Thanks for the responses

On this subject. How important would be the declaration of conflict of interests (COI) by the authors on the validity of the article? Should it be on the critical appraisal checklists?
On a systematic review checklist for validity, a funnel plot searching for publication bias is an important item to look for. Publication bias sometimes is not a random or systematic error, it could be an intentional bias (fraud, deceive??), the best example is the one we saw with Vioxx and the reason why clinicaltrias.gov and other trial registration sites were created.

"Research journals are still doing too little to protect themselves and their readers from the burgeoning incidence of scientific fraud, a poll of editors has found. Despite a spate of high profile misconduct cases in recent years"
http://tiny.cc/h7WGe

My point is; Should CASP and other critical appraisal tools check for COI and other "intentional bias"? As it is done in the systematic review checklists when looking for publication bias?
Does these items affect the validity (internal or external)?




On Wed, Aug 5, 2009 at 12:13 PM, roy poses <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

I am a big supporter of systematic reviews, and did not mean to disparage them.

However, it seems to be that the relevant principles of transparency, and indeed, the principles of transparency that apply to the EBM movement, were meant to protect against inadvertent error, not against deliberate attempts at deception.  A company willing to sponsor the deception entailed by having its marketing group design ostensibly scholarly articles, have ghost-writers construct the articles, and recruit distinguished academics to pretend to be their first authors, might well be willing to go to the further effort of engineering fundamentally deceptive, ghost-written articles meant to look like "systematic reviews."  I am not sure how easy these would be to detect. 

As long as there are not strong disclosure requirements, and big penalties for those failing to disclose, and as long as academic institutions are willing to look the other way from these and other deceptive practices as long as their faculty continue to bring in the money, these deceptive, ghost-writing and other fundamentally corrupt practices are likely to continue.

At 12:05 PM 8/5/2009, Ian Johnson (ERU) wrote:

I am one of those clever people, but as I am sure you will all be aware, the whole principle of systematic reviews, if appropriately conducted, is transparency and reproducibility. The question may be whether the results of all systematic reviews reach the public domain to contribute to the evidence base.

 

K Ian Johnson

Technical Director

 

Evidence Research Unit

19-21 King Edward Street

Macclesfield, Cheshire

SK10 1AQ, United Kingdom

Tel +44 (0)1625 624048, Fax +44 (0)1625 619812

[log in to unmask]

www.evidenceresearchunit.com

 

 

From: Evidence based health (EBH) [ mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of roy poses

Sent: 05 August 2009 15:58

To: [log in to unmask]

Subject: Fwd: another reason

 

I completely agree that systematic reviews are preferable, but...

do you really think that the clever people hired by pharma/ biotech/ device companies could not churn out what look like systematic reviews that would still come to conclusions in favor of their vested interests? 

This latest case of ghost-writing is an argument for, at the very least, full and detailed disclosure about all people involved in authorship. 

Another reason why narrative review articles should be replaced by systematic reviews

Wyeth and the ghostwriters

http://bit.ly/AIZUL