Review Interventions for the management of long covid post-covid condition: living systematic review, 2024, Zeraatkar, Flottorp, Garner, Busse+

Robert 1973 said:
My Rapid Response has not been published, and there are still no peer-review documents on the site.

The BMJ website was lagging a lot when I submitted my RR. The first time it lagged for so long I gave up and re-submitted it. I think I got a green message on the screen saying it had been received, but I've not received an email confirmation, so I'm wondering if there may have been a technical problem. Can others who have submitted RRs to the BMJ remember if they received email confirmations of receipt? @ME/CFS Skeptic @InitialConditions @dave30th
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Yeah, the submission took a while for me. And they don't give confirmation, except the green message. Hopefully they add it after Christmas.
 
Arvo said:
I wonder if the fact that they called it a "living" systematic review is exactly because they have insufficient crumbs to use for the interventions they want to promote (CBT & exercise). So that when the inevitable criticism comes that bringing in 1 study for each main conclusion is not a "systematic review" they'll go: "Well, duh, it's living, it will be updated with additional publications."

Which would still make no sense for an organisation for which creating "living" systematic reviews can be appropriate (like Cochrane), and would be utterly ridiculous for what is just a journal publication.

(Handy if that's allowed if you want to produce smoke & mirror reference fodder for the promotion of your preferred intervention though.)


Edited to add: sorry if this has already been mentioned - I'm following this thread a bit, but haven't read it all.
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I've only just seen this thread and haven't read all the comments so apologies if this duplicates, but I was about to start going through some Cochrane reading material.

My first question was also what the hell is a Living systematic review??

Reading the following from Cochrane, isn't this exactly what Cochrane have just done to the Larun et al 2019 review on ME/CFS? @Trish @Peter Trewhitt

Living systematic reviews | Cochrane Community
 
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Maat said:
My first question was also what the hell is a Living systematic review??

Reading the following from Cochrane, isn't this exactly what Cochrane have just done to the Larun et al 2019 review on ME/CFS?
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My understanding is that a ‘living review’ is developed for use in a rapidly changing field such as Covid during the pandemic, where provisional guidelines are produced and subject to continuous updating when new data becomes available. But I may be misunderstanding this.

However I would argue that Larun et al is the reverse of this, a dead review, albeit on life support via Cochrane’s editorial board. Larun et al is not being continuously updated on the basis of new evidence, the most recent data used was published in 2011, it is fighting tooth and nail any acknowledgment of already established contrary evidence and interpretations.
 
Peter Trewhitt said:
My understanding is that a ‘living review’ is developed for use in a rapidly changing field such as Covid during the pandemic, where provisional guidelines are produced and subject to continuous updating when new data becomes available. But I may be misunderstanding this.

However I would argue that Larun et al is the reverse of this, a dead review, albeit on life support via Cochrane’s editorial board. Larun et al is not being continuously updated on the basis of new evidence, the most recent data used was published in 2011, it is fighting tooth and nail any acknowledgment of already established contrary evidence and interpretations.
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:) Thanks for that clarification. I'll carry on reading then.
 
A living review should mean any new research is added in an updated version. As Peter says, the Larun review is the opposite, perpetuating an old review by publishing the old review with a new date.
I suspect in the case of the review published on this thread it's a trick to persuade the publisher to keep publishing new versions with the same conclusions.
 
Protocol published yesterday in BMJ Open:

Link | PDF | Reviewer comments

Haven't looked at it in detail but a couple of minor points:

(a) It doesn't look like the exclusion in the review of anosmia/hyposmia related LC trials was specified in the protocol?

(b) The protocol says "reviewers will use the TRACT checklist. . . and perform sensitivity analyses excluding trials that are deemed suspicious" - they did use the checklist but I can't see mention of the sensitivity analyses for this in the review (this was probably due to the limited number of trials, but equally 25% of trials were flagged using TRACT for integrity concerns).
 
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ME/CFS Skeptic said:
The authors have published a rapid response yesterday
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Their response is also non-responsive to the point I had raised, which was that they didn't point out in key sections that the REGAIN sample were post-hospitalized patients. REGAIN itself was forced to append a correction--not because they didn't mention that at all but because it wasn't mentioned in the most prominent places. This review did the exact same thing. The response is the same as the initial REGAIN response--"we mentioned the limitations in the fine print." But in the case of REGAIN, the BMJ itself apparently overruled the authors, because while they claimed in a rapid response that there was no correction needed, a correction appeared the next month.

Here again, they're responding to a criticism I didn't make. I didn't say they never mentioned anywhere that this was a hospitalized group. I pointed out that that needed to be mentioned in the prominent places like the abstract.
 
Thanks for all your work on this @dave30th
We still believe it is incumbent upon The BMJ to correct the review, and that the failure to do so represents a serious breach of the journal’s obligations to publish accurate and unbiased information. However, we see no point in submitting a rapid response at this time.
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Presumably there is someone trying to do the right thing in BMJ though, maybe they need some help? So I wonder if it might be worth doing as they ask and submitting a response?
 
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Hutan said:
Presumably there is someone trying to do the right thing in BMJ though, maybe they needs some help? So I wonder if it might be worth doing as they ask and submitting a response?
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I actually considered it, but I don't want to play that game.

If the authors hadn't already rejected the need for a correction, that would be one thing. But at this point, I don't understand the request. It's like they don't even realize that the request for a correction has already been rejected. They don't need our rapid response if they want to do the right thing. They clearly overruled the authors of REGAIN when they refused to make a correction. They could do the same here. If I were an editor there, I would be mortified that they allowed a review to make the exact same error that they have already corrected in the source material.
 
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