[R-meta] How to interpret the result of metabias function of the R package meta?

[Safa Aouinti]

Dear All 


I am learning how to make a meta analysis of binary outcome data. So I chose the Fleiss93 dataset available in the meta package. This is my code:

library(meta) 
data(Fleiss93) 
MA <- metabin(event.e, n.e, event.c, n.c, data=Fleiss93, studlab=paste(study, year), method = "Inverse",sm="OR")
forest(MA)
funnel(MA, studlab = TRUE)
metabias(res, method="linreg",k.min=7)

The funnel plot looks like asymmetric but when I use the function metabias to test this asymmetry I found a p-value=0.399 > 5% indicating that the hypothesis H0 should be accepted 'the funnel plot is symmetric' ???

For me the result is contradictory to what I expect. I misinterpreted the result or I did not choose the correct method to put in metabias function ??

Thank you in advance for your help/ explanations !

Best regards.

Safa Aouinti
Ph.D. in applied Mathematics and Statistics