http://woowooscience.com/index.php/blog/post/believing_in_science/ in health, homeopathy, and life en john@vitalpatterns.net Copyright 2008 by the respective commenters 2008-04-04T06:58:00-08:00 http://woowooscience.com/index.php/blog/post/believing_in_science/#185 Of course you should not blindly trust scientists! If you ask any professional scientist they will tell you that there is an awful lot of nonsense in the literature. Further more you will find greater scepticism of a theory or result from those most closely associated with a piece of research than with most of the rest of the scientific community. Some of the things you need to do to question scientific results are: 1.  Put almost everything you know into a kind of “truth escrow account” neither believe or disbelieve it, that way you have no vested psychological interest in being right. 2.  Always ask what question was asked what was compared and what was measured. Was the comparison made a sensible way to answer the question and was the thing measured a sensible point of comparison. 3.  Ask which statistical technique, if any, was used to test the comparison and ask if the assumptions of that technique were met. 4.  Think about what experiment you would do to test the result in a different way. I’m a scientist, I’m often wrong. I do not want you to trust me I want you to be scientifically literate enough to question properly everything I do. {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} 2008-01-05T09:15:41-08:00 http://woowooscience.com/index.php/blog/post/believing_in_science/#186 I agree wholeheartedly. This is my problem with most of the research that I’ve seen which claims that homeopathic treatment is no better than placebo. It asks the wrong question: about a potentized substance not the homeopathic method. It measures the wrong thing: does remedy X work on condition Y—that’s allopathy, not homeopathy. It uses statistics in a manner that doesn’t fit the test. (A larger topic for another time.) The researchers don’t seem to understand what they are testing, and so they don’t actually test it, but rather something that is sort of like it. Therefore, their conclusions are wrong. By the way, while I have gone beyond the question of whether or not homeopathic remedies “work,” i.e. are not just placebo, I do treat other claims I hear or read about in homeopathy with healthy skepticism. {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} 2008-01-08T01:22:28-08:00 http://woowooscience.com/index.php/blog/post/believing_in_science/#188 It asks the wrong question: about a potentized substance not the homeopathic method. It measures the wrong thing: does remedy X work on condition Y—that’s allopathy, not homeopathy. It uses statistics in a manner that doesn’t fit the test. (A larger topic for another time.) The weird thing is that these are also the problems with apparently positive research published in the alt med journals. An example is a RPCT of arnica for post operative pain relief [1] the homeopathy in this paper may be bad but it can’t be as awful as the science. I may even start a blog just to write about this paper. Anyway:   YOU DO NOT NEED TO US A SINGLE TREATMENT ON A SINGLE MALIDY   to do a RPCT. You can just take a large number of random patients interview them and prescribe a treatment, they can then be randomly allocated into two groups, those that get what you prescribe and those who get placebo by the pharmacy and without your knowledge. You can use some sort of generic wellbeingness measuring questionnaire to track their progress. The important thing is that given large enough groups confounding factors ought to equal out so that only the effect of the homeopathic remedy comes through in the analysis. You can even be cleaver and note that you would expect the placebo group not only to fair worse than the treated group but also to have their remedy altered more often as the homeopath struggles in vain to adjust the …(more) {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} 2008-01-09T10:54:30-08:00 http://woowooscience.com/index.php/blog/post/believing_in_science/#202 The weird thing is that these are also the problems with apparently positive research published in the alt med journals. I find the fact that some of these studies show results to be very significant, because the deck was stacked against homeopathy due to the methodology. The fact is that many of the remedy X for condition Y studies do not show a result. Some do. I depends on the condition and how well the single remedy is selected. There is a new one of these studies with a positive result in the journal Chest. They have moved on to a phase II trial. {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} 2008-01-10T10:05:58-08:00 http://woowooscience.com/index.php/blog/post/believing_in_science/#203 Also stop demanding that scientist do the work, we are busy doing our own things. It is the homeopaths that have an interest in homeopathy and it is up to them to get the data. I am not demanding that anybody do anything. I do prefer, however, that people stop criticising homeopathy using studies which were not designed to actually test homeopathy. Some studies have been done that aren’t single remedy studies, with good result. More of both kinds of studies are being done, as I understand it. I am not in the research business. Nor am I interested in selling homeopathy to people who are skeptical. I only want to try to provide straight information and counter the misinformation and let people decide for themselves. In addition it is a disgrace that you are treating the general public without the proper evidence to know you are actually helping them. There are several problems with this. The first is that you believe there isn’t proper evidence that homeopathy is helping people. I disagree. I say that you dismiss evidence because you don’t like the implications of it. Another is that this is the state of medicine. The majority of treatments that doctors use are not directly backed by studies, but are in fact anecdotal. Most are off label uses of pharmaceuticals. Most importantly has to do with freedom. If what I am doing is not intrinsicly harmful, I have the right to do it and people have the right to access it. I do not commit fraud by making promises of cure, only to give the best homeopathic treatment that …(more) {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} 2008-01-10T10:25:01-08:00 http://woowooscience.com/index.php/blog/post/believing_in_science/#205 The majority of treatments that doctors use are not directly backed by studies, but are in fact anecdotal. Most are off label uses of pharmaceuticals. Yes, you have mentioned this before. A very interesting point. I would be grateful if you could post a reference to the original source of that information. {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} 2008-01-12T04:46:55-08:00 http://woowooscience.com/index.php/blog/post/believing_in_science/#206 Darn it! I can’t find my orgininal notes where I heard about that study. Still, if I just use Google… A Standford study came up with a 21% number in 2001. Certain types of drugs have much higher numbers. According to this article, the AMA estimated it at 40%. And this group cites sources which give numbers from 25% to 60%, with an 80% number for children. These are only for pharmaceuticals, not all treatments. The source I want to cite was considering all type of medical interventions, not just the percentage of prescriptions. In any case, without my source I’ll reduce my “majority” to “commonly.” By the way, I’m not condemning medicine for this. It’s not illegal for doctors to do this, only for pharmaceutical companies to advertise off-label uses. All I’m saying is that doctors have the freedom to use their experience. And I believe this is an essential freedom. Like most things, sometimes this is bad, sometimes it’s good, but hopefully more often good than bad. I do think, however, that doctors probably ought to disclose when they do this. {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} 2008-01-12T11:17:54-08:00 http://woowooscience.com/index.php/blog/post/believing_in_science/#208 John, The Chest paper is very interesting. I’ve only skim read it and I want to give it careful consideration befor I respond. Also Woodchopper would you have a look at it. I have to say I can’t see anything obviously wrong with it at first glance. Looks like it was properly double blinded, looks like sensible things were measured, three of the five things subjected to statistical testing gave p-values < 0.0001! so its not like one of those flaky studies with p-values ~ 0.045 in 1 of 20 things tested. {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} 2008-01-14T12:36:08-08:00 http://woowooscience.com/index.php/blog/post/believing_in_science/#214 Derik, John I just saw the reference to the Chest article. Indeed, I think its the first I have seen in which the homeopathic group actually displays a significant difference to the control group. (As you say, its in a completely different league to all the ‘revolutionary paradigm shifting’ studies with a p-value of 0.5). I’m not a doctor so I can’t evaluate it properly. But the only issues I could see were the small sample size (25 + 25) and that the placebo control group appeared to be marginally iller at the start of the trial. But still, this is an interesting study. If its replicated with a much larger sample then people should take it seriously. {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} 2008-01-27T04:30:35-08:00 http://woowooscience.com/index.php/blog/post/believing_in_science/#215 In the comment above, I obviously ment “As you say, its in a completely different league to all the ‘revolutionary paradigm shifting’ studies with a p-value of 0.05).” {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} 2008-01-27T04:32:17-08:00