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Reanalysis of Survival of Oscar Winners
- Steven Goodman, MD, PhD, Associate Editor; and
- Harold C. Sox, MD, Editor
EDITORS' NOTE:
The debate between Sylvestre and colleagues (1) and Redelmeier and Singh shows both the value and limitations of prepublication peer review and underscores the importance of review after publication. The original paper by Redelmeier on the survival of Oscar winners (2) underwent close in-house scrutiny and external methodologic review, which resulted in several new analyses, including the “time-varying covariate” model we discuss here. Because the editors felt that the methodologic issues were subtle, we also took what was at that time a somewhat unusual step to facilitate postpublication review. As a condition of publication, we required the authors to make the data set available to interested researchers. Unfortunately, various complications prevented its prompt dissemination, and it has taken almost 5 years for someone to come forward with a reanalysis of the data. We are glad to publish Sylvestre and colleagues' reanalysis, partly because the article affords a chance to amend a widely publicized result, but more so because the analytic methods at issue apply to many health care research questions.
The main purpose of this letter is to help the technically less sophisticated reader to understand the issues under discussion. The central issue is how best to analyze a sudden …
