[jbandela1]

What is really interesting is looking at the meta analysis cited in the Vox article:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3932762/

This reaches the conclusion that beta blockers are harmful. However, if you look at the meat analysis, specifically figure 2, you find that the conclusion is mainly driven by a single trial - the 2008 POISE trial.

If you go to the POISE trial: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

You find that they discovered fraud in at least some of the hospitals:

" Concern was raised during central data consistency checks about 752 participants at six hospitals in Iran coordinated by one centre and 195 participants associated with one research assistant in three of 11 hospitals in Colombia. On-site auditing of these hospitals and cases indicated that fraudulent activity had occurred. Before the trial was concluded, the operations committee—blinded to the trial results at these hospitals and overall—decided to exclude these data (webappendix 1). "

We have an important question - should pre-op patients be given beta blockers - and the largest, most definitive trials to answer that question have at least some taint of fraud.