The Pandora's Box of Evidence Synthesis and the case for a living Evidence Synthesis Taxonomy.
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Date
2023
Authors
Munn, Z.
Pollock, D.
Barker, T.H.
Stone, J.
Stern, C.
Aromataris, E.
Schünemann, H.J.
Clyne, B.
Khalil, H.
Mustafa, R.A.
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Journal article
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BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine, 2023; 28(3):148-150
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Zachary Munn, Danielle Pollock, Timothy Hugh Barker, Jennifer Stone, Cindy Stern, Edoardo Aromataris, Holger J Schünemann, Barbara Clyne, Hanan Khalil, Reem A Mustafa, Christina Godfrey, Andrew Booth, Andrea C Tricco, Alan Pearson
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Abstract
Have we, as an evidence-based health community, opened the Pandora's box of evidence synthesis? There now exists a plethora of overlapping evidence synthesis approaches and duplicate, redundant and poor-quality reviews.1-4 After years of advocating for the need for systematic reviews of the evidence, there is a risk that this message been disseminated too widely and has been misinterpreted in this process. We have reached a point where in some fields more reviews exist than clinical trials, where same topic reviews are being conducted in parallel, and evidence syntheses possess limited utility for decision-making because of their poor quality or poor reporting.To paraphrase the late Douglas Altman,5 it is possible we are now at a stage where we need less reviews, better reviews and reviews done for the right reason - as opposed to the current state of mass production (approximately 80 reviews per day)6.
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© Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2023. Re-use permitted under CC BY-NC. No commercial re-use. Open access This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited, appropriate credit is given, any changes made indicated, and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.