Psychiatry researchers frequently put a positive spin on non-significant findings from trials of drugs or other interventions — and top journals publish them regardless, a study shows.

More than half of a sample of papers from six high-ranking psychology and psychiatry journals included ‘spin’ in the abstract results or conclusions, according to the US study published in BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine.

The finding raised concern over the potential for clinicians to be misled given that there was evidence “most physicians read only the article abstract the majority of the time”, the authors said.

The researchers, from the Oklahoma State University Center for Health Sciences, analysed 116 randomised controlled trial publications from 2012 to 2017, detecting spin in 56% of the papers.