Theme: Evidence based medicine (July 8, 2007) [Incomplete] These categories cover the major steps in evidence based medicine (asking a question, finding appropriate information, reviewing the quality of evidence, and applying the results to your particular practice. I place special emphasis on those aspects of evidence based medicine that relate to the practice of statistics.

Category: Blinding in research. Blinding is the process in a research study of hiding information about which treatment a patient receives.

Category: Clinical importance. Clinical importance represents a change or shift in the outcome between the treatment group and the control group that is large enough to have a practical impact on the patient.

Category: Conflict of interest. Conflict of interest represents an outside influence, usually financial, that has the potential to upset the balance of impartiality that is important in credible research.

Category: Corroborating evidence. Corroborating evidence is information from outside the research study that supplements and strengthens the persuasiveness of a research finding.

Category: Critical appraisal. Critical appraisal is the ability to judge the persuasiveness of the evidence in a research study. You have to strike the proper balance between being too harsh and being too accepting of research findings.

Category: Diagnostic testing. Evaluation of diagnostic tests involves some subtle but important issues in Statistics. These webpages show some interesting examples of diagnostic tests, offer pointers for critical evaluation of studies of diagnostic tests, and present practical applications of diagnostic tests in your day-to-day medical practice.

Category: Exclusions in research. These pages discuss the problems with generalizability that occur when researchers include important segments of the population from their research or when research subjects refuse to participate.

Category: Extrapolations in research. These pages discuss some of the issues that you should consider when evaluating whether it is appropriate to extrapolate research finding to a different group of patients or to a different practice.

Category: Fraud in research. These pages discuss recent examples of fraudulent research, false allegations of fraud, and the research community's efforts to reduce or eliminate fraud.

Category: Information searching. These pages describe efficient strategies for finding information in peer-reviewed journals or on the Internet.

Category: Multiple comparisons. The use of multiple statistical tests in a wide range of contexts, raises serious concerns. The proposed solutions to these concerns are very controversial. These pages discuss some of the concerns and the debate over the appropriate remedies.

Category: Publication bias. Publication bias is the tendency for researchers who have data with a negative conclusion to fail to publish their work. These pages discuss the problems that publication bias causes, especially for those researchers who are performing a systematic overview.

Category: Teaching Resources. Evidence Based Medicine covers a broad range of topics, from asking a well defined question, searching for information, critical appraisal of that evidence, and application of the results in your clinical practice. These pages describe some of the resources that can help you understand these steps.

Category: Statistical evidence. Statistical Evidence is the title of a book I wrote (full title: Statistical Evidence in Medical Trials. What Do the Data Really Tell Us?). There is a variety of supporting material for the book, excerpts from the book, and web pages that contributed information to the first draft of the book.

Category: Systematic overviews. These pages discuss issues associated with a systematic overview (sytematic review, meta-analysis).

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This webpage was written by Steve Simon and was last modified on 07/08/2008.