PEDIATRICS Vol. 98 No. 6 December 1996, pp. A22
This Article
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow P3Rs: Submit a response
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me when P3Rs are posted
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow E-mail this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My File Cabinet
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrow reprints & permissions
Citing Articles
Right arrow Citing Articles via CrossRef
Right arrow Citing Articles via Google Scholar
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Student,
Right arrow Search for Related Content
PubMed
Right arrow Articles by Student,

DIAGNOSING VALIDITY OF ARTICLES

Student

The first thing a clinician needs to know to determine whether an article is providing valid, clinically useful results has virtually nothing to do with statistics. What is important is the basic architecture of the study, and doctors can diagnose an article in much the same way they diagnose patients.

If you want to decide whether a treatment does more good than harm, the issues you need to consider have nothing to do with such things as multivariate analysis, chi-squares or P values. They have to do with whether the people who have had the treatments and who are being compared really are comparable in every way that might materially effect their clinical outcome, other than their treatment itself, of course. There is only one way of being sure of this, and that is to randomize. That's why the randomized controlled trial (RCT) has been so crucial in terms of sorting out therapy.