtzsche PC (1989) Methodology and overt and hidden bias in reports of 196 double-blind trials of nonsteroidal antiinflammatory drugs in rheumatoid arthritis. Controlled Clin Trials 10: 31–56
Assenzo JR, Lamborn KR (1981) Documenting the results of a study. In: Buncher CR, Jia-Yeong T (eds) Statistics in the pharmaceutical industry. Marcel Dekker, New York, pp 251–299
Mosteller F (1979) Problems of omission in communications. Clin Pharmacol Ther 25: 761–764
Lock S (1984) Repetitive publication: A waste that must stop. Br Med J 288: 661–662
Fulginiti VA (1985) Unfortunately, more on duplicate publication. Am J Dis Child 139: 865–866
Editor's Note (1985) Notice of duplicate publication. J Am Med Assoc 254: 3423
Curfman GD (1987) Duplicate publication on postmenopausal bone loss. N Engl J Med 317: 833–834
Editorial (1969) Definition of “sole contribution” N Engl J Med 281: 676–677
Relman AS (1981) The Ingelfinger rule. N Engl J Med 305: 824–826
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Gøtzsche, P.C. Multiple publication of reports of drug trials. Eur J Clin Pharmacol 36, 429–432 (1989). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00558064
Received:
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00558064