The degenerative manifestations were described blinded and standardised and expressed as 'max scores', 'sum scores' and 'present vs. not present'.
We assessed the extent of remyelination in these lesions at 2 and 4 weeks using a previously described blinded ranking system [ 17, 41, 55] (see methods) (Fig. 8a), by measuring the percentage of fibres which were myelinated (Fig. 8b) and the thickness of these myelinated fibres (Fig. 8c).
All four studies described blinding the participants to which group they were in, and including over 80% of the randomized participants in the main analyses.
32 However, no trial described blinding of the outcome assessment.
With respect to risk of bias of each trial, two described random allocation [ 46, 47], 13 described allocation concealment [ 27, 29, 31, 33- 37, 41, 42, 44, 46, 47], 13 described blinding [ 27, 29, 31, 33- 37, 41, 42, 44, 46, 47], three described outcome data addressed [ 44, 46, 47], and four described selective outcome reporting [ 36, 41, 47, 49]; no other bias was described.
"The new WCA test will mean many blind and partially sighted people are deemed immediately able to work and moved straight on to jobseeker's allowance, which will mean a big drop in income and less support to find work: 92% of employers describe blind or partially sighted people as difficult or impossible to employ.
Disagreements were resolved by a third intensivist (the principal investigator) scoring the case, in the same manner as described above, blinded to the decisions of the other triage officers and patient outcomes.
For blinding, we described who was blinded and the blinding method.
However, in what the judge in the trial following Climbié's death described as "blinding incompetence", all failed to properly investigate the case and little action was taken.
All studies were reported as double blind although just 60% (n = 246; 8/13) of them clearly described who was blinded and what blinding method was used.
(The writer Jorge Luis Borges, who went blind at age fifty-five, described going blind as a process by which "everything near becomes distant". In the newly sighted, without depth perception, the opposite seems true: the distant — tiny houses on the horizon, clouds in the impossibly high sky — suddenly looks nearby).
