An “Epidemic” of Wrong or Misleading Research: New Study Demonstrates How Most Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses Produced Today Are Not Useful

There is mass production of unnecessary, misleading, and conflicted systematic reviews and meta-analyses, according to a new study in the September issue of The Milbank Quarterly. In an examination of PubMed-indexed articles, author John Ioannidis of Stanford University found that many systematic reviews and meta-analyses are overproduced. As of result, too many reviews are redundancy, have little value, make misleading claims, or are produced by those with clear conflicts of interest.