This paper discusses the outstanding problem of replicability of empirical data in the context of recent work on meta-analysis, especially within the field of evidence-based medicine. Specifically, it deals with the methodological issue of how to determine the degrees of heterogeneity between different collected studies. After critically reviewing the standard measures used to quantify meta-analytical heterogeneity, we argue that they should be revised in such a way to take into account the statistical power of the individual studies. We thus propose some new measures of heterogeneity. Subsequently, we apply them to re-assess concrete case-studies from clinical research, thereby showing explicitly how the relevant values of heterogeneity diverge from those obtained with the original measures.

中文翻译：

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荟萃分析的力量：循证医学的挑战

本文在荟萃分析的最新工作中，尤其是在循证医学领域，讨论了经验数据的可复制性的突出问题。具体而言，它涉及如何确定不同收集研究之间异质性程度的方法论问题。在认真审查了用于量化荟萃分析异质性的标准方法之后，我们认为应该以考虑到各个研究的统计能力的方式对其进行修订。因此，我们提出了一些新的异质性度量。随后，我们将其应用到临床研究的具体案例研究中，以重新评估具体案例研究，从而明确显示异质性的相关值与原始方法获得的值之间的差异。