Dear Colleagues,
Hope all is well. I have been following this thread very closely and I think
it is developing very nicely. I believe that it is time to take it to the
next level. My suggestion is that we take this project on as we would any
day-to-day research project by developing a focused set of outcomes, prepare
a protocol and perform the study. In essence this is a diagnostic accuracy
test to determine how accurate "human intuition" and "visual accuracy" is
when looking at forest plots. I believe that the results will be rewarding
for all individuals involved in both performing systematic review, teaching
evidence-based medicine and/or reads publications on a regular basis.
In addition, I would opt to using a set of "artificial" forest plots, rather
than predefined plots, since it will allow us to create a much larger range
of options in order to increase the accuracy of the results by including
different factors, such as sample size, number of studies, heterogeneity
etc. In addition, I would note that since the point estimate and confidence
intervals can change with different pooling methods, we should include this
issue as part of the question. Lastly, I would be interested if experience
affects the results, and so I would suggest to perform a regression analysis
against factors as the reviewer's experience as defined by number of years
performing systematic review, number of publications, etc. It will
interesting to see whether a seasoned reviewer is more accurate than a
novice.
In conclusion, I believe that this is a great idea, and should be performed
with as much professionalism as we would put in any of our daily research
projects. Also I believe the results should be published to allow the
greatest number of individuals to gain from our experience.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
Please accept my regards.
Sincerely,
Ahmed
_______________________________________
Ahmed M. Abou-Setta, MD, PhD
Independent researcher/ systematic reviewer
Consulting Senior Systematic Reviewer,
Chalmers Research Group, CHEO Research Institute (CHEO RI)
Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario, University of Ottawa
Member, Geneva Foundation for Medical Education & Research
Member, Menstrual Disorders & Subfertility Subgroup, Cochrane Collaboration
5, El-Ashwal Street, from Pyramids Road
Maashal Station, Pyramids
Giza, Egypt
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