Welcome back to the plenary session podcast. If you're joining us, you're going to want to see this on video. I'm joined by Professor Carl Hannigan and Dr. Tom Jefferson. These are two of the premier evidence-based medicine researchers in the world. Gentlemen, it's great to see you both. Thanks for coming.

Likewise. Nice to see you in. I imagine you are phoning in from UK, where you're

Professor at Oxford. Yeah, I'm phoning you in from Oxford. I'm in my house, in the place where I do

most of my work. And yeah, it's a bit cold at the moment. It's a bit rainy, but yeah, it's plenty of

work going on here. Wonderful. And Tom, you're joining us from Rome, where you've been a clinical epidemiologist, a

practicing physician, and you have done many Cochran reviews for 20-plus years.

Yes, 17.

I'm co-author of 17 Cochran reviews, of one kind or another, yes.

That's right.

All right, gentlemen, thanks for doing this.

Let's get into this. I hope to cover a lot of topics, including masking, randomized control trials, meta-analysis,

how it's being interpreted in the press.

Maybe we'll get to lockdown in science itself and the silence, I think, of many academics

and evidence-based medicine.

But let me start by asking you, Tom, if you might tell the listeners, when did you get involved

in Cochran's review of physical interventions to slow the spread of respiratory viruses?

And how many protocols or how many iterations of that review have you done over the last 20 years?

The late and lamented Christelma and I wrote the original protocol in 2006.

And the current updates, which is two, two thousand and twenty three is the fifth update of the

review.

Five updates over these 20 years. is the fifth update of the movie.

Five updates over these 20 years.

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