STROBE-ME too!

Excerpt

The past decade has seen a growing catalogue of guidelines for reporting findings of epidemiologic studies [1‐4]. The basic rationale of each of these guidelines is that these efforts will ultimately improve the credibility of epidemiological research and publications. Recently, the European Journal of Epidemiology published the guide lines for prognostic studies in genomics [5, 6]. In this issue the journal includes the paper of the Gallo et al. entitled ‘STrengthening the Reporting of OBservational studies in Epidemiology—Molecular Epidemiology (STROBE-ME). In 2004, the STROBE initiative provided a checklist of 22 items to be reported in epidemiological studies. The present STROBE-ME initiative builds on the STROBE Statement [2]. It is difficult to suppress a ‘me-too’ feeling and the question raised by Vandenbroucke comes to mind: for whom do these guidelines toll [4]? Why do we need this extension of the STROBE statement given the abundance guidance? …