Confirmation Bias as a Factor in Pharmacy Student Assessment of Research Study Quality

Objective: To determine if prior beliefs and attitudes about U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved drug products versus dietary supplements affected the ability of pharmacy students to analyze quality of drug literature abstracts and use them for making drug recommendations.Methods: Fifty-nine students in a drug literature course were randomly assigned to receive one of two forms to evaluate four drug literature abstracts of varying quality and study design. In each form, two abstracts were real and two substituted a different product for the actual product. We asked students several questions about the studies to determine if evaluation of quality was affected by prior opinions about the drug products.Results: Students correctly recognized relative quality of the studies; however they still were more likely to recommend FDA-approved drugs compared to dietary supplements after reading identical studies.Conclusions: Pharmacy students’ evaluation of clinical research studies was mildly influenced...