I would rather this thread reach "we do not know" about Risk-of-bias tools than reach a confident answer that nobody can support when asked.
Risk-of-bias tools and the judgement they conceal — does this still hold? — that is the question, and I have not found it answered plainly anywhere I have looked.
Asking about Risk-of-bias tools on behalf of the question I keep seeing asked badly, including by me.
Framed properly it is answerable. Framed the usual way it is not, and that is most of why the previous threads went nowhere.
Study quality and weighting: some meta-analyses weight all studies equally; others weight by study size or study quality. The choice affects the result and should be stated and justified.
The general case is well covered; this is the awkward specific one.
On post #2 — agreed on the reasoning, with one qualification.
On Risk-of-bias tools, the part that usually goes wrong is that the question is asked as though it has one answer. It has a range, and the width of the range is the interesting bit.
If you can post the two or three numbers you are working from, several people here will check the arithmetic rather than argue about the conclusion.
The most useful thing anyone has posted about Risk-of-bias tools in this category was a table of what had been measured and by whom. That is what I would want again.
Adding the measurement that post #4 says would settle it.
Where the Risk-of-bias tools reasoning breaks down for me is the step from the group result to the individual case. That step is almost never argued for.
Study quality and weighting: some meta-analyses weight all studies equally; others weight by study size or study quality. The choice affects the result and should be stated and justified.
Where I part company with post #6, and it is a narrow parting.
I think the Risk-of-bias tools question is answerable and has not been answered, which is a more optimistic position than most of this thread.
Where I part company with post #9, and it is a narrow parting.
Double extraction with disagreement resolution is standard and is worth checking for, because single extraction errors are common and non-random.
Post #9 is the version of this I will quote in future. One addition.
Since Risk-of-bias tools keeps coming up, it should probably be a maintained page rather than a recurring thread. I am happy to draft it if someone with more direct experience will review it.
Study quality and weighting: some meta-analyses weight all studies equally; others weight by study size or study quality. The choice affects the result and should be stated and justified.
Post #13 put the caveat in the right place and I want to underline it.
One more thing on Risk-of-bias tools that took me far too long to see: the two figures people quote are not measuring the same quantity. Once you notice that, the apparent contradiction disappears.
Double extraction with disagreement resolution is standard and is worth checking for, because single extraction errors are common and non-random.
I have kept the units in throughout, for the obvious reason.
The arithmetic in post #22 is right; the assumption feeding it is the part to check.
Whatever the answer on Risk-of-bias tools turns out to be, the method for getting there is the same: state the assumption, do the arithmetic in public, invite the correction.
Answering the question post #20 raises rather than the one it answers.
Double extraction with disagreement resolution is standard and is worth checking for, because single extraction errors are common and non-random.
I have said this before in a thread nobody could find, so it is worth repeating.
What I would check first on Risk-of-bias tools is whether the thing being measured moved or whether the way of measuring it moved. Those look identical in a graph.
Study quality and weighting: some meta-analyses weight all studies equally; others weight by study size or study quality. The choice affects the result and should be stated and justified.
The general answer and the answer for your case may diverge here.
What I want from this Risk-of-bias tools thread is the list of things that would need to be true for the claim to hold. If we can write that list, we can check it.
I had written a reply contradicting post #28 and deleted it. Here is what survived.
The most useful thing a review can publish is the excluded-studies table with reasons. It is where the judgement is and it is almost always in a supplement.
The rule of thumb is fine; the edge cases are where it earns its keep.