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Exactly right. But their reputation is as an incorruptible infallible group of independent scientists. The people with real power in the organisation are not scientists and they trust their volunteers to get it right. If the volunteer authors screw up due to incompetence or conflict of interest...

Yes! I used to work for Cochrane and realised after a few months that they are ideally placed to do the job. They have thousands of willing volunteers who could do the systemativ surveillance work. But they spend all their time training people to shoehorn dodgy data into meta-analyses which (as...

I agree totally. They always say "hope to reduce potential for bias" so they cannot be held responsible or actually police what people do. It's exactly the same as the trials registers - no guarantee of research quality. I would love to set up a Research Police Force/Ombudsman. Like a souped...

It's because the database of review protocols PROSPERO (https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/PROSPERO/) is supported by NIHR money I think. The NIHR have no control over who registers their protocols. I see from 1 October they are requiring people register their protocols before they have collected any...

It will not affect the revision which is currently still under consideration. https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD003200.pub7/information#whatsNew 17 June 2019 Amended Addition of new published note 'Cochrane’s Editor in Chief has received the revised version of the...

I just had a look and disliked it. As you say, the number of likes and dislikes is not showing, and there are maybe one or two short negative comments (not yours) but the majority are positive and refer to negative comments you can no longer see. Awful.

There is another person from Cochrane on the team. Anna Noel-Storr the person behind Cochrane Crowd.

Blimey. Yes you're right. Doesn't time fly when you're enjoying yourself?!

Hi. I can't remember when I submitted that comment...maybe October 2018?? Yes they tied themselves in knots with the answer...in fact I didn't really understand it. But I didn't have the energy to respond to ask for clarification. At that time I thought that the full review would be published...

There was a published protocol for a review using individual patient data. But then the full review was rejected for publication because of extremely critical review. I think that means they withdrew the published protocol meaning the review was totally abandoned. I am sorry to have caused more...

I don't know. When we met her last month she used her newness in the job to ask for yet more time to consider what to do about the review. But she is not really new as she had been deputy Editor in Chief for at least six years working closely with David Tovey.

But the previous guy (David Tovey) backtracked on his decision already! I have met with the new editor (Karla Soares Weiser) and she implied she was about to publish an amended version of the 2017 review. So I don't know what Sharpe means about backtracking. Perhaps he means (God forbid) she...

Hi so sorry was on holiday and missed this!

Did you know Clare Gerada is married to Simon Wessely?

This is a stunningly good summary!

Thank you, and especially to @Marit @memhj for getting hold of them. I have now had a chance to read these emails and they are horribly fascinating. And of course completely missing the point about the folly of relying on subjective outcomes in a review of unblinded trials, because of course...

Absolutely. We are asking turkeys to vote for Christmas. I was a Cochrane turkey once, but have no loyalty to my turkey ex-colleagues who insist on clinging to the wreckage of the great idea gone wrong that the Cochrane Collaboration has become, and the harm they have done. Their reviews are...