Members of the Cochrane Iberoamérican Network recently made a statement to the Governing Board and Cochrane Members. Read the statement and the Board’s reponse, here (also available in Spanish).
In order to support the implementation of the Guidance note for Cochrane Groups to define systematic review priorities the members of the Knowledge Translation Prioritization Working Group would like to invite you to join our interactive webinar on the process for defining systematic review priorities. The date for the webinar is:
You can use https://www.worldtimebuddy.com/ to find the time of the meeting in your location.
The webinar will be an opportunity to talk to members of the Working Group and people from other Cochrane Groups, about any area of the prioritization process that you are working on. It will be a chance to ask questions about other people’s experiences, try to clarify anything which isn’t clear in the guidance note, or ask about the mandatory standards for including a review on the ‘Priority Review List’.
The webinar can be tailored to the specific topics in which you would like more information by submitting your questions in the week before the webinar.
Each year at our annual Colloquium, Cochrane presents a number of awards and prizes to contributors to recognize contributions to our work and organization made in various ways. This year the awards were presented at the Welcoming Reception of Colloquium Edinburgh.
Thomas C Chalmers Award is awarded to the principal author of the best oral and the best poster presentation addressing methodological issues related to systematic reviews.
2018 Winners: The Best Long Oral Presentation was awarded to Adriani Nikolakopoulou from the University of Bern; Switzerland for 'The emerging evidence synthesis tools: actively living network meta-analysis'. The Best Short Oral Presentation: Leonie Van Grootel from the Tilburg University, Netherlands for 'Using Bayesian information for matching qualitative and quantitative sources in a mixed studies review'.
The Chris Silagy Prize is awarded to an individual who has made an "extraordinary" contribution to the work of Cochrane which would not be recognized outside the scope of this prize.
2018 Winner: Karin Dearness
The Rosamund Snow Prize enabled two people aged under 30, with experience as health service users and an interest in evidence-based medical research, to attend the Colloquium. Rosamund Snow (1971-2017) will be remembered by many for her work to champion patients’ involvement in healthcare. Rosamund’s mother, Mary Snow, has established this prize in Rosamund’s name.
2018 Winners: Emma Cartwright and Jess Rees
The Kenneth Warren Prize is awarded at each Cochrane Colloquium to the principal author of whichever Cochrane Review authored by a national living in a developing country is judged to be both of high methodological quality and relevant to health problems in developing countries.
2018 Winner: Nai Ming Lai
Read: 'Kenneth Warren Prize 2018 goes to a Malaysian'
The Bill Silverman Prize is awarded at each Cochrane Colloquium to acknowledge explicitly the value of criticism of Cochrane, with a view to helping to improve its work, and thus achieve its aim of helping people make well-informed decisions about health care by providing the best possible evidence on the effects of healthcare interventions.
2018 Winner: Matthew Page
The Anne Anderson Award is awarded at each Cochrane Colloquium to a female member of Cochrane who has made a significant contribution to the enhancement and visibility of women's participation within Cochrane.
2018 Winner: Kay Dickersin
A warm to congratulations to all our 2018 winners!
The recording of this year’s Cochrane Annual General Meeting, held on Monday 17 September at the Cochrane Colloquium in Edinburgh, is now available.
Introduction (00:00:00)
In Memorium (00:04:40)
Council Report (00:31:48)
Co-Chairs’ Report / Statement from the Board (00:36:10)
CEO’s Report (00:46:30)
Editor-in-Chief’s Report (00:56:19)
Members’ Questions (01:11:17)
All proposed Resolutions were passed by the Members at the meeting. The results of the votes are available at agm.cochrane.org. Draft minutes from the meeting will be sent to Members in due course.
The Cochrane Collaboration’s Governing Board of Trustees voted unanimously on 25th September to terminate Professor Peter Gøtzsche’s membership of the organization, and his present position as a Member of the Governing Board and Director of the Nordic Cochrane Centre.
Cochrane is a collaboration: an organization founded on shared values and an ability to work effectively, considerately and collaboratively. The Governing Board’s decision was based on an ongoing, consistent pattern of disruptive and inappropriate behaviours by Professor Gøtzsche, taking place over a number of years, which undermined this culture and were detrimental to the charity’s work, reputation and members.
Professor Gøtzsche has also repeatedly represented his personal views as those of Cochrane, including in correspondence with members of the academic community; in the media; and when acting as an expert witness for a criminal trial. Cochrane’s strength and independence rests on our ability to engage in frank, open and transparent debate about health evidence and Professor Gøtzsche, like every other Cochrane member, has the right to express his views. However, as a leader of Cochrane – a Director of a Cochrane Centre and a trustee of the charity – he had a special duty of care to the organization about the way his views were expressed; particularly those made in a personal capacity. Despite numerous attempts to engage with him on this topic and warnings about his behaviour, he consistently failed to exercise this care. This has resulted in multiple complaints to the charity and damaged its credibility within the research community.
The decision has not been taken lightly and the process has included full Governing Board consideration of an independent legal review of the relevant facts. Professor Gøtzsche has been given a number of opportunities to make representations and to put forward his perspective on events, both as part of the independent review and subsequently.
The final decision follows an initial Governing Board meeting on 13th September 2018. At this meeting:
Professor Gøtzsche was then given the opportunity to provide further representations to the Governing Board, in accordance with the established procedure, which were considered fully by the Board on 25th September before a final decision was made.
In making its decision, the Governing Board has also taken into consideration events since the independent review began: in particular, a series of public statements by Professor Gøtzsche which have breached his obligations of confidentiality as a trustee and continued the pattern of behaviours which led to the Board’s initial decision.
We are committed to the highest standards of governance and to ensuring that Cochrane is a welcoming, open, dynamic organization, that lives up to its values, and has a working culture which attracts the best researchers, clinicians and others interested in healthcare evidence. We continue to lead and support the organization to deliver our Strategy to 2020, which aims to put Cochrane evidence at the heart of health decision-making all over the world.
Cochrane’s Governing Board
Wednesday 26th September 2018
For media enquiries, please contact pressoffice@cochrane.org
Cochrane defines Knowledge Translation (KT) as the process of ensuring that health evidence from our high quality, trusted Cochrane systematic reviews is used by those who need it to make health decisions. Producing high-quality systematic reviews is essential but not enough! To inform decisions and lead to the better health, Cochrane needs to make sure our evidence is used.
This video highlights some of the KT work that is being done in the Cochrane Community.
Learn more about KT in Cochane:
Statement made by the Governing Board at Cochrane’s 2018 Annual General Meeting, 17th September, at the Edinburgh Cochrane Colloquium
Dear Cochrane members,
These are extraordinary times and we find ourselves in an extraordinary situation. Your Board is always happy to answer questions about our decisions, and today is no different. We want to explain how we got here today. This wasn’t our original plan because we wanted to behave fairly and with integrity, in a process that respected the privacy of an individual, whilst taking place over a number of days. Days, which unfortunately span this special Colloquium.
This is about the behaviour of one individual. There has been a lengthy investigation into repeated bad behaviour over many years. It is exceptionally unusual for a Board to have to do such an investigation.
Last Thursday, the Board took a decision which divided the Board. Subsequently, four Board members chose to resign. At the same time, others contributed to a public and media campaign of misinformation.
We recognize that the last 24 hours have been exceptionally difficult and as a result, we as a Board have decided to share with you information about the decision that was made, the process by which it was made, and where we are now, in order to act in the best interests of Cochrane.
We now want to put before you as much evidence as we can, so you know what is going on. We cannot tell you everything. All of you will understand why individuals have a right to privacy and confidentiality. We ask that you all respect this, because we may not be able to tell you everything, for legal reasons and reasons of privacy.
By way of background, we are a global organization which operates under British law because we were founded as a UK charity. Our mission is to benefit the public. We are governed by our Articles of Association.
As the Board, we are in fact the employers of the Cochrane staff. All our staff, and our members, have the right to do their work without harassment and personal attacks. We are living in a world where behaviours that cause pain and misery to people, are being ‘called out’. This Board wants to be clear that while we are Trustees of this organization, we will have a “zero tolerance” policy for repeated, seriously bad behaviour. There is a critical need for ALL organizations to look after their staff and members; once repeated, seriously bad behaviour had been recognized, doing nothing was NOT an option.
So, here are the facts as we are able to report them. We may be able to tell you more later, we may not. Time will tell.
This Board decision is not about freedom of speech.
It is not about scientific debate.
It is not about tolerance of dissent.
It is not about someone being unable to criticize a Cochrane Review.
It is about a long-term pattern of behaviour that we say is totally, and utterly, at variance with the principles and governance of the Cochrane Collaboration. This is about integrity, accountability and leadership.
In March this year, we received three complaints about an individual. These were not the first complaints that had ever been received. In fact, the earliest recorded goes back to 2003. Many have been dealt with over the years. Many disputes have arisen. Formal letters have been exchanged. Promises have been made. And broken. Some disputes have been resolved, some have not.
It was clear to the Co-Chairs that the Board had to reach a decision about these most recent complaints. The individual then made serious allegations against one of the Senior Management Team and shared those with the Board. We seemed to be in an impossible situation. How could the Board now reach a decision about the complaints in a fair way? How could we fulfil our responsibilities as employers of the Senior Management Team? Or alternatively, act to admonish that member of the Senior Management Team if they had done wrong?
With guidance from a Trustee with extensive experience of complaints, we proposed asking a totally independent person to undertake a review. The report was to be confidential to the Board.
After failing to get agreement from the individual to an independent review, we then sought legal advice on behalf of Cochrane. We asked the lawyers, what should a Charity such as Cochrane do in this situation? We were advised that various legal consequences flowed from the events – the complaints and the accusations - and that Cochrane should take them seriously.
We asked the lawyers to take particular note of Cochrane’s commitment to transparency. They noted that, but also stressed the importance of confidentiality.
They advised that an independent review was both a sensible and proportionate response.
At the Governing Board Teleconference on 13th June 2018, all Board members read the letter from our lawyers. The lawyers stated that given the serious legal concerns about this matter they strongly recommended an independent review by a very senior lawyer. The Board approved a motion to accept the lawyer’s advice and establish the independent review.
Our lawyers identified a senior independent lawyer (QC) and he was instructed on 2nd July 2018. As part of the process, he invited written submissions from both individuals concerned. He invited both to be interviewed. The lawyer was asked to work to a deadline of the Board Meeting on Thursday last week, 13th September. And, we did in fact receive his preliminary report in time for that meeting. The report completely exonerated the member of the Senior Management Team but did not exonerate the other individual.
Whilst the review was underway, and as a completely separate matter, a paper was published in the journal BMJ-EBM co-authored by the individual concerned on July 27th 2018. The publication of this paper has proved controversial. As a result, the Board received a number of letters of complaint. Each was sent to the individual to allow a written response. In order to avoid any misunderstanding, the Board want you to be clear that this was a matter that arrived very late in this whole process.
So, at the Board Meeting on Thursday September 13th, the trustees reviewed the lawyer’s report of his independent review, and all the material related to the recently published paper. After they had reviewed and discussed this at length, the Trustees exercised their judgement, and looking across a broad range of behaviours, the Board came to a decision to invoke Article 5.2.1. relating to termination of membership. This was not unanimous.
As a result, Article 5.3 was triggered, and the member has been invited to make a written response within seven days.
At this point in time, this person remains a member of the Cochrane Collaboration. We are waiting for the process to be completed. We will report back to you about the outcome as soon as we are able to.
Let us repeat, this is an extremely rare and unusual thing to do. We hope never to have to do this again.
Cochrane Governing Board
Edited (without prejudice): 19th September 2018
This year’s winners of Cochrane-REWARD prizes for reducing waste in research were the UK Equator Centre (for its Good Reports Tool), the EBM DataLab (for its Trials Tracker initiative), and the James Lind Alliance (for its Priority Setting Partnerships). The prize of GBP 2500 recognizes local or pilot initiatives that could lead to reductions in research waste. Given the high standard of the 15 applicants, the panel decided to award three prizes this year, with Trials Tracker and the James Lindt Alliance being awarded a joint second prize. The ceremony took place during the 2018 Cochrane Colloquium on 17 September 2018.
The UK Equator Centre developed the Equator Good Reports Tool to help overcome key barriers which prevent authors finding and using reporting guidelines. Good reports guides authors to the right guidelines to use, then provides access to reporting guidelines in a user friendly way. In October 2017, BMJ Open introduced an optional free online automatic manuscript checker for their authors, provided by Penelope.ai. In January 2018, Penelope.ai’s manuscript checker was adapted to incorporate the EQUATOR Good Reports Tool, and now directs authors to a suitable checklist when appropriate. Integrating reporting guidelines into an automated manuscript checker has created a viable way for journals and publishers to:
Initial results of user testing are encouraging: prompting authors to complete a checklist as part of an automated manuscript check, results in more authors uploading a completed checklist when submitting to a journal. In the coming two years, the UK EQUATOR aims to expand this work through collaborations with 50 other journals.
The TrialsTracker initiative, developed by the EBM DataLab, began in 2016 with the launch of the original TrialsTracker. When trials go unreported, the investment is spent, but with zero output. Hence getting some unreported trials reported has an extremely high marginal value. The automated tool developed searches all trials on ClinicalTrials.gov and Pubmed for results and reports performance by sponsor. In 2018, the EBM DataLab launched the FDAAA TrialsTracker, which monitors breaches of the Final Rule of the FDA Amendments Act 2007. It ranks trial sponsors on their reporting rates, with updates every working day. As of 15 August 2018, just 59% of all trials required to report under FDAAA have submitted results to ClinicalTrials.gov since the new regulations came into effect in early 2017. Additional trackers are being planned that aim to use new datasets, bring new features, and respond to the needs of various user groups.
The James Lind Alliance (JLA) brings patients, carers and health professionals together in Priority Setting Partnerships (PSPs), and ensures that their research priorities are taken into account. PSPs use an established, transparent method to identify and prioritize uncertainties, or ‘unanswered questions’ in a particular area of health and social care, giving a voice to patient and clinician stakeholders who have traditionally had little say in what research should be done. The partnerships work with specific funders to highlight research questions of most relevance and potential benefit to patients and the clinicians who treat them. Since 2007 a total of 63 JLA PSPs have been completed in a diverse range of conditions and settings. The JLA community is growing and embracing different countries, contexts, languages and cultures with partnership methods used in Canada, the Netherlands and Germany.
The decisions in this second year of the Cochrane-REWARD prize were particularly difficult with considerable breadth and depth of the initiatives submitted. For example, the CAMARADES group has developed SyRF - a free-to-use online platform for researchers to perform systematic reviews and meta-analysis of animal studies. A group in the Netherlands developed an online register for protocols of preclinical animal studies. MoreTrials started a public campaign in 2016 for more and better randomized trials in medicine. In particular, it has campaigned to reduce excessive regulation which adds expense to clinical trials with little benefit, while ignoring key principles of trials. It aims to replace the ICH-GCP guideline[1] with more scientifically focused but more streamlined guidance. Open Source Malaria is a novel project trying a different approach to curing malaria. Guided by open source principles, it fosters research and collaboration where anyone can contribute.
These are just some examples of the great work being done by researchers to improve research. We look forward to continuing the Cochrane-REWARD prize in 2019, and encourage initiatives that were not yet advanced enough this year to consider submitting their nomination for the 2019 award. A call for nominations will be issued early 2019.
[1] Good Clinical Practice (GCP) guidelines of the International Council for Harmonisation of Technical Requirements for Pharmaceuticals for Human Use (ICH).
The foundations of both Cochrane and the wider evidence synthesis community rest on the involvement of methodologists in the production of high‐quality systematic reviews. Epidemiologists, statisticians, and information specialists have had an enormous impact on the evolution of Cochrane and the advancement of systematic review methodology. Compared with other methodologists, information specialists tend to fly somewhat under the radar despite the fact that they act in a wide variety of roles. Information specialists organize, disseminate, and interpret information; they also preserve knowledge and ensure that it is discoverable in the future.
Read a new Cochrane Library Editorial on how information specialist expertise should be leveraged further to ensure quality and improve the efficiency of evidence synthesis.
This week at its meeting in Edinburgh, Cochrane’s Governing Board considered, as planned, the findings of an independent review and additional complaints related to the conduct of a Member. The Board’s conclusion was communicated to the individual concerned and is part of an ongoing process. The Co-Chairs of the Board will provide further details once this process is complete.
Following this, four Board members (Gerald Gartlehner, David Hammerstein Mintz, Joerg Meerpohl and Nancy Santesso) decided to resign as Cochrane trustees with immediate effect. This situation required further changes in the composition of the Board in order to comply with Cochrane’s Articles of Association, and as a result Rae Lamb and Catherine Marshall, two appointed trustees, volunteered to step down.
An election for new Board members will take place soon. In the meantime, the Board will continue to govern The Cochrane Collaboration as usual, guided by our principles, Charter and Articles. The Board completed its planned business today and expresses its strong support for the commitment and professionalism of Cochrane’s Central Executive Team.
As the 25th Cochrane Colloquium gets underway in Edinburgh, the Governing Board looks forward to welcoming nearly 1,300 participants from 57 countries to celebrate our theme of ‘Cochrane for all: better evidence for better health decisions’.
Marguerite Koster and Martin Burton
Governing Board Co-Chairs