Very Positive Initial Findings May Not Hold Up After More Studies.

The Los Angeles Times (10/24, Brown) reports, “In a statistical analysis of nearly 230,000 trials compiled from a variety of disciplines, study results that claimed a ‘very large effect’ rarely held up when other research teams tried to replicate them,” according to research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

HealthDay (10/24, Gordon) reports, “When initial findings about an experimental drug or treatment sound too good to be true, they probably are, according to a new study” published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Investigators “found that after a single study reports large benefits for a new medical intervention, additional studies almost always find a smaller treatment effect.” The researchers “suspect that a small study size contributes to the initially inflated benefits.”

Related Links:

— “Medical studies with striking results often prove false, “Eryn Brown, Los Angeles Times, October 24, 2012.

Posted in In The News.