About the Authors

Christian Röver

Affiliation Department of Medical Statistics, University Medical Center Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany

Richard Nicholas

Affiliation Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, London, United Kingdom

Sebastian Straube

Affiliation Division of Preventive Medicine, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, T6G 2T4, Canada

Tim Friede

tim.friede@med.uni-goettingen.de

Affiliation Department of Medical Statistics, University Medical Center Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany

Competing Interests

CR has declared that no competing interests exist. RN has received honoraria for speaking fees for advisory boards or search funds from Bayer, Biogen, Genzyme, Merck Serono, Novartis, Roche, TEVA and NICE. SS declares honoraria from Oxford Medical Knowledge and advisory board fees from Daiichi Sankyo, Inc. TF is a consultant to Novartis, Biogen, Grünenthal, Bayer, Vertex, Janssen, and AstraZeneca. This does not alter the authors’ adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: TF. Performed the experiments: CR RN SS. Analyzed the data: CR TF. Wrote the paper: CR RN SS TF.