Skewed Results? Failure to Account for Clinical Trial Drop-Outs Can Lead to Erroneous Findings in Top Medical Journals

A recent study in the British Medical Journal analyzed studies published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, the British Medical Journal, the Journal of the American Medical Association, the Lancet and the New England Journal of Medicine between 2005 to 2007 and found that up to a third of the trials where the results were statistically significant would become non-significant if the researchers had included participants who were lost to follow-up.