Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology (STROBE) in the International Journal of Medical Students

1 While clinical trials and meta-analyses offer the highest levels of evidence and are therefore considered the gold standards of human research, experimental studies would be hardly possible without any evidence from the hypo- thesis-generating observational studies. It is by the help of we- ll-conducted epidemiological studies that scientists can inform public health decisions and clinical practice guidelines. Nevertheless, observational epidemiological studies are not always conducted by expert epidemiologists. In such cases, fundamental deficiencies in reporting have been identified. 2