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Peter C Gøtzsche

Publications and source records attributed to Peter C Gøtzsche.

At least 73 records · Page 4Linked to original sources
PubMed2002

Prevalence of honorary and ghost authorship in Cochrane reviews.

CONTEXT: To determine the prevalence of honorary and ghost authorship in Cochrane reviews, how authorship is assigned, and the ways in which authors and Cochrane editorial teams contribute. METHODS: Using a Web-based, self-administered survey, corresponding authors for 577 reviews published in issues 1 and 2 from 1999 of The Cochrane Library were invited to report on the prevalence of honorary and ghost authors, contributions by authors listed in the byline and members of Cochrane editorial teams, and identification of methods of assigning authorship. Responses were received for 362 reviews (63% response rate), which contained 913 authors. RESULTS: One hundred forty-one reviews (39%) had evidence of honorary authors, 32 (9%) had evidence of ghost authors (most commonly a member of the Cochrane editorial team), and 9 (2%) had evidence of both honorary and ghost authors. The editorial teams contributed in a wide variety of ways to 301 reviews (83%). Authorship was decided by the group of authors (31%) or lead author (25%) in most reviews. Authorship order was assigned according to contribution in most reviews (76%). The 3 functions contributed to most by those listed in the byline were assessing the quality of included studies (83%), interpreting data (82%), and abstracting data from included studies (77%). CONCLUSIONS: A substantial proportion of reviews had evidence of honorary and ghost authorship. The Cochrane editorial teams contributed to most Cochrane reviews.

Authorship↗
PubMed2002

[What is the effect of placebo interventions? A systematic review of randomized clinical trials with placebo treated and untreated patients].

INTRODUCTION: Placebo treatments have been reported to help patients with many diseases, but the quality of the evidence supporting this belief has not been rigorously evaluated. MATERIAL AND METHODS: We conducted a systematic review of clinical trials in which patients were randomised either to placebo treatment or to no treatment. A placebo intervention could be pharmacological (for instance, a tablet), physical (for instance manipulation), or psychological (for instance conversation). RESULTS: We identified 130 trials that met our inclusion criteria. After excluding 16, which gave no relevant outcome data, 32 with binary outcomes and 82 with continuous outcomes were left. As compared to no treatment, placebo had no significant effect on binary outcomes, the pooled relative risk was 0.95 (95% confidence interval 0.88 to 1.02), irrespective of whether these outcomes were subjective or objective. Placebo seemed to have a beneficial effect in the trials with continuous outcomes, the overall pooled standardised mean difference of the placebo and no-treatment groups was -0.28 (-0.38 to -0.19), but the effect decreased with increasing sample size, which indicates bias. The pooled standardised mean difference was significant for the trials with subjective outcomes, -0.36 (-0.47 to -0.25), but not for those with objective outcomes, -0.12 (-0.27 to 0.03). In trials involving the treatment of pain, placebo was reported to have a moderate beneficial effect, with a pooled standardised mean difference of -0.27 (-0.40 to -0.15), but bias, for instance reporting bias, was possible. CONCLUSION: We found no reliable evidence that placebo treatments in general had effects of clinical importance.

Evidence-Based Medicine↗