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Trials and Tribulations of Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses

2007· review· en· W2168972696 on OpenAlexaff
Mark Crowther

Bibliographic record

VenueHematology · 2007
Typereview
Languageen
FieldDecision Sciences
TopicMeta-analysis and systematic reviews
Canadian institutionsSt. Joseph’s Healthcare HamiltonSt. Joseph's Hospital
Fundersnot available
KeywordsSystematic reviewCritical appraisalMeta-analysisManagement scienceProcess (computing)Medical literatureSubject (documents)MEDLINEEngineering ethicsSystematic processPublication biasPsychologyAlternative medicineMedicineComputer sciencePolitical scienceWork in processPathologyOperations managementEngineering

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

Systematic reviews can help practitioners keep abreast of the medical literature by summarizing large bodies of evidence and helping to explain differences among studies on the same question. A systematic review involves the application of scientific strategies, in ways that limit bias, to the assembly, critical appraisal, and synthesis of all relevant studies that address a specific clinical question. A meta-analysis is a type of systematic review that uses statistical methods to combine and summarize the results of several primary studies. Because the review process itself (like any other type of research) is subject to bias, a useful review requires rigorous methods that are clearly reported. Used increasingly to inform medical decision making, plan future research agendas, and establish clinical policy, systematic reviews may strengthen the link between best research evidence and optimal health care. In this article, we discuss key steps in how to critically appraise and how to conduct a systematic review or meta-analysis.

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.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Direct model labels (unvalidated)

Per-model category and study-design labels from the labeling rounds. They are machine output, unvalidated, and the disagreement between models ships as data. No study design here is MEDLINE-validated yet.

Model armCategoriesStudy designConfidence
gemmaMetaresearch
Domain: Methods · Genre: Review
About the Canadian research system: no · About a Canadian topic: no
Not applicablelow
gptMetaresearch
Domain: Methods · Genre: Review
About the Canadian research system: no · About a Canadian topic: no
Other designmedium
models splitAgreement compares identical category sets and study designs across arms.

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not 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.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.386
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.811
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesMetaresearch
Consensus categoriesMetaresearch
DomainCandidate signal: Methods · Consensus signal: Methods
Study designCandidate signal: Not applicable · Consensus signal: none
GenreCandidate signal: Review · Consensus signal: Review
Teacher disagreement score0.614
Threshold uncertainty score0.757

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.3860.811
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0060.007
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0210.019
Bibliometrics0.0610.056
Science and technology studies0.0040.008
Scholarly communication0.0170.015
Open science0.0090.012
Research integrity0.0100.010
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0290.008

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 head0.988
GPT teacher head0.728
Teacher spread0.260 · 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

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Labeled directly by 2 models reading the full record.

Metaresearch

The models disagree on parts of this classification; every voice is preserved in the section at the end of the page.

Study designNot applicable · Other design
DomainMethods
GenreReview

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".

Quick stats

Citations84
Published2007
Admission routes1
Has abstractyes

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