Letter to the Editor - Not even the top general medical journals are free of spin: A wake-up call based on an overview of reviews

Ref ID 810
First Author D.P. Nascimento
Journal JOURNAL OF CLINICAL EPIDEMIOLOGY
Year Of Publishing 2021
URL https://www.jclinepi.com/article/S0895-4356(21)00194-3/fulltext#supplementaryMaterial
Keywords • Spin
• Abstract / summary
• Journalology/ Publication science
• General medical
• Low methodological quality
• Non-Cochrane reviews
Problem(s) • Spin or subjective interpretation of findings
• Errors in systematic review abstracts or plain language summaries
• Low methodological (AMSTAR) quality
Article Type Editorial
Article Subtype Comment/letter
First Author Country Brazil
Checklists • AMSTAR 2
Aim To assess the presence of spin (Yavchitz et al 2016) and methodological quality (AMSTAR 2) in systematic reviews of interventions from the top 5 general medical journals (1. The Lancet; 2. Journal of American Medical Association; 3. British Medical Journal; 4, Annals of Internal Medicine ; and 5. JAMA Internal Medicine) published between January 2011 and November 2017.
Level of Investigation Analytical
Summary of Findings From 196 systematic reviews of interventions from the top 5 general medical journals (1. The Lancet; 2. Journal of American Medical Association; 3. British Medical Journal; 4, Annals of Internal Medicine ; and 5. JAMA Internal Medicine) published between January 2011 and November 2017, 94% of abstracts and 67% of full texts presented at least one item of the 7-item SPIN checklist. The authors of the letter also observed critically low overall confidence in 77% reviews, 19% with low, 3% with moderate and only 1% with high overall confidence and report an association between abstracts with higher levels of spin and reviews with critically low methodological quality (ß 0.22; 95%CI: 0.14, 0.63), when compared to reviews of high methodological quality (ß -0.12; 95%CI: -2.69, 0.18).
Number of systematic reviews included 196
Number of eligible systematic reviews assessed 295
Treatment impacted No
Treatment impacted description
Interpretation impacted Not Applicable
Interpretation impacted description