Assessment of “Spin” in the abstracts of systematic reviews in leading upper extremity surgery journals over the past 10 years: A cross-sectional methodological study
Oluwatoba T Balogun, Varun Jain, Praveen Sritharan, Aava Param, Ajay Shah, Darius Luke Lameire, Ujash Sheth · 2026
Read Assessment of “Spin” in the abstracts of systematic reviews in leading upper extremity surgery journals over the past 10 years: A cross-sectional methodological study by Oluwatoba T Balogun, Varun Jain, Praveen Sritharan, Aava Param, Ajay Shah, Darius Luke Lameire, Ujash Sheth (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/PMC13407678.txt.
Description
Oluwatoba T. Balogun and co-authors audit, in 2026, misleading reporting, known as spin, in the summaries of systematic reviews published by leading upper-extremity surgery journals. Such reviews steer practice guidelines, so spin in an abstract can distort what surgeons take away, and the team scored ten years of abstracts against nine recognised spin types.
Spin appeared in 28 of 54 reviews, just over half, and 21 reviews carried more than one type. The commonest trick, found in exactly half, was claiming benefit while glossing over a high risk of bias in the underlying studies. Other spin types included selective framing of results. The authors call for stronger reporting frameworks so that evidence summaries in hand and arm surgery can be read at face value.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Oluwatoba T Balogun, Varun Jain, Praveen Sritharan, Aava Param, Ajay Shah, Darius Luke Lameire, Ujash Sheth |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 25 KB |
| LICENSE | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |