Just out of curiosity when you say red flag do you mean they are hiding something, have an agenda, or don’t know what they are doing? I don’t do peer reviews on scientific papers but I assume all of that data is available just not part of the online version.
I am definitely not qualified to do peer reviews either but good papers will have a lot more transparency there and in the limitations.
I see a lot of papers that get release and devoured by the media that really doesn’t tell us anything definitive at all and they seem to draw strong conclusions from questionable data in spite of declaring the data is questionable.
Take this lancet article for example. They draw a very strong conclusion while in the same sentence admitting the data is extremely questionable. How can they do that?www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)31142-9/fulltext#%20
The primary limitation of our study is that all studies were non-randomised, not always fully adjusted, and might suffer from recall and measurement bias (eg, direct contact in some studies might not be measuring near distance). However, unadjusted, adjusted, frequentist, and Bayesian meta-analyses all supported the main findings, and large or very large effects were recorded. Nevertheless, we are cautious not to be overly certain in the precise quantitative estimates of effects, although the qualitative effect and direction is probably of high certainty. Many studies did not provide information on precise distances, and direct contact was equated to 0 m distance; none of the eligible studies quantitatively evaluated whether distances of more than 2 m were more effective, although our meta-regression provides potential predictions for estimates of risk. Few studies assessed the effect of interventions in non-health-care settings, and they primarily evaluated mask use in households or contacts of cases, although beneficial associations were seen across settings. Furthermore, most evidence was from studies that reported on SARS and MERS (n=6674 patients with COVID-19, of 25 697 total), but data from these previous epidemics provide the most direct information for COVID-19 currently. We did not specifically assess the effect of duration of exposure on risk for transmission, although whether or not this variable was judged a risk factor considerably varied across studies, from any duration to a minimum of 1 h. Because of inconsistent reporting, information is limited about whether aerosol-generating procedures were in place in studies using respirators, and whether masks worn by infected patients might alter the effectiveness of each intervention, although the stronger association with N95 or similar respirators over other masks persisted when adjusting for studies reporting aerosol-generating medical procedures. These factors might account for some of the residual statistical heterogeneity seen for some outcomes, albeit I2 is commonly inflated in meta-analyses of observational data,21, 22 and nevertheless the effects seen were large and probably clinically important in all adjusted studies.
good article.
