Improved editorial practices may reduce positive spin, increase objectivity in peer-reviewed medical journals
West Virginia University researcher Safi U. Khan, an assistant professor in the School of Medicine, is part of a team that examined six prestigious medical journals and identified positive spin in how they portrayed cardiovascular trials. The researchers found that 57 percent of the abstracts—and 67 percent of the articles themselves—were phrased to make results seem more statistically significant than they were.