TY - JOUR T1 - Editors’ Note: <em>“The Cochrane HPV vaccine review was incomplete and ignored important evidence of bias”</em> JF - BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine JO - BMJ EBM SP - e2 LP - e2 DO - 10.1136/bmjebm-2018-111012ednote VL - 25 IS - 3 AU - Carl Heneghan AU - Igho Onakpoya Y1 - 2020/06/01 UR - http://ebm.bmj.com/content/25/3/e2.abstract N2 - A Cochrane systematic review of human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine (hereafter referred to as the Cochrane HPV Review) was published on 9th May 2018.The article, ‘The Cochrane HPV vaccine review was incomplete and ignored important evidence of bias’ was submitted to BMJ EBM on 24th May 2018 for the ‘Debate, analysis and opinion’ section of the journal. The handling editor, Dr Igho Onakpoya (Research Editor, BMJ EBM) sent it for external peer review to an expert in HPV vaccines and for internal peer review to Professor Carl Heneghan, Editor in Chief of BMJ EBM. Peer reviewers’ reports were returned by 19th June and were sent to the authors, who were invited to make revisions. The revised version was submitted on third July, accepted by the handling editor on seventh July and published online on 27th July 2018.1 The analysis of the Cochrane HPV review stated there were missing eligible trials, reporting bias, and biased trial designs and conflicts of interest.2 3 Cochrane initiated an investigation in response to the criticism and published a response to the article on third September authored by Cochrane’s then Editor in Chief (EiC) David Tovey and deputy EiC Karla Soares-Weiser. This response defended the Cochrane HPV Review and outlined key findings from the Cochrane investigation:The Cochrane Review did not miss “nearly half of the eligible trials”. A small number of studies were missed due to the primary focus on peer-reviewed reports in scientific journals, but the addition of these data makes little or no difference to the results … ER -