Cochrane: a quick and dirty summary

By EdoArad @ 2019-07-14T17:46 (+11)

I found myself reading into Cochrane, and will try in 10 minutes to make a summary of what I've gathered.

So Cochrane is a group of independent researchers, professionals, patients and others that are interested in health, organized by a non-profit with the same name. They are doing systemic reviews on health related research, and have a strict methodology which is considered a "gold standard".

Their mission is to put Cochrane evidence at the heart of health decision-making all over the world. Other then putting out many such systemic reviews, they also advocate, give tools and tutorials, and build a community in which random people can help with generating more systemic reviews.

I was struck by how much their goal resembles the EA goal of improving philanthropy (and probably also of improving evidence based policies), at least on the methodological side. They seem very successful, and I wonder what we can learn from them. I am specifically interested in their community aspect - it seems like they have some sort of methodology and tools that allow non-experts to contribute well.

Also, to glance at the ancient history, look up "the worm wars". :)