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It's interesting that Pitkin is raised as a supporter of obtaining full-text journals. In the article, Pitkin states "Many of the discrepancies identified were quite minor and not likely to cause serious misinterpretation". In fact, after an exchange of e-mails with Pitkin about twelve months ago he states "The frequency of errors severe enough to lead to an erroneous conclusion is very low. I do not recall any cases in which the actual conclusion was stated incorrectly" and "I think what you are doing seems fine and appropriate for the clinical situation. I was in clinical practice for many years and I understand fully the urgency of getting the best answer". Abstracts have drawbacks but then so does having to rely on full-text. 'Quick and dirty' that rely on one abstract has problems, but when you look at numerous abstracts you tend to get the bigger picture. In fact the way some people are leading this debate the only 'proper' way of answering a question is to do a full scale systematic review (including gray literature and foregin language. Terms such as 'quick and dirty', 'systematic review' are relative terms. With ATTRACT we follow a systematic protocol - but that isn't a SR, or is it? Does omitting gray literature and/or foreign language still make it a SR? I'm not denying the problems of quick and dirty but respectfully the bigger problem is making EBM so ivory tower it alienates 90% of clinicians who might benefit from it's approach. yours jon