Ten rules for reading clinical research reports.

This was not a scientific assessment of the scientific quality of the papers published by The American Journal of Surgery. It was an informal audit of the adequacy of the data analysis in the clinical research reports appearing in the 1987-1988 issues. As one who has devoted more than three decades to helping a great variety of people make sense of scientific data, I found the overall quality of data analysis in these papers to be above average for the medical literature; and yet, I found many instances of errors so serious as to render invalid the conclusions of the authors. My 10 proposed rules for reading clinical research reports constitute only an interim solution to a very worrisome problem. The real solution must come from the producers of and the gatekeepers for the medical literature.