Can Systematic Reviewing be Adapted for Hypothesis Testing in Medicine and Biology?
Author: Robert Miller, Department of Anatomy and Structural Biology, University of Otago Medical SchoolDunedin, New Zealand. Background: Reviewing procedures inspired by Cochrane improve evaluation of treatment procedures by accessing all relevant RCTs, specifying search procedures and data used, with subjective judgements minimized by crosschecking between reviewers. The weaknesses of conventional approaches to reviewing, which led to the Cochrane movement also apply more widely when reviews attempt to evaluate hypotheses, for instance about aetiopathological bases of disease. This is closely related to treatment evaluation because many treatment procedures derive from inadequate hypotheses which cannot survive critical scrutiny in a systematic review. Objectives: This paper discusses possibilities of systematic reviewing for hypothesis testing in medicine. Discussion: Testing disease hypotheses is more complex than evaluating RCTs, because relevant information is more diverse. Nevert
