Seen the “98% of studies were ignored!” one doing the rounds on social media. The editorial in the BMJ put it in much better terms:
“One emerging criticism of the Cass review is that it set the methodological bar too high for research to be included in its analysis and discarded too many studies on the basis of quality. In fact, the reality is different: studies in gender medicine fall woefully short in terms of methodological rigour; the methodological bar for gender medicine studies was set too low, generating research findings that are therefore hard to interpret.”
If they made a scientific argument about these review papers under discussion I might but this is just a polemic using unscientific language like “cis-supremacy” in a low impact obscure journal.
Newcastle-Ottawa scoring is a scientific method for weighting the methodical quality of scientific studies.
It was peer reviewed since thats BMJ policy, unless you have evidence to the contrary. There is even a link on the online edition of both reviews for you to submit a rapid response pointing out all their flaws which I would encourage you to do.
Interestingly some nice fellow DM’d me with a link to “Patient Zero” of the “they dismissed 98% of the data” myth.
https://twitter.com/benryanwriter/status/1779671152148857212
And of course, everyone has doubled down rather than admit they read the wrong paper. A better “litmus test” of scientific debate is humbly correcting yourself when shown to be wrong.
“They dismissed 98% of the data” remains a lie.
98% of the data could be summarized in one sentence. Trans healthcare and hrt works. 98% of the data comes to that conclusion with vast consensus across multi disciplines and fields comes to that conclusion and that was ignored. 98% of the data was discarded. Most of those studies discarded already had a statistical analysis backing up their efficacy while the Cass report doesn’t. Nor does the Cass report include a nearly mandatory implicit bias report.
Those peer reviews are most likely selected and not randomized selections or contestations as most peer reviews are required to be, they are ok for initial release irc. But it is an outgoing process that doesn’t have an endpoint. They were most likely provided prior to release and the normal peer review process won’t be completed for years to undo the damage. But it is not considered peer reviewed yet.
Again you have not proven that the new castle Ottawa scale has any efficacy or scientific merit as a disqualifying tool No one has as far as I know.
Liar.
So now they were peer reviewed but by people you don’t trust based on the same evidence you used to assert it wasn’t peer reviewed in the first place I.e. zero.
You’d better tell the Cohcrane library to bin every systematic review they’ve ever done which used this system then. I’d be eager to hear their reply to you
98% of the data was discarded
No I’m just explaining the process and why it isn’t complete yet. Or even valid yet
And show me that the Cochrane library ever discarded a study using the criteria even once yet alone with the same level as the Cass report and I’ll write them
For something that illustrates the problem with the Cass report read https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC300808/
It was not. All studies that scored high or moderate quality made it into the synthesis. That’s 60 out of the 103 looked at, that’s not 2%.
You are speculating, based on nothing.
Here’s one I found in <7 seconds
https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD013256.pub2/full
If you want to find more simply search the Cochrane library for reviews with “Newcastle-Ottawa” in the main body of text. It seems like this is new to you.
The relevance of a joke paper from 2003 to a systematic review published last week is certainly questionable but it seeks you’re trying to imply that Cass discarded anything except RCT’s. The didn’t and that’'s myth #2 from the original Quackometer article.
Where will the goalposts move next?
Goal posts haven’t moved and I’ve already pointed out a dozen of so methodological flaws around the Cass report that you are choosing to ignore.
That’s on you
You haven’t pointed out, let alone substantiated, any. If you truly believe you have then I implore to use the rapid response function on the bmj site and communicate these catastrophic flaws to the editorial team immediately. I’d be eager to know what their reply is.
I don’t need to, it is already happening within the scientific community of which I am merely a part.
Don’t abdicate responsibility to someone else, you’ve clearly got a firmer grasp of the issue than the editorial board of the British Medical Journal. You would be neglecting your duty as “part of the scientific community” to abdicate responsibility on such an important matter.
Indeed the whole medical establishment must be told about the critical flaws in the Newcastle-Ottawa scoring system before other medical scandals are allowed to happen. Imagine having that on your conscience.