Australian and international researchers have developed a way to identify and fix ‘spin’ or misleading conclusions in research summarising what we know about an area of science. The researchers looked at 100 studies that pool together previous research, known as systematic reviews, and found that 34 contained at least 1 type of spin including misleading or selective reporting, misleading interpretation or misleading or selective extrapolation. Spin was especially common in studies reporting on potential harms. The researchers then revised the research to remove the spin, and provided advice for other scientists to help them recognise, fix and ideally avoid spin in their research.
Journal/conference: Annals of Internal Medicine
Link to research (DOI): 10.7326/M24-0771
Organisation/s: Monash University, University of Colorado, US
Funder: No direct funding was received for this study.
Media release
From: American College of Physicians
Experts create framework to identify and address “spin” in research reporting
Nearly half of reviews that assessed harms were found to contain some type of spinAn international team of researchers specializing in spin and reporting bias created a framework to provide guidance for authors, peer reviewers, and editors to recognize and rectify “spin,” or the misleading reporting, interpretation, and extrapolation of findings in primary and secondary research, such as systematic reviews. The authors say it is important for reviewers to be clear about the limitations of the evidence that they have for harms and to not overstate confidence in their findings, as readers may draw the wrong conclusions or inferences. Spin was found to be fairly common, especially when reporting harms. The framework is published in Annals of Internal Medicine.Researchers from the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus and team gathered instances of spin from a random sample of 100 systematic reviews of interventions to identify and address instances of spin. Of the 58 reviews that assessed harm and the 42 that did not, they found, respectively, that 28 (48%) and 6 (14%) had at least 1 of the 12 types of spin (grouped into 7 categories) they had identified for harms. Inappropriate extrapolation of the results and conclusions for harms to populations, interventions, outcomes, or settings not assessed in a review was the most common category of spin in 17 of 100 reviews. The authors revised the examples to remove spin, considering the context, findings for harms, and methodological limitations of the original reviews. Their goal is to provide a framework for researchers and reviewers to avoid spin, enhancing the clarity and accuracy of harms reporting in systematic review publications.
American College of Physicians
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