Positive results bias in pediatric ophthalmology scientific publications.

ABSTRACT

Previous studies in several fields of medicine, including general ophthalmology, have revealed a positive results bias, demonstrating an association between the results of a trial and the impact factor (IF) of the journal in which it was published. We hypothesized that randomized clinical studies in pediatric ophthalmology with positive results have a greater chance of publication in journals with a higher IF than those with negative results. We analyzed 174 randomized, controlled trials conducted in the field of pediatric ophthalmology, which were retrieved from PubMed. Each study was classified as having either a positive or a negative result. A positive result was defined as a study in which there was a statistically significant difference between groups (P < 0.05). No difference was found in IF between negative and positive outcomes, after statistically adjusting for the number of subjects and year of publication. We concluded that, unlike general ophthalmology, positive results bias probably does not occur in the field of pediatric ophthalmology.