OBJECTIVES Identification of sufficiently trustworthy top 5 list recommendations from the US Choosing Wisely campaign. SETTING Not applicable. PARTICIPANTS All top 5 list recommendations available from the American Board of Internal Medicine Foundation website. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES/INTERVENTIONS Compilation of US top 5 lists and search for current German highly trustworthy (S3) guideline...

BACKGROUND Although the methodological quality of therapeutic guidelines (GLs) has been criticized, little is known regarding the quality of GLs that make diagnostic recommendations. Therefore, we assessed the methodological quality of GLs providing diagnostic recommendations for managing diabetes mellitus (DM) and explored several reasons for differences in quality across these GLs. METHODS ...

Development economists have superseded any necessity of using Arrow’s methodological individualism (MI) in focusing on cross-cultural, cross-national, or developmental economics. This study examines whether analysis of cross-cultural economic models might include a concept of economic generosity as a type of economic structuration that deviates from MI principles and is closer to what economist...

BACKGROUND Article summaries' information and structure may influence researchers/clinicians' decisions to conduct deeper full-text analyses. Specifically, abstracts of systematic reviews (SRs) and meta-analyses (MA) should provide structured summaries for quick assessment. This study explored a method for determining the methodological quality and bias risk of full-text reviews using abstract ...

Reacting to the original papers outlining the importance of “social mechanisms,” thispaper contrasts two views of the social process, the mechanismal and the relational. In the sourceshere analyzed, the mechanismal perspective is largely based on methodological individualismand generally presupposes rational, or at least intentional, action. A fundamental assumption ofthis appro...

This article presents a theoretical foundation for marketing based on the ideas of the Austrian school of economists. After a discussion of the methodological foundations of Austrian economics, which reject the statistical and experimental methods of the physical sciences as the means to verify theory in the social sciences, the article presents the Austrians' principle of methodological indivi...

Intelligent Design Theory (ID) has been much maligned recently as Neo-Creationist pseudoscience. This paper looks briefly at the common arguments used against ID, including arguments from methodological naturalism (MN), falsifiability, productivity, and religious fundamentalism. Ultimately it goes on to explain why the theory could be beneficial to our society today and suggests a need for a me...

CONTEXT AND OBJECTIVES The level of evidence and methodological quality of articles published in medical journals are important aids for clinicians in decision-making and also affect journals' impact factor. Although systematic reviews (SR) are considered to represent the highest level of evidence, their methodological quality is not homogeneous and they need to be as carefully assessed as othe...