The quality of published ecological papers in top journals

Background: Ecological studies explore the relationships among variables in sub-populations, aiming to generate hypotheses; however, they are prone to errors. We explored two main types of errors in published ecological articles. These errors were "ecological fallacy" and "ignored lag time between exposure and outcome." Methods: We reviewed the published ecological articles in 100 top medical and public health journals based on their impact factors in Scopus from January 2020 to December 2022. We found only 13 journals with at least one published ecological article (IF between 1.3 and 13.3). Results: A total of 68 ecological articles were extracted and reviewed. Ecological fallacy was found in 23% of the 40 studies. Although ignored lag time should have been considered in 21% of the studies, only 36.0% of them mentioned it. Conclusion: Despite the importance of ecological research, especially in understanding complex environmental and health-related issues, many studies failed to adequately address critical methodological factors such as ecological fallacy (EF) and ignored lag time (LT). Although most researchers are familiar with the strengths and weaknesses of ecological studies, they did not mention them and take them into account.