🚀 go-pugleaf

Thomas L. Mead wrote:
>> 
> My questions:
> 
> ==> Is a published meta-analysis paper to be considered adequate if it
> gives an inadequate explanation of the literature search (the
> resources, the techniques, strategies, dates & files & details galore)
> ...?
>

You would probably find more discussion of these points on the evidence-based-health
mailing list (at mailbase in the UK). There are guidelines for "systematic reviews"
produced by the Cochrane Collaboration and various other people which do point out how
important the initial selection of papers is. In particular, restricting an analysis
to just those papers found in a MEDLINE search is not a highly regarded approach:
MEDLINE searches, even conducted by experts, miss an enormous number of studies.

The Cochrane Collaboration has a Web site at
http://hiru.mcmaster.ca/cochrane/default.html

In regard to your questions about the need to report search strategies and so on, here
is a quote from the Cochrane Collaboration handbook.

------------
As with any research study, a number of methodological decisions must be made when
undertaking a systematic review, and there are potential threats to validity
associated with each decision. These include: how studies are identified and selected
for inclusion, how their quality (validity) is assessed, how much weight each one is
given, and how their results are combined and interpreted. 

If reviewers do not say how these decisions were made, there is no way of knowing how
much faith to put in their conclusions.
-------------

There is a lot more similar information and recommendations in the handbook, which is
available online at the Web site.

Hope this is helpful

thomas lumley
University of Washington