Conclusions
To the extent that the central to the epistemology of EBM is that what is justifiable or reasonable to believe depends on CoE1, our findings indicate urgent need to refine current EBM critical appraisal methods. If EBM is going to flourish, it is crucial to develop methods with capacity to categorize CoE to reliably differentiate between magnitude effects that are potentially biased from those that are accurate and trustworthy. The major opportunity, therein, lies in addressing the main limitations of this study- carefully and painstakingly discerning various aspects of CoE (from the components related to study limitations/risk of bias to inconsistency, imprecision, or indirectness) to better characterize CoE and its relationship to the magnitude of effects of health interventions.