Key result
A 1980 five-sentence letter on opioid addiction was cited 608 times, with 72.2% of citations uncritically using it as evidence that addiction during long-term opioid therapy is rare.
A brief 1980 letter was heavily and uncritically cited in subsequent literature to support the claim that opioid addiction is rare during long-term therapy.
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Clinicians must scrutinize citation sources; this leaves open the true addiction risk during long-term opioid therapy.
A five-sentence letter published in the Journal in 1980 has been heavily cited as evidence that long-term opioid therapy has seldom been associated with addiction. Of the 608 citations, 72.2% used the letter uncritically as evidence that such addiction was rare.
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Leung et al. (2017) studied this question. A 1980 five-sentence letter on opioid addiction was cited 608 times, with 72.2% of citations uncritically using it as evidence that addiction during long-term opioid therapy is rare.
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