Evaluation of exaggerated claims in the abstracts of systematic reviews reporting accelerated orthodontic tooth movement: a meta research analysis

Background The latest trend in scientific literature review is to scrutinise the practices of false or biased reporting of findings, which is rightly termed as 'spin'. In recent years, accelerated tooth movement has gained attention from the orthodontic community, but the findings still remain unclear and controversial. Objectives To estimate the frequency of distorted claims and over-interpretation of abstracts of systematic reviews related to accelerated orthodontic tooth movement. The objective was to differentiate the type of claim and to determine its prevalence. Methods A literature search was performed using the Cochrane library and the top five most prominent orthodontic journals for systematic reviews on accelerated orthodontics were identified by applying appropriate key words. According to pre-set selection criteria, only systematic reviews published between January 2010 and September 2021 were included. The selected articles were scrutinised for the assigned exclusion criteria. The articles were finally scanned for false claims by two independent reviewers. The identified claims fell into either the categories of misleading interpretation, misleading reporting or misleading extrapolation. The obtained data were tabulated and analysed using the one-way ANOVA statistical test to indicate the difference between the different types of reported claims. Results There were 98 systematic reviews identified in total, of which 59 articles met the selection criteria and 39 articles were excluded. Of the 59 included articles, 38 systematic reviews had exaggerated claims. Twenty-two of the reported claims came under the misleading reporting category, 10 fell under the misleading interpretation category and 6 came under the misleading extrapolation category. The difference noted between the reporting prevalence of different types of claim was statistically significant (P < 0.001). In misleading reporting, it was noted that most of the systematic reviews refrained from reporting the adverse effects of treatment. Conclusion The prevalence of exaggerated claims is high in the abstracts of systematic reviews related to accelerated orthodontic tooth movement. It is recommended that a clinician critically assess the claims presented in systematic reviews which are considered to be the hallmark articles of evidence-based practice. Orthodontists should be careful when applying the findings in clinical practice.