Origin from 1993
The exhaustive, pre-specified search and appraisal of every study on a given question, institutionalized by the Cochrane Collaboration founded in 1993. Weighs a religious practice's claimed benefits against the full body of evidence rather than a favorable few studies.
Facts
Subject
Subjectthe complete body of research evidence on a specific question, assembled by a fixed protocol rather than by a reviewer's own selective reading 2 Method
Methodexhaustive, pre-specified search and appraisal of every study addressing a given question, assembled and reported to a fixed, replicable protocol 2 Identity
Field Category Parent FieldMeta-Analytic Methodology 1 Origins
Emerged As Named Discipline Learn More
The Cochrane Collaboration Insists on Finding Every Study, Not Just the Convenient Ones
A systematic review exhaustively searches for and critically appraises every study addressing a specific question, following a pre-specified, published protocol for what counts as an eligible study and how its quality is judged, rather than relying on a reviewer's own selective reading of the literature they happen to know. The method was institutionalized in 1993 with the founding of the Cochrane Collaboration, an international network built explicitly to produce and maintain systematic reviews of medical evidence to a fixed, replicable standard, in response to the recognition that ordinary narrative literature reviews were prone to citing whichever studies supported a reviewer's prior view.
Claims that a religious practice produces a measurable benefit, on health, wellbeing or behavior, are frequently supported in public discussion by citing a handful of favorable studies while ignoring a larger number of null or unfavorable ones that a systematic search would also have found. The atlas treats a properly conducted systematic review of a practice's claimed effects as stronger evidence than any individual study it might cite, precisely because a systematic review's protocol requires searching for and reporting the unfavorable evidence too.
Connections
Branch Of
Source Frascati Manual 2015: Guidelines for Collecting and Reporting Data on Research and Experimental DevelopmentOECD
Open Questions Needing This
Source Psychology and Anomalous Observations: The Question of ESP in DreamsIrvin L. Child
Sources
1. Frascati Manual 2015: Guidelines for Collecting and Reporting Data on Research and Experimental Development
2. Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions
Julian P. T. Higgins and Sally Green (editors), Cochrane Collaboration, 2011
Divinity Atlas Scholarly Discipline Register
Reader Challenges (0)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.
Sign in to dispute this or suggest a correction.
View At A Past Year
Choose a year to see this entry's facts and connections as the atlas records them at that moment: what it held then, what it held instead, and what it had not yet adopted. Choose Present for the current record.