Evidence map›Paper›PMID 33303482›Full record

ReviewBMJ (Clinical research ed.)2020

The time to act is now: pseudo-systematic review.

Nathan Ford, Grania Brigden, Tom Ellman, Edward J Mills

Abstract readReview
PubMed Full text at PMC Publisher
In one paragraph

Review in BMJ (Clinical research ed.), 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
1citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

1 citing paper in PubMed.

  1. Do "Calls to Action" Lead to Action?Academic psychiatry : the journal of the American Association of Directors of Psychiatric Residency Training and the Association for Academic Psychiatry · 2025
    Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

4 authors.

Nathan FordCentre for Infectious Disease Epidemiology and Research, School of Public Health, University of Cape Town, Observatory 7925, South Africa.ORCID 0000-0003-1482-3967
Grania BrigdenDepartment of Tuberculosis, International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease, Geneva, Switzerland.
Tom EllmanSouth African Medical Unit, Médecins Sans Frontières, Cape Town, South Africa.
Edward J MillsDepartment of Health Research Methods, Evidence, and Impact, McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

objectiveTo identify any medical or public health rationale for claims that the time to act is now.

designPseudo-systematic review. DATA SOURCES: PubMed. STUDY SELECTION: Studies that included the claim "time is now" in the title, with or without exclamation marks. No language or date restriction was applied.

results512 articles were included for review. No relationship was identified between time to act and disease burden, severity, or specialty. Claims that the time to act was Christmas were almost entirely without basis. A clustering of claims that it is time to act in the first quarter of the year suggested a possible association with New Year's resolutions.

conclusionsNow is as good a time as any.

Indexed as

Time-to-TreatmentHumansSystematic Reviews as TopicTime

Identifiers

PMID33303482
PMCPMC7726705

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
LicenceCC BY-NC
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.