Live
Keynote
Misunderstandings and misuses of commonly-cited methods for meta-analyses
Systematic reviews and meta-analyses have become influential and popular. Papers describing aspects of the evidence synthesis toolkit have become some of the most highly cited papers. I will review those that appear at the top of the most-cited list and explain why I believe the methods described are routinely misunderstood or misused. These include a test for asymmetry in a funnel plot, the I-squared statistic for measuring inconsistency across studies, the random-effects meta-analysis model and the PRISMA reporting guideline.