Incorrect blinding assessments are common in meta‐analyses published in high impact journals.

A study published in the Journal of Evidence-Based Medicine found that incorrect assessments of blinding are common in meta-analyses published in high impact journals. Blinding is an important practice to reduce biases in clinical studies, particularly for subjective outcomes. The study examined systematic reviews and meta-analyses published in top medical journals and Cochrane, and found that non-Cochrane reviews were less likely to include both subjective and objective outcomes in the same review. The use of the revised Risk of Bias (RoB) 2.0 tool was associated with a higher proportion of correct assessments. The authors recommend the use of the RoB 2.0 tool for accurate risk of bias assessment. [Extracted from the article]