The proliferation and popularity of online media has led to what amounts to a real-time, longitudinally documented Journal Club. Named “post-publication peer review” (PPPR), it consists of blog posts, podcasts and videocasts, comments on research journal websites, remarks on online media outlets, and websites dedicated specifically to PPPR. Like a traditional Journal Club, PPPR seeks to redress any deficiencies in the traditional peer review process that lead to shortcomings or errors in the reporting or interpretation of a research study.
PPPR following publication of a “positive” trial, that is one where the authors conclude that their a priori criteria for rejecting the null hypothesis were met, is oftentimes directed at the identification of a host of biases in the design, conduct, and analysis of the trial that may have led to a “false positive” trial. False positive trials are those in which either a type I error has occurred (the null hypothesis was rejected even though it is true and no difference between groups exists), or the structure of the experiment was biased in such a way as that the experiment and its statistics cannot be informative. The biases that cause structural problems in a trial are manifold, and I may attempt to delineate them at some point in the future. Because it is a simpler task, I will here attempt to list a differential diagnosis that people may use in PPPRs of “negative” trials.
