Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions

The Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions, edited by Julian P. T. Higgins and Sally Green and maintained by the Cochrane Collaboration, is the standard methodological reference for how to conduct a rigorous systematic review of medical and health interventions, used internationally by researchers producing the evidence syntheses that inform clinical guidelines. Its strength is that it is produced by the organization that essentially defined modern systematic review methodology, continually updated by working groups of specialist methodologists rather than a single author's opinion. Its limit is that the handbook teaches how to properly synthesize and weigh existing studies, it is not itself a source of substantive medical or scientific findings, so it should be cited here only when the atlas needs to reference the standard for how evidence is systematically evaluated, never as a source for any specific claim about religion, health or paranormal phenomena in its own right.