London Evidence Syntheses and Research Use Seminars
The EPPI Centre and The Centre for Evaluation at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) jointly host the ‘London Evidence Syntheses and Research Use Seminars’. These seminars aim to encourage discussion and information-sharing on challenges and innovations in evidence syntheses methods.
The free of charge hybrid seminars are hosted in London but can be attended online. They take place every other month on a Wednesday between 12.30 and 13.45. They include 25-30 min presentations and plenty of time for discussion. Recordings of previous seminars: https://eppi.ioe.ac.uk/cms/Default.aspx?tabid=3317.
If you have queries, would like to suggest a topic, or to be added to the mailing list to be notified of future sessions, contact: katy.sutcliffe@ucl.ac.uk.
April 2026 Seminar
- Title: Trials We Cannot Trust? Examples from Pain Research and the INSPECT-SR Tool for Assessing RCT Trustworthiness
- Speakers: Professor Neil O'Connell, Brunel and Dr Jack Wilkinson, University of Manchester
- Date and time: Wednesday 1st April 2026, 12:30 - 13:45 (GMT)
- Admission: Free, accessible online
- In-person attendance: Manson Lecture Theatre, LSHTM, Keppel Street, London, WC1E 7HT
- Online attendance: https://lshtm.zoom.us/j/87137990239
Session details: In this talk, Neil will discuss an investigation into the trustworthiness of a group of clinical trials in the field of back pain, and an exploration of the impact that those trials have had on the evidence base and on international clinical guidelines He will also introduce the ENTRUST-PE framework for more trustworthy evidence in pain. He will then pass over to Jack, who will introduce the problem of untrustworthy data entering systematic reviews. Many systematic reviews contain problematic randomised controlled trials (RCTs). These are studies with false data or results, which could be caused by research misconduct (such as data fabrication) or by critical errors in study conduct. Risk of bias tools are not designed to detect problems of this nature, and are not successful in doing so. This prompts the question of how problematic RCTs may be detected by systematic reviewers. The INSPECT-SR (INveStigating ProblEmatic Clinical Trials in Systematic Reviews) tool has been developed in partnership with Cochrane for this purpose. In this talk, he will introduce the INSPECT-SR tool by describing its development and illustrating its use with an example. The session will also provide details on how to access further resources, including free online training workshops.
Speaker details:
Neil O'Connell is Professor of Evidence-Based Healthcare in the Physiotherapy Division of the Department of Health Sciences. Neil's research interests focus on the evidence-based management of persistent pain. He was the Co-ordinating editor for the Cochrane Pain, Palliative and Supportive Care (PaPaS) group from 2020-23 and is a member of Cochrane's central editorial board. He was a member of the Guideline Development Group for the UK's National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (NICE) 2016 clinical guideline on the management of low back pain and sciatica. He is the current Chair of the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) Methods, Evidence Synthesis and Implementation Special Interest Group (MESIGIG) and the Scientific Co-ordinator ENhancing TRUST in Pain Evidence (ENTRUST-PE) network. See https://entrust-pe.org/ .
Jack Wilkinson is a senior lecturer in the Centre for Biostatistics at the University of Manchester, UK. His research interests cover both the application, development, and criticism of methods for the evaluation of health interventions, with a particular interest in interventions for the treatment of subfertility, including assisted reproductive technologies (ART). He is a statistical editor for Cochrane Gynaecology and Fertility. He additionally has a background in undertaking integrity investigations for scientific journals and publishers, and leads the NIHR-funded INSPECT-SR project, which has developed a tool for identifying ‘problematic’ randomised controlled trials, including those subject to data fabrication or falsification.
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