'Medical Error' Study Shows Major Flaws, Should Be Retracted

HARRISBURG, Pa., July 5, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Medical blogger Shyam Sabat, MD, practices neuroradiology in Hershey, Pa. He is also Vice-Chair of the Pennsylvania Medical Society Young Physician Section and Secretary-Treasurer of the Dauphin County Medical Society. In this Quality and Value blog, he writes about flaws discovered in paper titled "Medical Error: The Third Leading Cause of Death in the U.S." and scrutinizes this paper's statistical work.

The BMJ (formerly the British Medical Journal) published a paper titled "Medical Error: The Third Leading Cause of Death in the U.S.," authored by Makary M & Daniel M in its 353th issue dated May 3, 2016.

The paper, which likely purposefully has a tabloid type spicy headline, has expectedly already garnered widespread attention in the print, online and TV media as well as the blogosphere and social media. The paper is being cited in the same breath as the very famous Institute of Medicine (IOM) 1999 paper titled: "To Err is Human."

But luckily for the U.S. medical/paramedical personnel and patients (and unfortunately for the authors and publishers), the paper is a shoddy piece of scientific and statistical work which cannot stand the close scrutiny of peer physician researchers and professional statisticians.

We reviewed the paper with expert statistician Dr. Vernon Chinchilli (Prof. and Chair Department of Public Health Sciences, Penn State College of Medicine), who found it shoddy science that the paper which calls itself a meta-analysis of four studies, is actually just a borrowed summary of a single study ....

To read the entire blog, visit https://www.pamedsoc.org/tools-you-can-use/topics/quality-and-value-blog/BlogJune2116

To learn more about the Pennsylvania Medical Society, visit its web site at www.pamedsoc.org or follow on Twitter @PAMEDSociety. Members of the media are encouraged to follow Chuck Moran on Twitter @ChuckMoran7.

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SOURCE Pennsylvania Medical Society

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