RoB 2: a revised tool for assessing risk of bias in randomised trials (2019) Sterne et al.

Lucibee said:
Unfortunately, journal correspondence (whether in print or online) does very little to change anything if the original authors don't want to make corrections. And it's very, very rare for the journal to insist that they do so.
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This is certainly true, given that the PACE authors acknowledged a significant mistake in the Lancet correspondence about how they characterized the population of a database they used to developed their bogus "normal range." The point has never been corrected in The Lancet, and Dr Horton has ignored the request to do so.
 
Webinar: RoB 2 Domain 3: Bias due to missing outcome data

This is the fourth webinar in our RoB 2 Learning Live series, and will explain how to use the third domain of the RoB 2: bias due to missing outcome data. We will explain when bias arises and introduce the signalling questions for the domain. We will cover how to determine when sensitivity analyses provide evidence that a result was not biased by missing outcome data, and we will discuss how to assess whether missingness in the outcome depends on its true value, which is the key consideration in the domain. We will show the algorithm for how answers to signalling questions are mapped to judgements about risk of bias for the domains, along with worked examples.

This session is intended for people who are interested in using RoB 2 to assess risk of bias in their review. In addition to review author teams, CRG editors can learn about the risk of bias from missing outcome data so that they are able to assist authors with any queries they may have and also ensure information included in the review for this domain are relevant.
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Presented by Higgins and Sterne.

https://training.cochrane.org/rob-2-domain-3-bias-due-missing-outcome-data
 
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Jonathan Edwards said:
Yes, I looked up a while back and it certainly does not have to be financial.
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Bero says...."Focusing on interests such as personal beliefs, experience, or intellectual commitments can divert attention from financial conflicts of interest, which have the potential for widespread influence. The result is an erosion of the evidence base and confidence in science, making it vulnerable to competing groups’ claims [12], as we are seeing with issues as diverse as childhood vaccination and climate change."

Oh dear, well we'd better stop diverting attention then. Selfishly causing the erosion of trust in the nice people of Cochrane and the crappy data from crappy studies they polish up and put in their reviews.
 
Caroline Struthers said:
Focusing on interests such as personal beliefs, experience, or intellectual commitments
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But those are not interests in the sense that is relevant. An interest is some potential benefit that may accrue, not a belief or experience. Nobody is focusing on those. This resounds with rationalisation with deliberate confusion of term usage. Again, the message in the background is that big Pharma is bad but equally biased thinking of a touchy feely primary care sort is always good.
 
Jonathan Edwards said:
But those are not interests in the sense that is relevant. An interest is some potential benefit that may accrue, not a belief or experience. Nobody is focusing on those. This resounds with rationalisation with deliberate confusion of term usage. Again, the message in the background is that big Pharma is bad but equally biased thinking of a touchy feely primary care sort is always good.
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yes, you're right. She doesn't mention researcher allegiance at all. Which is relevant.

https://www.nationalelfservice.net/...ce-the-achilles-heel-of-psychotherapy-trials/
https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/5/6/e007206
 
Caroline Struthers said:
Bero says...."Focusing on interests such as personal beliefs, experience, or intellectual commitments can divert attention from financial conflicts of interest, which have the potential for widespread influence. The result is an erosion of the evidence base and confidence in science, making it vulnerable to competing groups’ claims [12], as we are seeing with issues as diverse as childhood vaccination and climate change."
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I see that as an example of some really poor quality reasoning. Turning a reasoned thoughtful consideration of what is a conflict into a polemic of competing opinion is unhelpful. Again and again, I see this unhelpful attitude of it's all so complicated let's simplify it all. (An example within this group but on a different topic would be the ubiquitous fatigue -- let's not tease out differences let's turn everything into generic fatigue)

Yes, thinking can be hard work. Good thing they get paid to do it. So no excuses then.
 
Protecting one's ego is at least as powerful a motivation as protecting one's income, empire, etc. To admit you were seriously wrong, even reckless and callous, and caused terrible harm on a massive scale, is too great a psychological and moral hurdle for most to face.

Most of the guilty in the ME debacle are never going to admit any significant wrongdoing. They will go to their graves denying it all, and blaming patient 'activists' for their failure.

Don't wait around for genuine apologies from the likes of Wessely, the PACE crew, Vogt, Shorter, etc. Will never happen.
 
2020 Bias Methods Group Open Meeting October 27 & 29

https://methods.cochrane.org/bias/news/2020-bias-methods-group-open-meeting

Due to the postponement of the 2020 Cochrane Colloquium in Toronto, the annual Bias Methods Group meeting will be a virtual meeting.

At the meeting, we will launch a testing version of ROB-ME (Risk Of Bias due to Missing Evidence), a new tool for assessing risk of non-reporting biases in evidence syntheses. Further, we will provide a short overview of the groups’ activities as well as give updates on important methodological projects, including a tool for addressing conflicts of interest in randomised trials (TACIT), the revised Cochrane risk-of-bias tool for randomised trials (RoB 2), and a living network meta-analysis on COVID-19 trials.

Presenters include convenors of the Bias Methods Group: Isabelle Boutron, Julian Higgins, Asbjørn Hróbjartsson, and Matthew Page.

Please join us for updates on important methodological developments and interesting discussions. The meetings are open for everyone interested.
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We have planned two meetings to accommodate different time zones. The meetings will be held through Zoom:

October 27 at 10 am CET; 9 am GMT; 8 pm AEDT; 6 pm JST. Click https://syddanskuni.zoom.us/j/68991524846 (meeting ID: 689 9152 4846) to join the meeting.

October 29 at 9 pm CET; 8 pm GMT; 7 am AEDT (please note, October 30); 4 pm EDT; 3 pm CDT; 1 pm PDT, 5 pm BRT. Click https://syddanskuni.zoom.us/j/66028284567 (meeting ID: 660 2828 4567) to join the meeting.
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Sly Saint said:


how indeed.
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The bigger question is how is it that this is common practice?

Wait, I know, it's because it is common practice, in the sense that people commonly do this. None of this is accidental, it's built-in to EBM, an alternative to the scientific method. How people expect that using a lesser methodology would yield good results is a real puzzle. No one ever checks these things.

That's easy to fix. Except the problem is people, that people are using this method to make their job easy, don't even to bother doing any real work. In hindsight this is bad but that was obvious from the start.

In computer science we respect GIGO. Why medicine can't do this I don't understand but if we can do this, they sure can, they just choose not to.
 
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