A 3D illustration of many wiggly lines forming a bar chart
Credit: Getty
Bar charts are ubiquitous in the life-science literature, yet a study suggests that they’re often used in ways that can misrepresent research findings. The preprint1, which was first posted on bioRxiv in September and has yet to be peer reviewed, found that in a collection of nearly 3,400 papers from 2023 that included at least one bar chart, almost one-third distorted the data in some way, highlighting a need for increased data literacy among scientists and for a system of checks throughout the writing and publishing processes.
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