Flawed conclusion

Dobbs’ conflict of interest in the study “Accuracy of the DriveABLE cognitive assessment to determine cognitive fitness to drive”¹ appears to have coloured the interpretation of the results to an unacceptable degree, and the manuscript’s conclusions should have been totally revised, or the manuscript rejected. Table 1¹ in the article clearly showed that the In-Office test had an accuracy rate of about 69% when it gave drivers a “pass,” about 75% when it gave a “fail,” and about 24% when it claimed a driver was “indeterminate.” Using the diagonal percents as the measure of accuracy across all cases, the In-Office test matched the On-Road test in 50% of all cases. A 50% accuracy rate is far from the tenor of the conclusion the author tries to depict (“highly accurate”), and far from a standard that one would consider to be an overall “good” test. In summary, the “savings” provided by the In-Office test amount to wasted funds if half of its conclusions about driver ability are wrong. “Just test drivers on the road” should be the conclusion, in my opinion. It is good that the conflict of interest was reported, but in this case the conflict appears to have coloured the conclusions so much that this article’s conclusions are severely flawed and should not have been published as is. This shows that merely reporting a conflict of interest is not enough; a manuscript’s interpretations and conclusions need closer scrutiny when there is a conflict. One wonders what the peer reviewers were thinking.

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