Kaiser KA, George BJ, Allison DB. Re: Errors in Zhao et al (2015), Impact of enteral nutrition on energy metabolism in patients with Crohn's disease. World J Gastroenterol 2016; 22(9): 2867-2868 [PMID: 26973426 DOI: 10.3748/wjg.v22.i9.2867]
Corresponding Author of This Article
David B Allison, PhD, Distinguished Professor, Office of Energetics, School of Public Health, University of Alabama at Birmingham, 1665 University Blvd, RPHB 140J, Birmingham, AL 35294-0022, United States. dallison@uab.edu
Research Domain of This Article
Statistics & Probability
Article-Type of This Article
Letters To The Editor
Open-Access Policy of This Article
This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
World J Gastroenterol. Mar 7, 2016; 22(9): 2867-2868 Published online Mar 7, 2016. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v22.i9.2867
Re: Errors in Zhao et al (2015), Impact of enteral nutrition on energy metabolism in patients with Crohn's disease
Kathryn A Kaiser, Brandon J George, David B Allison
Kathryn A Kaiser, Brandon J George, David B Allison, Office of Energetics, School of Public Health, University of Alabama at Birmingham, AL 35294-0022, United States
Author contributions: Kaiser KA and Allison DB wrote the letter; George BJ provided the calculations reported in the letter and verified the content.
Supported by NIH P30 DK056336.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare no commercial, personal, political, intellectual or religious conflicts related to the content of this letter.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: David B Allison, PhD, Distinguished Professor, Office of Energetics, School of Public Health, University of Alabama at Birmingham, 1665 University Blvd, RPHB 140J, Birmingham, AL 35294-0022, United States. dallison@uab.edu
Telephone: +1-205-9759169 Fax: +1-205-9757536
Received: July 9, 2015 Peer-review started: July 9, 2015 First decision: September 9, 2015 Revised: October 7, 2015 Accepted: December 14, 2015 Article in press: December 14, 2015 Published online: March 7, 2016 Processing time: 237 Days and 6.6 Hours
Abstract
We report invalidating errors related to the statistical approach in the analysis and data inconsistencies in a published single cohort study of patients with Crohn’s disease. We provide corrected calculations from the available data and request that a corrected analysis be provided by the authors. These errors should be corrected.
Core tip: The modern scientific process depends on the collaboration among multiple investigators with complementary expertise. Gone are the days when a single investigator can typically be expected to have all the expertise necessary to produce a high quality article on any complex topic. One area of expertise that may be often taken for granted is that of the statistical design and analysis. The concerns raised about the paper in our letter highlight the value of having extensive and careful statistical input into the production of any empirical research paper.
