In many meta-analysis cases the estimator of the overall effect in independent trials or experiments leads to unjustified significant results. This paper considers trials with two arms where the summary statistic of interest is either the mean difference or the risk difference. By using...

The variance function of the optimal estimator of the overall mean in a heteroscedastic one-way ANOVA model is dominated by positive semi-definite quadratic functions. This makes it possible to develop closely related tests on the nullity of the overall mean parameter in one-way fixed and random...