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Record W2061242309 · doi:10.4414/smw.2012.13518

Meta-analyses: what they can and cannot do

2012· review· en· W2061242309 on OpenAlex

Why this work is in the frame

A frame that forgets how it found something cannot be audited. These are the routes that admitted this work.

affAt least one author lists a Canadian institution in the pinned OpenAlex snapshot.

Bibliographic record

VenueSwiss Medical Weekly · 2012
Typereview
Languageen
FieldDecision Sciences
TopicMeta-analysis and systematic reviews
Canadian institutionsMcMaster University
FundersGottfried und Julia Bangerter-Rhyner-Stiftung
KeywordsMeta-analysisMedicinePoolingSample size determinationSystematic reviewPsychological interventionStudy heterogeneityMEDLINECritical appraisalStatisticsComputer scienceAlternative medicineArtificial intelligencePsychiatryPathology

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

Meta-analyses overcome the limitation of small sample sizes or rare outcomes by pooling results from a number of individual studies to generate a single best estimate. As long as a meta-analysis is not limited by poor quality of included trials, unexplainable heterogeneity and/or reporting bias of individual trials, meta-analyses can be instrumental in reliably demonstrating benefit or harm of an intervention when results of individual randomised controlled trials are conflicting or inconclusive. Therefore meta-analyses should be conducted as part of a systematic review, i.e., a systematic approach to answer a focused clinical question. Important features of a systematic review are a comprehensive, reproducible search for primary studies, selection of studies using clear and transparent eligibility criteria, standardised critical appraisal of studies for quality, and investigation of heterogeneity among included studies. Cumulative meta-analysis may prevent delays in the introduction of effective treatments and may allow for early detection of harmful effects of interventions. As opposed to meta-analysis based on aggregate study data, individual patient data meta-analyses offer the advantage to use standardised criteria across trials and reliably investigate subgroup effects of interventions. Network meta-analysis allows the integration of data from direct and indirect comparisons in order to compare multiple treatments in a comprehensive analysis and determine the best treatment among several options. We conclude that meta-analysis has become a popular, versatile, and powerful tool. If rigorously conducted as part of a systematic review, it is essential for evidence-based decision making in clinical practice as well as on the health policy level.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

Full frame distilled prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.200
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.048
Version: codex-gemma-dda1882f352aValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesMetaresearch, Meta-epidemiology (narrow), Meta-epidemiology (broad), Scholarly communication, Open science, Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)
Consensus categoriesMetaresearch, Meta-epidemiology (narrow), Meta-epidemiology (broad), Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Other design · Consensus signal: none
GenreCandidate signal: Review · Consensus signal: Review
Teacher disagreement score0.948
Threshold uncertainty score1.000

Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.2000.048
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0010.001
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0350.015
Bibliometrics0.0010.002
Science and technology studies0.0000.000
Scholarly communication0.0030.001
Open science0.0060.001
Research integrity0.0010.001
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0990.008

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.

Opus teacher head0.937
GPT teacher head0.630
Teacher spread0.307 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it