The Cochrane HPV vaccine review was incomplete and ignored important evidence of bias

Ref ID 519
First Author L. Jørgensen
Journal BMJ EVIDENCE-BASED MEDICINE
Year Of Publishing 2018
URL https://ebm.bmj.com/content/ebmed/23/5/165.full.pdf
Keywords • Cochrane
• Harms
• Author
• Transparency
• Allegiance
• Vaccination
• Low reporting quality
• Error
• Disclosure
• Risk of bias
Problem(s) • Financial conflicts of interest of review authors
• Errors in study inclusion or omission of relevant studies
• Overly stringent inclusion criteria affecting external validity
• Conflicts of interest or funding of included studies not assessed
• Non-financial conflicts of interest of review authors
• Flawed risk of bias undertaken
• Weaknesses identified in some Cochrane reviews
• Reliance on randomised controlled trials for harms / safety data
• Selective reporting of harms / safety / adverse events / side effects
• Individual study characteristics not reported sufficiently
Number of systematic reviews included 1
Summary of Findings The authors highlight several concerns including omission of relevant trials, omission of searching clinical trial registries, inaccurate classification of the comparator in included trials, trial inclusion criteria which limited the external validity of the conclusions, omission of some adverse event data, flawed risk of bias which judged reporting bias of included trials as low, failure to adequately assess conflicts of interest of included studies, conflicts of interest of review authors.
Did the article find that the problem(s) led to qualitative changes in interpretation of the results? Yes
Are the methods of the article described in enough detail to replicate the study? N/A