A citation analysis of clinical trials; are definitive studies less cited than others ?

Abstract

A citation analysis of 316 clinical trials published in 1979 and 1980 in two major medical journals : New England Journal of Medicine and Lancet arrives at an apparently paradoxical finding.: large trials, carried out according t o modern designs involving randomized and double-blind allocation procedures, tend to be less cited than other, less rigorous studies. The explanation put forward in this paper revolves around the idea that heuristic value is an important determinant of citedness. Since studies designed to yield final conclusions are likely to be preceded by smaller and more tentative trials , new ideas, concepts and approaches are more likely to originate in the latter rather than in the former.