Department of Biostatistics, School of Public Health, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL 35294-0022, USA.
Int J Obes (Lond). 2012 Jul;36(7):977-81. doi: 10.1038/ijo.2011.207. Epub 2011 Nov 8.
Faithful and complete reporting of trial results is essential to the validity of the scientific literature. An earlier systematic study of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) found that industry-funded RCTs appeared to be reported with greater quality than non-industry-funded RCTs. The aim of this study was to examine the association between systematic differences in reporting quality and funding status (that is, industry funding vs non-industry funding) among recent obesity and nutrition RCTs published in top-tier medical journals.
Thirty-eight obesity or nutrition intervention RCT articles were selected from high-profile, general medical journals (The Lancet, Annals of Internal Medicine, JAMA and the British Medical Journal) published between 2000 and 2007. Paired papers were selected from the same journal published in the same year, one with and the other without industry funding. The following identifying information was redacted: journal, title, authors, funding source and institution(s). Then three raters independently and blindly rated each paper according to the Chalmers method, and total reporting quality scores were calculated.
The inter-rater reliability (Cronbach's alpha) was 0.82 (95% confidence interval = 0.80-0.84). The total mean (M) and s.d. of Chalmers Index quality score (out of a possible 100) for industry-funded studies were M = 84.5, s.d. = 7.04 and for non-industry-funded studies they were M = 79.4, s.d. = 13.00. A Wilcoxon matched-pairs signed-ranks test indicates no significant rank difference in the distributions of total quality scores between funding sources, Z = -0.966, P = 0.334 (two tailed).
Recently published RCTs on nutrition and obesity that appear in top-tier journals seem to be equivalent in quality of reporting, regardless of funding source. This may be a result of recent reporting of quality statements and efforts of journal editors to raise all papers to a common standard.
忠实完整地报告试验结果对于科学文献的有效性至关重要。早期对随机对照试验（RCT）的系统研究发现，与非行业资助的 RCT 相比，行业资助的 RCT 似乎报告的质量更高。本研究旨在检验近期发表在顶级医学期刊上的肥胖和营养 RCT 中报告质量与资助状况（即行业资助与非行业资助）之间是否存在系统差异。
从 2000 年至 2007 年发表在高知名度的普通医学期刊（《柳叶刀》、《内科学纪事》、《美国医学会杂志》和《英国医学杂志》）上选择了 38 篇肥胖或营养干预 RCT 文章。从同年同一期刊上选择配对论文，一篇有行业资助，另一篇没有行业资助。然后，三名审核员独立且盲目地根据 Chalmers 方法对每篇论文进行评分，并计算总报告质量评分。
评分者间信度（Cronbach's alpha）为 0.82（95%置信区间=0.80-0.84）。行业资助研究的 Chalmers 指数质量评分（满分 100）的总平均值（M）和标准差（s.d.）为 M=84.5，s.d.=7.04，而非行业资助研究的为 M=79.4，s.d.=13.00。Wilcoxon 配对符号秩检验表明，资金来源的总质量评分分布无显著差异，Z=-0.966，P=0.334（双侧）。
最近发表在顶级期刊上的关于营养和肥胖的 RCT 似乎在报告质量上没有差异，无论其资助来源如何。这可能是由于最近对质量声明的报告以及期刊编辑努力将所有论文提高到一个共同标准所致。
