I'm pleasantly surprised at all the thoughtful responses so far. One
point that needs to be made strongly is that the systematic review (SR)
is often good at uncovering the limitations of systematic reviews.
In particular, much about what we know about the biases created by
monetary conflicts of interest were discovered through SR.
The SR is also useful at identifying research gaps, such as the absence
of lifestyle intervention trials.
Thus, the SR is self-critical and provides us with many of the warnings
that we need to avoid placing too much faith in them.
Nevertheless, I would not go as far as Wouter Havinga, who writes:
> Therefore SR appear futile to me, to waste again time and money over
> these numbers. It's better to ask doctors what they think would be a
> good research topic then to swallow Big Pharma indoctrination.
The SR, when tempered with our knowledge of the existing biases in the
medical literature, can still be very useful. Claiming that the SR is
futile is just as dangerous as trusting a SR blindly.
Steve Simon, [log in to unmask], Standard Disclaimer.
I'm a blogger now! http://blog.pmean.com
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