Corrections to Statistical Questions in Evidence-based Medicine by Martin Bland and Janet Peacock.

Some of these errors were corrected in later printings so may not be present in your copy.

Missing references

The last two pages of references were omitted by the printers. They were present in the proofs, honest! The missing references are:

Vaidya, J.S. and Mittra, I. (1997) Fraction of normal remaining life span: a new method for expressing survival in cancer. British Medical Journal 314, 1682-4.

Vaidya, J.S. and Mittra, I. (1998) New method of expressing survival in cancer is popular. British Medical Journal 316, 1092.

Varghese, Z., Scoble, J.E., Chan, M.K., Wheeler, D., Lui, S.F., Baillod, R.A., Fernado, O.N., Sweny, P., and Moorhead, J.F. (1988) Parathyroid hormone as a causative factor of primary non-function in renal transplants. British Medical Journal 296, 393.

Variainen, E., Puska, P., Pekkanen, J., Tuomilehto, J., Lonnqvist, J., Ehnholm, and C. (1994) Serum cholesterol concentration and mortality from accidents, suicide, and other violent causes. British Medical Journal 309, 445-7.

Verdrager, J. (1998) New variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease and bovine pituitary growth hormone. Lancet 351, 112-3.

Wallace, S.J. and Smith, J.A. (1980) Successful prophylaxis against febrile convulsions with valproic acid or phenobarbitone. British Medical Journal 280, 353-4.

Ward, H., Day, S., Mezzone, J., Dunlop, L., Donegan, C., Farrar, S., Whitaker, L., Harris, J.R., and Miller, D.L. (1993) Prostitution and risk of HIV: female prostitutes in London. British Medical Journal 307, 356-8.

Webb, P.M., Knight, T., Greaves, S., Wilson, A., Newell, D.G., Elder, J., Forman, and D. (1994) Relation between infection with Helicobacter pylori and living conditions in childhood: evidence for person to person transmission in early life. British Medical Journal 308, 750-3.

Weissman, M.M., Klerman, G.L., Markowitz, J.S., and Ouellette, R. (1989) Suicidal ideation and suicide attempts in panic disorder and attacks. New England Journal of Medicine 321, 1209-14.

West, K.P., Katz, J., Khatry, S.K., LeClerq, S.C., Pradhan, E.K., Shrestha, S.R., Connor, P.B., Dali, S.M., Christian, P., Pokhrel, R.P., and Sommer, A. (1999) Double blind, cluster randomised trial of low dose supplementation with vitamin A or beta-carotene on mortality related to pregnancy in Nepal. British Medical Journal 318, 570-5.

West, M.J., Coleman, P.D., Flood, D.G., and Troncoso, J.C. (1994) Differences in the pattern of hippocampal neuronal loss in normal ageing and Alzheimer's disease. Lancet 344, 769-72.

Whitley, E., Gunnell, D., Dorling, D., and Smith, G.D. (1999) Ecological study of social fragmentation, poverty, and suicide. British Medical Journal 319, 1034-7.

Wilkinson, C.E., Peters, T.J., Stott, N.C., and Harvey, I.M. (1994) Prospective evaluation of a risk scoring system for cervical neoplasia in primary care. British Journal of General Practice 44, 341-4.

Wilkinson, R., Milledge, J.S., and Landon, M.J. (1993) Microalbuminuria in chronic obstructive lung disease. British Medical Journal 307, 239.

Wilkinson, R.G. (1992) Income distribution and life expectancy. British Medical Journal 304, 165-8.

Winters, J.C., Sobel, J.S., Groenier, K.H., Arendzen, H.J., and Meijboom-de Jong, B. (1997) Comparison of physiotherapy, manipulation and corticosteroid injection for treating shoulder complaints in general practice: randomised, single blind study. British Medical Journal 314, 1320-5.

Winters, J.C., Jorritsma, W., Groenier, K.H., Sobel, J.S., and Meijboom-de Jong, B. (1999) Treatment of shoulder complaints in general practice: long term results of a randomised, single blind study comparing physiotherapy, manipulation, and corticosteroid injection. British Medical Journal 318, 1395-6.

Wise, J. (1998) Links to tobacco industry influences review conclusions. British Medical Journal 316, 1533.

Wjst, M., Reitmeir, P., Dold, S., Wulff, A., Nicolai, T., von, Loeffelholz-Colberg, E.F., and von Mutius, E. (1993) Road traffic and adverse effects on respiratory health in children. British Medical Journal 307, 596-600.

Wood, A. (1999) Exclusion orders: for and against. The Guardian London, 3 September, 19.

Yerushalmy, J. (1971) The relationship of parents' cigarette smoking to outcome of pregnancy -- implications as to the problem of inferring causation from observed associations. American Journal of Epidemiology 93, 443-56.

Zhang, J. and Radcliffe, J.M. (1993) Paternal smoking and birthweight in Shanghi. American Journal of Public Health 83, 207-10.

In addition, the last reference on page 251 is incomplete. It should be:

Turnbull, D., Holmes, A., Shields, N., Cheyne, H., Twaddle, S., Gilmour, W.H., McGinley, M., Reid, M., Johnstone, I., Geer, I., McIlwaine, G., and Lunan, C.B. (1996) Randomised, controlled trial of efficacy of midwife-managed care. Lancet 348, 213-8.

Other corrections

Page 11, Answer 2.7.4. Insert "and" between "Reporting of migraine is subjective " and "it may be associated with".

Page 12, Question 2.10, line 4. Replace "At ages" by "To study possible long-term effects of ultrasonography, at ages".

Page 12, Question 2.10, line 5. After "followed up" add "and their educational attainment measured".

Page 13, Answers 2.10, line 3. Replace "may refuse medical advice in general." by "may be likely to refuse any medical advice, not just ultrasound, and so may have worse health."

Page 28, Question 3.7, line 2. Replace "294 685" by "54 385".

Page 28, Question 3.7, line 4. Replace "4 524" by "4 526".

Page 28 Question 3.8. Replace "Churchill and Beevers 1996" by "Churchill et al. 1997".

Page 40 Question 4.1.2. Delete "age". This is a distribution of blood pressure, the age distribution is in the next question.

Page 51, Answers 4.11.6, line 1. Insert "not" between "does" and "make".

Page 53, Answers 4.12.5, line 4. Add "We think a better alternative would be to include a heading showing `mean (SD)' and give the data as `125.2 (33.9)'".

Page 63, Answers 5.7.2, line 3. After "bars in the figure" insert ", jutting out of the top of the bars like little television aerials". Delete "To give a better idea of the distribution, a box and whisker plot could be used. I would prefer a dot or scatter plot showing all the data in each group (Intro S5.6)".

Page 63, Answers 5.7.2, lines 9-11. Delete "Adding these to a scatter diagram gives a much more informative graph than letting them jut out of the top of the bars, like little television aerials." Insert "We could use a box and whisker plot to do this. We could also use a dot or scatter plot, which would show all the data in each group (Intro S5.6). If we wanted to show the means and their standard errors, we could add these to the scatter diagram."

The whole of Answer 5.7.2 should now read:
"There is no indication of either the variability of the data or the precision of the mean estimates. To indicate the variability, standard deviation lines could be added to the bars in the figure, jutting out of the top of the bars like little television aerials. There are no standard deviations given in the paper, only P values, so we cannot improve the diagram with the information available. If the precision of the estimated means were thought more important, standard error or confidence interval lines could be added instead. Bar charts of means do not show us the shape of the distribution. We could use a box and whisker plot to do this. We could also use a dot or scatter plot, which would show all the data in each group (Intro S5.6). If we wanted to show the means and their standard errors, we could add these to the scatter diagram."

Page 67, 2nd paragraph, line 1. Replace "times" by "occasions on which".

Page 87, Answer 8.1.6, lines 5-6. Insert "is" between "Hence there" and "some evidence for a real difference".

Page 90, Question 8.6, line 2. Replace "294 685" by "54 385".

Page 90, Question 8.6, line 4. Replace "4 524" by "4 526".

Page 95, Answer 9.2.2, lines 2-4. Replace "(Chapter 9.3)" by "(Chapter 9.7)".

Page 100, Answer 9.7.2, lines 2-3. Replace "(p=0.58)" by "(p=0.158)".

Page 116, Question 11.1, line 9. Replace "Churchill and Beevers 1996" by "Churchill et al. 1997".

Page 120, Question 11.5. Add note after graph "(Vertical axis shows mutant frequency multiplied by 106.)".

Page 120, Question 11.5.3. Delete "using the original variables".

Page 132, Questions 12.1, line 4. Replace "sort" by "sought".

Page 139, Answers 12.3.5, line 3. Replace "significance" by "significant".

Page 139, Answers 12.3.5, line 7. Replace "1 - 0.9515 = 0.54" by "1 - 0.9515 = 0.54".

Page 139, Answers 12.3.5, line 15. Replace "1 - 0.9915 = 0.14" by "1 - 0.9915 = 0.14".

Page 146, Questions 13.1, table. In the "Total" row replace "28" by "30".

Page 147, Answer 13.1.1, line 2. Replace "Providencia" by "P. alcalifaciens".

Page 147, Answer 13.1.5, line 5. Replace "Providencia" by "P. alcalifaciens".

Page 150, Questions 13.5, table. In the column headed "ages 45-49", replace "41" by "31" and "44%" by "51%".

Page 151, Answer 13.5.3, line 2. Replace "305" by "295".

Page 174, Question 15.5, table. Insert a row in the table " mean (SE) mean (SE) mean (SE)", as shown:

---------------------------------------------------------------
                       Plasma       Plasma      i-PTH (ng/l)
                       calcium      phosphate   (normal range
                       (mmol/l)     (mmol/l)    1200)
                      mean (SE)    mean (SE)    mean (SE)
---------------------------------------------------------------
Primary function      2.50 (0.04)  1.64 (0.09)  1760 (330)
Primary non-function  2.56 (0.04)  1.78 (0.10)  3069 (389)
P value *                 NS           NS          0.01
---------------------------------------------------------------
* Unpaired t test

Page 175 Answer 15.5.2, line 8. Replace "as all" by "at all".

Page 183, Answer 15.10.5, line 1. Delete "They are right".

Page 214, Question 18.4.3, lines 7-8. Replace "cholescystectomy" by "cholecystectomy".

Page 229, Answer 19.3.10, lines 1-2. After "first table" insert "(Question 19.3.7)", after "second table" insert "( Question 19.3.9)".

Page 244. Replace reference to Churchill and Beevers (1996) by "Churchill D, Perry IJ, Beevers DG. (1997) Ambulatory blood pressure in pregnancy and fetal growth. Lancet 349, 7-10."

Many thanks to error spotters, including Ken-ichi Adachi, Denise Howel, and Alastair Munro.


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Last updated: 7 August, 2007.

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