Background

Spin—reporting that distorts the interpretation of results—is not unusual within scientific literature.

Objective

To appraise strategies of spin among placebo-controlled double-blind clinical trials of topical treatments for photoaged skin.

Methods

A systematic review of the literature was performed to identify placebo-controlled double-blind clinical trials of topical treatments for photoaged skin. A survey of spin strategies was developed and applied to the cohort of identified studies.

Results

The systematic review led to the identification of 20 studies in which various types of spin strategies, broadly classified as either inappropriate statistical analyses or inappropriate interpretation of results, were used. The most commonly used strategies included use of multiple primary outcomes (95%), inappropriate extrapolation of results from specific outcomes to global improvements (95%), focus on within-group comparisons (75%), and focus on interim analyses to give more weight to nonsignificant findings (65%).

Limitations

Classification of spin strategies was subjective and might not encompass all the methods used in the published literature.

Conclusion

Findings in this study inform efforts to reduce spin in the dermatologic literature.

中文翻译：

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在光老化皮肤局部治疗研究报告中的自旋分析

背景

自旋-报告扭曲了结果的解释-在科学文献中并不罕见。

客观的

在光疗皮肤局部治疗的安慰剂对照双盲临床试验中评估旋转策略。

方法

进行了系统的文献综述，以发现安慰剂对照的双盲临床试验，这些试验用于光老化皮肤的局部治疗。开发了自旋策略的调查，并将其应用于已鉴定研究的队列。

结果

通过系统的审查，我们确定了20项研究，其中使用了各种类型的自旋策略，这些策略被广泛归类为不适当的统计分析或不适当的结果解释。最常用的策略包括使用多个主要结果（95％），将结果从特定结果不恰当地推断为整体改善（95％），着重于组内比较（75％）以及着重于中期分析以提供更多结果体重不重要的发现（65％）。

局限性

自旋策略的分类是主观的，可能不包含已出版文献中使用的所有方法。

结论

这项研究的发现为减少皮肤病学文献的努力提供了依据。