Journal of clinical epidemiology
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To systematically identify the strategy and frequency of spin in reports of bariatric surgery randomized controlled trials (RCTs) with statistically nonsignificant primary endpoint. ⋯ Spin occurred in a high proportion of bariatric surgery RCTs with a statistically nonsignificant primary endpoint.
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Effective collaboration and mentorship are essential to success in a career of health research. We summarize our conversation with Dr. John Ioannidis, professor at Stanford University, author of the most accessed manuscript in the history of the Public Library of Science, and one of the most cited scientists in history. ⋯ Ioannidis was invited for a question and answer session as part of a graduate-level course on biostatistical collaboration hosted at McMaster University in December 2020. This text provides insight into the experiences and pearls he shared, that we hope will inspire and guide other researchers early or junior in their careers. He emphasized the importance of passion, enthusiasm and a sincere pursuit for high quality research as being the cornerstones to success and continued productivity in this field.
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GRADE Guidance: 31. Assessing the certainty across a body of evidence for comparative test accuracy.
This article provides GRADE guidance on how authors of evidence syntheses and health decision makers, including guideline developers, can rate the certainty across a body of evidence for comparative test accuracy questions. ⋯ This GRADE guidance will support transparent assessment of the certainty for a body of comparative test accuracy evidence.
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This study developed, calibrated, and evaluated a machine learning classifier designed to reduce study identification workload in Cochrane for producing systematic reviews. ⋯ The Cochrane RCT Classifier can reduce manual study identification workload for Cochrane Reviews, with a very low and acceptable risk of missing eligible RCTs. This classifier now forms part of the Evidence Pipeline, an integrated workflow deployed within Cochrane to help improve the efficiency of the study identification processes that support systematic review production.
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Filtering the deluge of new research to facilitate evidence synthesis has proven to be unmanageable using current paradigms of search and retrieval. Crowdsourcing, a way of harnessing the collective effort of a "crowd" of people, has the potential to support evidence synthesis by addressing this information overload created by the exponential growth in primary research outputs. Cochrane Crowd, Cochrane's citizen science platform, offers a range of tasks aimed at identifying studies related to health care. Accompanying each task are brief, interactive training modules, and agreement algorithms that help ensure accurate collective decision-making.The aims of the study were to evaluate the performance of Cochrane Crowd in terms of its accuracy, capacity, and autonomy and to examine contributor engagement across three tasks aimed at identifying randomized trials. ⋯ Cochrane Crowd is sufficiently accurate and scalable to keep pace with the current rate of publication (and registration) of new primary studies. It has also proved to be a popular, efficient, and accurate way for a large number of people to play an important voluntary role in health evidence production. Cochrane Crowd is now an established part of Cochrane's effort to manage the deluge of primary research being produced.