Draft synthesis: Discontinued development programmes as… — submissions
The 3 submissions received, published in full with declared interests and secretariat responses.
§2Submissions and responses
3 submissions were received. Each is published in full below with its declared interest, the secretariat response and the disposition. The Institute publishes submissions it did not accept in the same form as those it did.
The conclusion is stated more strongly than the certainty rating supports
The draft rates the anchor outcome at low certainty and then states in the conclusion that the intervention is effective. The respondent states that the two sentences cannot both be true as written.
The respondent proposes that conclusion language be tied mechanically to the certainty rating, so that a low rating cannot produce an unqualified claim.
The secretariat accepts this submission. The mismatch is the failure mode the certainty framework exists to prevent.
Conclusion wording is now drawn from a fixed set of formulations tied to the certainty rating, so that a low certainty rating produces a statement that the evidence may suggest an effect and that the estimate is likely to change with further research.
The review question is drawn too broadly to be answerable
The respondent states that the population as registered spans groups in which the intervention would be expected to behave differently, and that a single estimate across them is uninformative.
The respondent proposes that the question be split and the review re-registered.
The secretariat does not accept this submission. The breadth was registered before screening, the pre-specified subgroups address the variation the respondent identifies, and re-registering after the results are known would convert a pre-specified analysis into a post hoc one.
The question stands as registered. The point is recorded in the limitations, and the assessment committee has noted it for the protocol of the next version of this review, which will be registered before the search is run. The submission remains published in full.
A sortable table implies a comparison the underlying data do not support
The draft presents a sortable table whose columns are drawn from sources of differing quality. The respondent states that sorting on such a column produces an ordering that looks like a ranking and is not one.
The respondent proposes that sorting be disabled on any column whose values are not commensurable.
The secretariat notes this submission and records that the point is correct in principle.
No amendment arises here because every sortable table in the document set already carries a standing statement above it that the ordering is not a ranking and that the values in each column are commensurable only where the column header says so. The proposal to disable sorting was considered and not adopted, because a reader who cannot sort a table generally sorts it elsewhere and without the statement.
References cited on this page
References are numbered in order of first citation in this document. Each superscript in the text links to its entry below.
- International Organization for Standardization. ISO/IEC 17025:2017 General Requirements for the Competence of Testing and Calibration Laboratories. ISO/IEC Standard 2017;3rd edition. identifier not held by the Institute
Identifiers are reproduced only where the Institute holds them. Where a digital object identifier or PubMed identifier is not shown, the Institute has recorded the journal and year and has not constructed an identifier.