Overwhelmingly Complex

First of all, depending on the research article you happen to be reading, a particular level of evidence may have been provided.  The American Family Physician, the Centre for Evidence Based Medicine, Oxford; and also National Cancer Institute have levels of evidence.  To understand the level of evidence, the reader needs to know what system for defining the level of evidence.

Then, depending on the type of study being read, the reader needs to know who funded the study.  This would be more relevant for situations in which there could be financial gain because of the published article.  Funding for particular research might be political in nature.

I've also seen more articles analyzed for quality.  For example QUADAS (Quality Assessment of Diagnostic Accuracy) can be used to rate papers.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I don't have the time to go through every article I read with a fine toothed comb to analyze all the intricacies to determine the level of quality of most articles or the strength articles will have in influencing my practice patterns.  It might be nice if the level of quality and article quality weaknesses were also reported.

Is there a way to move from overwhelmingly complex to simple?

Selena Horner