Systematic Reviews & Meta-Analyses Of Health Research: Fill & Download for Free

If you are working on a systematic review I can recommend Covidence!It's a tool designed to streamline your systematic review process.It makes it easy to:Screen references (both title/abstract and full-text),Create and populate data extraction forms,Complete your risk of bias tables,Collaborate with team members in real-time,and track the progress of your projects.It is the primary screening and data extraction tool for Cochrane authors.Also, it has a free trial.You can learn more by clicking the link below:Covidence - Better systematic review management

OK there are 2 ways I can explain this to a layperson:EXPLANATION #1: SYSTEMATIC REVIEWSSystematic reviews are usually written by a small group of people who are experts in the field. What they do is comb through every single paper they can find on the subject of interest, and run them through a bunch of quality control checks, for example:- if an experiment was just plain crappy it gets thrown out- if an experiment looked at too few subjects it gets thrown out- if an experiment didn't look at certain important factors it gets thrown out.- if a study didn't meet international ethics standards for clinical trials it gets thrown out (e.g. kidnapping babies and stabbing them in the head or something)- etc.The reason for throwing out the crappy studies is what was discussed in the Lancet editorial.They then take all the good studies left behind in the pile, process the data in a way such that they can compare apples to apples instead of apples to oranges, and draw a conclusion based on the big pile of good-quality studies. The conclusion we draw from this is stronger than the individual papers because we're looking at a much bigger group of people, and a bunch of different sites, so we can say whether or not the vaccine works in every place in the world it's been tested in, not just in one hospital.So for instance here's a systematic review on childhood immunizations that concluded that serious adverse events are "extremely rare". Safety of vaccines used for routine immunization of U.S. children: a systematic review.Here's a systematic review, from THE LANCET from which you are taking that out-of-context quote, on the HPV (cervical cancer) vaccine.Population-level impact and herd effects following human papillomavirus vaccination programmes: a systematic review and meta-analysis.EXPLANATION #2: 95% TIMES 50% IS 95% OF 50%.Let's say for argument's sake that half of published papers on experiments/studies ARE indeed useless. This does NOT mean that the conclusions get flipped around.For example if a study finds that, I don't know, office workers between the ages of 18-35 like white coffee and this is later found to be a crap study, that does NOT mean we can conclude that office workers between the ages of 18-35 like black coffee. It just means we have NO IDEA what kind of coffee office workers age 18-35 like.So let's say 95% of all papers ever published on clinical trials of vaccines now on the market show that they work, and are safe (positive), and 5% found that a vaccine either didn't work or caused an unacceptable rate of serious adverse events (negative).Let's say it turns out that half of all of the vaccine papers are crap.This DOES NOT MEAN that we now only have 47.5% of papers showing positive effects and the majority 52.5% showing negative effects.It just means that half of the papers don't say anything meaningful either way.The remaining good-quality papers are still 95% positive, 5% negative.This is basically a simplified way of explaining the purpose of what systematic reviewers do, as described in Explanation #1. They throw away the crappy ones because we can't conclude anything from the crappy ones.Hope this makes sense.

Here are some very important dates. Pay attention.Ivana Marie Trump was born on February 20, 1949, 67 years ago.Marla Ann Maples was born on October 27, 1963, 53 years ago.Melania Trump was born on April 26, 1970, 46 years ago.So of the three of them, Melania is probably the hottest. Why - and why probably? Because the science[1][1][1][1]shows that body temperature drops as you age, by about half a degree C if you compare people older than 60 to those younger. So Melania, being biologically the youngest, should have the edge.However, that difference is quite small relative to the normal variability in body temperature just between different humans. So I'm afraid the only way to find out for sure is by using some thermometers, very shameless PIs, and (in one case) extensive wrangling with the Secret Service.Wait, you meant which one was more attractive? Don’t sexually objectify complete strangers ya perv.Footnotes[1] A systematic review of body temperature variations in older people.[1] A systematic review of body temperature variations in older people.[1] A systematic review of body temperature variations in older people.[1] A systematic review of body temperature variations in older people.