In our recent post, we showed how Cochrane grandees attempted to undermine the update of the A122 review on face masks and other physical interventions to reduce the spread of respiratory viruses with statements such as:
Waiting for strong evidence is a recipe for paralysis.
and
Public health officials must, instead, take measured gambles, based on circumstantial evidence from the reviewed studies and other sources. When protecting the public from harm is the objective, public health officials must act in a precautionary manner to take action even when evidence is uncertain (or not of the highest quality), particularly when the harms and costs of such action are likely limited.
We showed that such statements were a subversion of the precautionary principle, a subversion of Archie Cochrane’s agenda and the rationale for setting up the Cochrane Collaboration.
During the pandemic, Cohrane’s position changed to taking “measured gambles”. As if this weren’t bad enough, the throw of the dice was to be based on “circumstantial evidence”.
To add insult to injury, the evidence to inform the pandemic was to come from “other sources” – permitting the influx of modelling studies to go unchallenged. It was okay to replace evidence with consensus and fill the void with “rapid reviews” of junk science that included mathematical models. Why? Because Cochrane said so.
Yet, this approach contrasts with recent statements at a WHO summit, when Cochrane’s Advocacy and Partnerships Lead applauded the draft of WHO’s 14th General Programme of Work with “recognition of WHO’s science and evidence-based leadership, particularly highlighting the importance of high-quality evidence in health decision making”.
So which is it to be? Measured gambles based on circumstantial evidence and mathematical models or high-quality evidence?
The impression we get is that the two organisations, amongst many others, lost their heads in 2020 and were not able to withstand the pressure of strident lobbies and idiotic media. In doing so, they lost much of their reputation and our trust.
Prof. Carl Heneghan is the Oxford Professor of Evidence Based Medicine and Dr. Tom Jefferson is an epidemiologist based in Rome who works with Professor Heneghan on the Cochrane Collaboration. This article was first published on their Substack, Trust The Evidence, which you can subscribe to here.
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