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At 12:00 AM 7/17/2005 +0100, you wrote: >Concerning Jon's idea of appraising abstract, I thing Jadad's scale may be >applied to abstracts and checked against the score of the full report. >What do you think of it, Jon? Isn't allocation concealment a major part of the Jadad scale? Abstracts rarely report on allocation concealment. (Full-text still does not report on allocation concealment frequently as well.) There are many times where the full-text article will have flaws not apparent in the abstract, or have information that invalidates statements in the abstract. Some of the worst examples are "randomized" trials that were randomized by having the first 50 patients treated one way and the next 50 patients treated a different way. Also, outcome measures may not be clearly understood without the full-text. There are times when a clinician might need to make decisions and only have abstracts available. One must realize during those times that there is insufficient information to be certain about the validity suggested by the abstract. But the clinical reality is we often have to use our judgment with uncertain information. The purpose of critically appraising abstracts and comparing that with the full-text reports could be to document and publish how often important discrepancies occur. I'm guessing that is what Roger was suggesting. Brian S. Alper MD, MSPH Editor-in-Chief, DynaMed (http://www.DynamicMedical.com) Founder and Medical Director, Dynamic Medical Information Systems, LLC 3610 Buttonwood Drive, Suite 200 Columbia, MO 65201 (573) 886-8907 fax (573) 886-8901 home (573) 447-0705 "It only takes a pebble to start an avalanche."