About the Authors

Allison Hirst

allison.hirst@csm.ox.ac.uk

Affiliation The EQUATOR Network, Centre for Statistics in Medicine, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom

Douglas G. Altman

Affiliation The EQUATOR Network, Centre for Statistics in Medicine, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom

Competing Interests

DGA is a member of the EQUATOR Network Steering Group and is a member of several reporting guideline development groups including CONSORT, PRISMA, STROBE, ARRIVE and STRICTA. AH is employed as a research fellow by the EQUATOR Network. This does not alter the authors' adherence to all PLoS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: AH DGA. Performed the experiments: AH DGA. Analyzed the data: AH DGA. Wrote the paper: AH DGA.