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Trust the Evidence

Cochrane: C for Cancel - Part 3

The HPV Review: Setting Standards

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Carl Heneghan
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Tom Jefferson
Oct 09, 2025
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In our previous report about our disappearing blog, we now turn to the analysis article on the Cochrane HPV vaccine review that was submitted to BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine.

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In 2017, CH became the editor-in-chief of the BMJ journal Evidence-Based Medicine. At that time, the journal primarily published summaries of existing research, generating relatively little original content. However, a shift in the direction of the BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine journal, coupled with a push for more contentious content, gained momentum quickly.

Part of this push included an analysis piece on the Cochrane HPV vaccine review, which claimed that the review was incomplete and overlooked significant evidence of bias.

The analysis piece, co-authored by Tom, reported that they had published an index of the study programmes of the HPV vaccines, including 206 comparative studies, of which about a third were not published, and half of the completed studies listed on ClinicalTrials.gov had no results posted.

They r…

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