The Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine (CEBM) has decamped to somewhere near Warwick for two days to update the Catalogue of Bias.

For those not familiar with the Catalogue of Bias, it aims to better understand the persistent presence, diversity, and impact of biases. The Catalogue stems from original work by David Sackett.

Sackett recognised the importance of bias in research. His 1979 paper “Bias in Analytic Research”, published in the Journal of Chronic Diseases. He proposed that the continued development of an annotated catalogue of bias be a research priority, stating that each citation should include a useful definition, a referenced example illustrating the magnitude and direction of its effects, and a description of the appropriate preventive measures, if any.

Sackett catalogued 35 biases that arise in sampling and measurement, in the context of clinical trials, and listed 56 biases potentially affecting case-control and cohort studies. So far, we’ve catalogued 65 biases: The top three on the site are Selection bias, Attrition bias, and Ascertainment bias.

As for TTE’s favourite, check out Hot Stuff bias. When a topic is fashionable (‘hot’), investigators may be less critical in their approach to their research, and investigators and editors may not be able to resist the temptation to publish the results. Sound familiar?

The catalogue is maintained by a group of CEBM members who are dedicated to overcoming bias. They meet regularly to develop and refine their content, and in between meetings, they update it. Despite limited funding, the catalogue has made a significant impact and often appears in our friend Matt’s work.

Sackett’s first draft of a catalogue aimed to assess those biases which may ‘distort the design, execution, analysis, and interpretation of research.’ In the next two days, we’re hoping to add another 10 to the catalogue site, taking the total to 75 (we’ve got over 100 in our current list). Among these, there are Editor bias, Citation bias, Healthy vaccine bias/Healthy user bias, Sick quitter bias, and Repeated peeks bias. How’s that for a list?

This post first appeared on Trust the Evidence

This post was written by an old geezer (Carl Heneghan ) who is tortured by bias.

https://trusttheevidence.substack.com/p/catalogue-of-bias