The Popp et al. meta-analysis included four of the Knackered Nine clinical studies in Table 1: Buonfrate et al. (2022), López-Medina et al. (2021), Reis et al. (2022), and Vallejos et al. (2021). This shouldn’t be surprising when we consider that the Popp et al. authors include some of the authors of the Knackered Nine, such as Stefanie Reis and Stephanie Weibel. Reis was the lead author of the TOGETHER Trial study; Weibel was a coauthor of Buonfrate et al. In fairness to the authors, it’s natural to include your own study, but it’s also natural to overlook the weaknesses of your own study. It’s important to note that the TOGETHER Trial (Reis et al.) was both big and bad, raising serious questions about its final results.

While we correctly cited the Reis et al. article, we incorrectly claimed that Stefanie Reis was one of its authors. In fact, the author was Gilmar Reis, something we should have noticed. That mistake was understandable. Less understandable is our claim that Stephanie Weibel was one of the many co-authors of the Buonfrate et al. study. She was not. These two errors substantially undercut our implicit claim that the authors of the Cochrane study had a conflict of interest.

We thank Pierre Crot Gallaz for pointing out our errors.