The Cochrane Editors’ comments

Attempts to discredit authors and underplay editors’ mismanagement of review A122 continue with a very thin smokescreen.

I was one of the three people who wrote the protocol for Cochrane Review A122—Physical Interventions to Interrupt or Reduce the Spread of Respiratory Viruses in 2006, and I have worked on all five updates. I will try to summarise what is a very confusing situation.

There are two issues here:

Cochrane editorial mission control throwing us under the bus because of “pressure” (let’s call it gross editorial mismanagement). This happened twice: in 2020 (4th update) and 2023 (5th update).

Cochrane editorial mission control’s infringement of four founding principles of what was then the Cochrane Collaboration (this also took place in 2020 and 2023) is still ongoing, as none of the offending pieces of work have been retracted.

These are linked but equally serious issues.

We have told the story in a series of Trust the Evidence posts dating back two years and will continue to do so as it is far from finished, and there’s lots more to come.

The latest post is:  Follow the narrative, not the evidence.…