Statistical inference in abstracts of 3 influential clinical pharmacology journals analysed using a text‐mining algorithm

2021

Aim To describe the trend in the prevalence of statistical inference in three influential clinical pharmacology journals METHODS: We applied a computer-based algorithm to abstracts of three clinical pharmacology journals published in 1976 to 2016 to identify statistical inference and its subtypes. Furthermore, we manually reviewed a random sample of 300 articles to access algorithm's performance in finding statistical inference in abstracts and as a screening tool for presence and absence of statistical inference in full text. Result The algorithm identified 59% (13,375/22,516 [mid p 95% CI, 59%-60%]) article abstracts with statistical inference. The percentage of abstracts with statistical…