In abdicating this editorial responsibility, along with a new policy of not informing readers when they know a review is out-of-date, Cochrane has dismantled a core part of what defined Cochrane reviews. Meanwhile, the reviews are getting progressively more out-of-date. With the loss of funding for so many editorial review groups recently, and the centralization of editing in a small group, the rate of reviews being out-of-date is presumably escalating, while key mechanisms for dealing with outdated or inaccurate reviews have been curtailed.
Meanwhile, the organization’s promotional rhetoric hasn’t been updated to reflect the changed nature of Cochrane reviews. The Cochrane website has had a major update in the last few weeks. They still have the central goal and claim of of providing the “
best evidence to help patients and health organizations to make informed decisions.” A new section was added: “
Why our evidence is trusted,” with the tagline, “We provide high-quality, unbiased health information.” And there is this claim:
“We are committed to regular reviews of every piece of our evidence. We assess whether findings are still relevant, and we identify aspects to investigate further or update. We believe this is critical to ensure the ongoing reliability and trust in our work as medicine progresses.”
They go on to say, “Governments in all continents of the world regard our evidence so highly that they give their entire populations access to our systematic reviews by funding national provision through the Cochrane Library.” Of course, governments don’t typically do this for medical journals: They do this because of the unique nature the
Database used to have. If key pillars of reliability of the
Database for users are no longer there, and Cochrane doesn’t take action on high profile unreliable reviews, how long can this special status last?
This is existential for an organization whose current long-term economic strategy involves publicly-funded subscription, especially national ones.
I wrote about this earlier this year. Since then, one of only 10 countries outside the UK funding like this has announced it will end soon (
New Zealand).