Reproducible variability: assessing investigator discordance across 9 research teams attempting to reproduce the same observational study

Anna Ostropolets, Yasser Albogami, Mitchell Conover, Juan M. Banda, William A. Baumgartner Jr., Clair Blacketer, Priyamvada Desai, Scott L. DuVall, Stephen P. Fortin, James P. Gilbert, Asieh Golozar, Joshua Ide, Andrew S. Kanter, David M. Kern, Chungsoo Kim, Lana Y. H. Lai, Chenyu Li, Feifan Liu, Kristine E. Lynch, Evan Minty et al. (18 additional authors not shown)

Abstract: Observational studies can impact patient care but must be robust and reproducible. Nonreproducibility is primarily caused by unclear reporting of design choices and analytic procedures. This study aimed to: (1) assess how the study logic described in an observational study could be interpreted by independent researchers and (2) quantify the impact of interpretations’ variability on patient characteristics.