[R] OT: model diagnostics in the published literature

[Christopher W. Ryan]

This is a more general statiscal question, not specific to R:

As I move through my masters curriculum in statistics, I am becoming 
more and more attuned to issues of model fit and diagnostics (graphical 
methods, AIC, BIC, deviance, etc.) As my regression professor always 
likes to say, only draw substantive conclusions from valid models.

Yet in published articles in my field (medicine), I rarely see any 
explicit description of whether, and if so how, model fit was assessed 
and assumptions checked. Mostly the results sections are all about 
hypothesis testing on model coefficients.

Is this common in other disciplines? Are there fields of study in which 
it is customary to provide a discussion of model adequacy, either in the 
text or perhaps in an online appendix?

And if that discussion is not provided, what, if anything, can one 
conclude about whether, and how well, it was done? Is it sort of taken 
as a given that those diagnostic checks were carried out? Do journal 
editors often ask?

Thanks for your thoughts.

--Chris Ryan
Clinical Associate Professor of Family Medicine
SUNY Upstate Medical University Clinical Campus at Binghamton