The positive outcome bias decreases the tendency of a manuscript being published when its results are near the null, not statistically significant, or otherwise less interesting.2,3 Several studies including Cochrane Tubacin side effects reviews demonstrated that studies with positive findings were given priority in publication compared with those with inconclusive or invalidating results or with findings contrary to the study hypotheses.2 This preference can mislead readers about the effectiveness of the reported therapy2 and inflate the rate of type I (false-positive) error of a meta-analysis.4 The Declaration of Helsinki (Article 30) clearly states that ��Authors, editors and publishers all have ethical obligations with regard to the publication of the results of research.

Authors have a duty to make the results of their research on human subjects publicly available and are accountable for the completeness and accuracy of their reports. They should adhere to accepted guidelines for ethical reporting. Negative and inconclusive as well as positive results should be published or otherwise made publicly available��.5 Hence, it is the moral responsibility of researchers, fund givers and journals to distribute research findings, regardless of the outcome. Authors and fund providers should not have a preference to submit only studies reporting positive results. Meanwhile, journals should implement the ��must have�� measures to diminish PB from their selection processes. In this way, scientific integrity will be upheld and maintained.

2 Bias in the dissemination of research, publication, interpretation and review of scientific findings is considered as ��scientific misconduct��.6 For details on publication bias, we refer to our recent publication.2 Moreover, the P-value does not provide a good measure of the strength of evidence against the null hypothesis of no difference (no association between a characteristic and an outcome), even though it is often interpreted in this way.7 A small P-value signifies that the evidence in favour of the null hypothesis is weak and that the likelihood of the observed differences due to chance is so small that the null hypothesis is unlikely to be true.3,8�C10 The rejection of the null hypothesis (when a P-value of <.

05) must be based on the limitations/assumptions that (1) there is up to 5% chance of a type I error of finding a difference where there is none, (2) there is 50% chance of a type II error of finding no difference where there is one, (3) the data are normally distributed, Dacomitinib (4) they follow exactly the same distribution as that of the population from which the sample was taken.10 Conversely, a P-value of >.05 only indicates that the evidence is inadequate to reject the null hypothesis, and the alternative hypothesis (the opposite of the null hypothesis) that the observed differences between the groups is real or not due to chance is not accepted. As a consequence, the study results are unlikely to have occurred by chance.