The DOI matches its Crossref record.
Down with odds ratios!
Open accessAbstract
As described in an earlier EBM note (1) and in our glossary, this journal reports the results of individual randomised trials in terms of relative risk reductions (RRRs), calculated by dividing the absolute difference in event rates between the control (control event rate [CER]) and experimental (experimental event rate [EER]) patients by the event rate for the controls: (CER – EER)/CER = RRR. From these same values, we also report the number of patients that would need to be treated (NNT) to prevent 1 additional event—1/(CER–EER)—or by its alternative calculation–1/(RRR × CER). Thus, in the example shown in Table 1, the RRR is 89% and the NNT is 4 (2).
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cited by
Austin, P. C. (2009) · Statistics in Medicine · doi:10.1002/sim.3697 · Cited by 6,758
A modified test for small‐study effects in meta‐analyses of controlled trials with binary endpoints
Harbord, R. M., Egger, M., & Sterne, J. A. C. (2006) · Statistics in Medicine · doi:10.1002/sim.2380 · Cited by 2,267
Deeks, J. J., Altman, D. G., & Bradburn, M. J. (2001) · Systematic Reviews in Health Care · doi:10.1002/9780470693926.ch15 · Cited by 2,163
Self-citationHow Big is a Big Odds Ratio? Interpreting the Magnitudes of Odds Ratios in Epidemiological Studies
Chen, H., Cohen, P., & Chen, S. (2010) · Communications in Statistics - Simulation and Computation · doi:10.1080/03610911003650383 · Cited by 1,952
Statistics Notes: The odds ratio
Bland, J. M. (2000) · BMJ · doi:10.1136/bmj.320.7247.1468 · Cited by 1,294
Metadata
- Authors
- Sackett, D. L., Deeks, J. J., & Altman, D. G.
- Venue
- Evidence Based Medicine
- Publisher
- BMJ
- Published
- 1996-10
- Volume
- 1
- Issue
- 6
- Pages
- 164-166
- ISSN
- 1356-5524 (ISSN-L)
- 1473-6810
- OpenAlex
- W2336718169
- Cited by
- 177
- References
- 0
- FWCI
- 7.22
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Down with odds ratios! https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1136/ebm.1996.1.164
- The paper
- Sackett, D. L., Deeks, J. J., & Altman, D. G. (1996). Down with odds ratios! Evidence Based Medicine. https://doi.org/10.1136/ebm.1996.1.164
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
