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Thomas Johannes Hoogeboom, Sijmen Hacquebord, The Emperor’s New Reporting Guidelines: Are We Fooling Ourselves?, Physical Therapy, Volume 105, Issue 4, April 2025, pzaf033, https://doi.org/10.1093/ptj/pzaf033
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Extract
Hans Christian Andersen’s folktale The Emperor’s New Clothes tells of a ruler deceived by 2 con men, posing as weavers, who claim to make invisible garments. Not wanting to appear unfit for their roles, the emperor and his subjects pretend to see the nonexistent clothes—until a child blurts out the truth, exposing the power of collective self-deception. In this editorial, we highlight the work of Tsuge and colleagues,1 who reveal that we—rehabilitation scientists—may also be admiring an emperor in “new clothes.”
Since the rise of evidence-based practice, systematic reviews have been essential in evaluating rehabilitation interventions. To enhance transparency regarding the quality of these reviews, the PRISMA guideline (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) was introduced in 2009. PRISMA quickly became the gold standard for reporting, aiming to improve the quality and consistency of published evidence. In 2020, the guidelines were updated to reflect advances in research methodology.2 The authors presumed that this comprehensive update would foster better adherence to high-quality reporting standards and ultimately lead to more trustworthy evidence. Over the last decades, the number of published systematic reviews in the field of rehabilitation has skyrocketed, from nearly 3000 in 2009 to almost 40,000 today. With such an incredible number of systematic reviews, often claiming PRISMA adherence, one might believe that our evidence base is stronger than ever. However, when Tsuge and colleagues took a closer look, they saw that we might be deceiving ourselves.1
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