By Skeptical
Second : Has anyone quoted the Lancet paper on homeopathy? A metastudy that combined the results of 110 double blind, randomised, placebo controlled clinical studies. End result showed that homeopathy = placebo. This is as close to total 100% "proof" that medical science is able to achieve.
Erm... actually, no. The research that the Lancet looked at was carried out by scientists - a bit like asking the Labour party to carry out research into the efficacy of the Tories. Or athiests carrying out research into life after death. And let's not forget that the Lancet published Dr Andrew Wakefield's paper, after their strict rules of peer-review had been followed... you can either be subjective, and believe what
you want, or try and find a balanced argument, away from the bias that exists in research.
Biased? What, scientists? No never, just not possible, these are fine upstanding pillars of the community with no axe to grind whatsoever... If you believe that, then you're definitely in the right place, as this
is a fantasy forum...
But in the days of google, it's easy to check for yourself - unless you'd rather take Derren Brown's word for it - by typing in 'scientist research fudged' and spend a few weeks looking at the papers there. When it comes to money, there isn't anything they won't do, to get the right results; take GM food for instance:
www.non-gm-farmers.com/news_print.asp?ID=2705
The main criticism of Homoeopathic research is that it shouldn't be carried out by homoeopaths: in that case, why do doctors carry out research for doctors and scientists carry out research for scientists? Shouldn't the same rules apply equally? And every
so-called scientific study is doomed to failure and they know it, which is why they are happy to keep doing it. Why? Well, because Homoeopathy works differently to the drugs that you and I take every day to suppress our symptoms. If two people have sore throats, then they will get different homoeopathic treatments, depending on their own constitutional make-up. But that's okay, the scientists will ignore that and do a double-blind, randomised trial, using 50 people with sore throats and give them all the same remedy. Voila, homeopathy doesn't work!
And even when it
does work, they say it doesn't. I was going to cut and paste some research from Pubmed, about the use of homoeopathy in children with warts, but I think I might be breaking copyright. So google this:
Homoepathic versus placebo therapy of children with warts on their hands: a randomized, double-blind clinical trial.
and the paper will be listed as the first entry. And you should remember that placebo shouldn't work so well with children, they don't know as much as us adults. Have a look at it, because what they say, and what the results are, are spectacularly different, proved by the statistics they have used to 'disprove' it.
Now, am I wrong, or does it not say that total cure of warts occured in 5 patients in the treated group? And one in the placebo group? Anyone like to test their statistics using the chi square? I'm sorry but 17% of the treated group had a total cure against 3% of the placebo group and that's 'no apparent difference'?
"I'm sorry sir, but I'm going to have to cut off 17% of your leg, but there'll be no apparent difference to if I only cut off 3%"
I know which I'd go for...
The reason they say this, is hidden in the abstract, (but you can find the whole paper if you have access to any scientific community which can use Athens or such). And it's the parameters they have set:
The area occupied by warts was measured by computerized planimetry before and after 8 weeks of treatment. (My underlining) Reduction of the warty area by at least 50% was considered a response.
Now within this grouping, ie after 8 weeks, there were 9 in the treated group and 7 in the placebo group, so they're absolutely right!!!
But imagine carrying out the same type of research with drugs:
"Sorry, this heart/blood pressure/asthma/cancer (pick any)drug is ineffective as it hadn't produced a result within 8 weeks"
"But doctor, 17% of the treated group were cured
totally after that!"
"Sorry, it's only considered effective if it works within the parameters we set for the research. We're not interested, otherwise"
And why wasn't the research carried out comparing Homoeopathy with a branded treatment for warts? Might it have been embarrassing for the producers of said treatment if Homoeopathy had outperformed the drug? We'll never know, but guess what? In this trial, Homeopathy outperformed placebo six times over.
Damn me, they've proved that Homoeopathy isn't a placebo!!
Nah, don't be silly, looking at the results after 8 weeks showed virtually no difference between them. Who cares if there was a spectacular result after that time? Well, the 17% might... And if you extrapolate this research into drug research, you can bet the researchers would...
And I'll leave the last word for now to the BMJ, in an article that looked at Homoeopathy back in 1991: (google 'Clinical Trials of Homoeopathy Kleijnen J, Knipschild P, ter Reit G' and you should find it). And then google 'publication bias' and see what you get.
The results showed a positive trend regardless of the quality of the trial or the variety of homeopathy used. Overall, of the 105 trials with interpretable results, 81 trials indicated positive results whereas in 24 trials no positive effects of homoeopathy were found. The results of the review may be complicated by publication bias, especially in such a controversial subject as homoeopathy. CONCLUSIONS: At the moment the evidence of clinical trials is positive but not sufficient to draw definitive conclusions because most trials are of low methodological quality and because of the unknown role of publication bias. This indicates that there is a legitimate case for further evaluation of homoeopathy, but only by means of well performed trials.
Would anybody like to suggest that the warty research was well-performed? (Apart from the researchers themselves, who seem to have fallen foul of publication bias....)