subcommand meta __000005 is unrecognized

[Head GD]

Dear all,

can someone explain to me why I am getting this error?

metatrim _ES _seES, reffect funnel

Note: default data input format (theta, se_theta) assumed.
subcommand meta __000005 is unrecognized
r(199);

Thank you very much

[David Fisher]

The command metatrim is user-contributed and now very old (last updated in 2003!). It has a dependency upon another old user-contributed command, meta, to run a simple meta-analysis. However, Stata 16 introduced an official, built-in suite of commands for meta-analysis also called meta. Hence, when metatrim is run, it attempts to call the older command, but in fact the newer command takes over. Because the syntaxes differ between the two commands, an error is experienced.

I would suggest using Stata's built-in capabilities for trim-and-fill analysis. For documentation, type (from within Stata): help meta trimfill

Best wishes,
David.