The current research activity in so-called alternative medicine

We are about half way through 2025 which is an opportune occasion to again check how research-active the various branches of so-called alternative medicine (SCAM) currently are. To get a rough impression, I yesterday went on Medline and did a few very simple searches. They all used this search term:

“2025, [name of therapy in question], clinical trial”.

The findings are, I think, impressive. Here are some SCAM modalities ranked by the number of hits I received:

• dietary supplements 790
• herbal medicine 455
• acupuncture 407
• mindfulness 338
• massage 129
• yoga 98
• tai chi 60
• essential oil 31
• chiropractic 19
• osteopathic manipulative therapy 13
• homeopathy 11
• naturopathy 6

I should stress that not all of these hits are truly clinical trials (Medline is not precise in that), neither does Medline capture all SCAM journals. So, the figures are by no means accurate but they do give a rough picture of what is going on.

And what is going on?

Unsurprisingly, commercial products are heading the list. Acupuncture in the 3rd place might surprize some; here I must add that the 407 articles come to ~90% (my guess) from China. I have often warned on this blog to not take these papers seriously, as they are predominantly promotion rather than science. Mindfulness on the 4th place is, I think, a reflection of the current hype around this therapy.

The rest is as one might expect – except for the dismal ranking of chiropractic, osteopathy, homeopathy and naturopathy. The suggestion here is, I fear, that these practitioners seem to have very little interest in doing research. Why? Perhaps they know that their treatments cannot withstand the rigor of a decent clinical trial?

In fact, with a bit of fantasy, one could even see an interesting correlation between the evidence-base and the research-activity of SCAM: the treatments that are best supported by evidence seem to have the highest level of research-activity. Conversely, the ones that have the weakest evidence-base seem to have the least research going on.

PS

My analysis does, of course, say nothing about the quality of the science which is, as we often discuss here on this blog, frequenlty dismal.