In many cases, negotiations are derailed by cognitive biases assumptions and systematic errors that can cloud judgment, affect decisions, harm outcomes, and even escalate conflict.
A recent study of Cochrane systematic reviews and their primary studies showed that specific harm outcomes are poorly reported and less than 30%% report them in full [1].
Studies have found that statistically significant results had a higher odds of being fully reported compared to non-significant results for both efficacy and harm outcomes.
Chan et al also looked at efficacy and harm outcomes and in their Canadian empirical study [14] found that a median of 31% of efficacy outcomes and 59% of harm outcomes were incompletely reported and statistically significant efficacy outcomes had a higher odds than non significant efficacy outcomes of being fully reported (OR 2.7; 95% CI 1.5, 5).
von Elm et al [18] considered efficacy and harm outcomes as well as primary outcomes overall and found that 32% (223/687) were reported in the publication but not specified in the protocol and 42% (227/546) were specified in the protocol but not reported, however this is preliminary data.
In their Danish empirical study [15] they found that 50% of efficacy and 65% of harm outcomes per trial were incompletely reported and statistically significant outcomes had a higher odds of being fully reported compared with non significant outcomes for both efficacy (OR 2.4, 95% CI; 1.4, 4) and harm (OR 4.7, 95% CI; 1.8, 12) data.
The joint distribution describes the correlation between benefit and harm outcomes.
In addition, none of the methods considers the joint distribution of benefit and harm outcomes.
Equally, reviews that specified no harm outcomes or reported only on pooled harm outcomes were excluded from further consideration because an assessment of outcome reporting bias in these situations would not be possible or feasible.
Trial reports commonly describe standard errors and confidence intervals for the benefit and harm outcomes separately, but rarely describe the joint distribution of the effects of the treatment on the benefit and harm outcomes.
The most consistent associations were between frequency of interpersonal discussion and two of the perceived harm outcomes, while perceived valence of interpersonal discussion was associated with all three perceived harm outcomes.
