Time to challenge the spurious hierarchy of systematic over narrative reviews?

Cynthia Mulrow's important paper calling for literature reviews to be undertaken more systematically (and hence be more informative and reliable) is now 30 years old.1 A recent paper in BMC Medical Research Methodology compared the proportion of reviews that were systematic (as opposed to narrative) in five leading biomedical journals.2 The authors found significant diversity: from New England Journal of Medicine (0%) and Lancet (11%) to Annals...