I notice you don't say anything substantive about the facts I presented on Shang and Linde so one can only conclude you disagree but cannot produce anything in favour of the criticisms.
In the references given above in support of homeopathy there are several papers, including the infamous Frass trial that have generalised treatments. The cherry picking that Shang eliminated in his meta-study extends to Frass as well. It seems ok to accept non-individualised poor quality trials that are in favour of homeopathy but to reject high quality non-individualised trials that show no difference between product and placebo. Do you see a problem with that approach?
I'd like to bet, that if the meta-analysis had been in favour of homeopathy you would not reject it. Linde's meta-analysis were accepted by homeopaths purely on the basis of one sentence in the conclusions. The moment Linde said that the analysis should be more in line with Shang, you don't hear too much about them. Although you still get copy and paste merchants who bring up the early statement but refuse to acknowledge the later one.
Even in those poor quality trials that show a positive effect for the homeopathic treatment, the clinical significance is often small.
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I notice you don't say anything substantive about the facts I presented on Shang and Linde so one can only conclude you disagree but cannot produce anything in favour of the criticisms.
In the references given above in support of homeopathy there are several papers, including the infamous Frass trial that have generalised treatments. The cherry picking that Shang eliminated in his meta-study extends to Frass as well. It seems ok to accept non-individualised poor quality trials that are in favour of homeopathy but to reject high quality non-individualised trials that show no difference between product and placebo. Do you see a problem with that approach?
I'd like to bet, that if the meta-analysis had been in favour of homeopathy you would not reject it. Linde's meta-analysis were accepted by homeopaths purely on the basis of one sentence in the conclusions. The moment Linde said that the analysis should be more in line with Shang, you don't hear too much about them. Although you still get copy and paste merchants who bring up the early statement but refuse to acknowledge the later one.
Even in those poor quality trials that show a positive effect for the homeopathic treatment, the clinical significance is often small.
February 6, 2012 - 4:28pmThis Comment
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