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Comment & Response
August 2015

Errors and Misleading Data in Table

Author Affiliations
  • 1School of Public Health, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel
  • 2Ministry of Health, Israel Center for Disease Control, Ramat Gan, Israel
JAMA Pediatr. 2015;169(8):791. doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2015.2165

To the Editor Following the publication of our meta-analysis on breastfeeding and childhood leukemia incidence in JAMA Pediatrics,1 we noticed a few errors in the crude odds ratios (95% CIs) recalculated using raw data and weight/random columns in Table 2 that were likely the result of mistyping. It also came to our attention that these 2 columns, which present the crude estimates (and weights) calculated by the meta-analysis software used (as opposed to those originally published by the authors) may be misleading because they are in disagreement with the original odds ratios cited in the text. Therefore, we decided to omit these columns from the corrected Table 2 and thus avoid confusion. These columns are not essential to the understanding of the text and only show the backstage calculations done by the meta-analysis software used. The results of the meta-analysis and conclusions are not affected. A corrected version of Table 2 has been provided.2

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