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Giant study finds untrustworthy trials pollute gold-standard medical reviews

Two-year collaboration aims to create tools to help counter the tide of flawed research.
By
  1. Richard Van Noorden

A huge collaboration has confirmed growing concerns that fake or flawed research is polluting medical systematic reviews, which summarize evidence from multiple clinical trials and shape treatment guidelines worldwide. The study is part of an effort to address the problem by creating a short checklist that will help researchers to spot untrustworthy trials. Combined with automated integrity tools, this could help those conducting systematic reviews to filter out flawed work — in medicine and beyond.

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Nature 637, 256-257 (2025)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-04206-3

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