Comparison of a full systematic review versus a rapid review approaches to assess a newborn screening test for tyrosinemia type 1. Taylor-Phillips S et al. Res Synth Methods. 2017 Jul 13.
This is exactly the sort of thing I want to see, a comparison of systematic versus rapid reviews. A couple of points:
- Much of the analysis focuses on process outcomes (e.g. RR missing papers). My main interest is in the outcomes – do they give the same answer? And, to be clear, I’m not saying that’s bad – but outcome interests me not things like missed papers. And, a continuation of the point, SRs will typically miss the unpublished studies (on average 50% of trials). So, SR miss 50%, RR misses 55-60% (possibly). But other issues, around quality scoring is – possibly important – again it’d be good to see how that affects outcomes.
- Not enough of them – I wish they had had the funding to do 50 of them! I suspect the authors would like that as well!!
Rapid-Reviews.info 
Interesting. The question for me is not whether or they have the same answer. The important question is, is either of the answers near enough to the truth? It probably isn’t because at least 50% of the research is missing, and the published research is usually biased in favour of the intervention.
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Very good point! Thanks 🙂
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