A Randomized Survey of the Preference of Gastroenterologists for a Cochrane Review versus a Traditional Narrative Review
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Clinicians often rely on review material rather than analysis of primary research to guide therapy. Systematic reviews use methods to insure thoroughness and to minimize bias, but many clinicians are not familiar with systematic reviews and continue to rely on narrative reviews. OBJECTIVES: To determine whether a traditional narrative review or a systematic review is perceived to be more useful. METHODS: A clinical scenario (patient with chronic Crohn's disease considered for azathioprine therapy) was circulated to gastroenterologists, along with a narrative review of therapy (including azathioprine) for inflammatory bowel disease written by an acknowledged expert, or with a systematic Cochrane review of the use of azathioprine for this disease. Whether knowledge of authorship and journal source influences the perception of usefulness of a narrative review was investigated. RESULTS: The Cochrane review was rated significantly more highly than the narrative review on a 100 mm visual analogue scale (21.3 mm; 95% CI 14.5 to 28 mm). The proportion of respondents who considered the review to be a useful guide was also higher in the group that received the Cochrane review (91%) than in the group that received the narrative review, with author and journal concealed (62%) or identified (70%) (P<0.001 for both comparisons). Ratings from the two groups that received the narrative review were not significantly different. CONCLUSIONS: The focused systematic review was perceived to be more useful than a traditional broad narrative review as a guide to making a decision concerning the use of specific therapy. The possible strengths of systematic reviews should be more fully investigated. If there is additional evidence supporting their greater value to clinicians, they should be made more widely available to clinicians and their strengths should be publicized.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.118 | 0.359 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.004 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.005 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".