The 30 most recent comments from all posts are listed below. Click on the post title to go to the comment on the post’s page.
- Comment by Richard Rasker on NHS hospitals spent a fortune on “quack” therapies such as reiki and foot massages last year Tuesday 22 October 2024: 13:10 @RG News of successful treatments travels fast among the sick and diseased. And misinformation and lies promoting useless quack treatments travel even faster.
- Comment by on NHS hospitals spent a fortune on “quack” therapies such as reiki and foot massages last year Tuesday 22 October 2024: 12:10 Evidently SMB doesn’t have a better treatment. News of successful treatments travels fast among the sick and diseased.
- Comment by on Homoeopathy vs. conventional primary care in children during the first 24 months of life Tuesday 22 October 2024: 11:10 Another issue.. The IQR for the number of sickness episodes for Homeopathy group is 0-2. Which means that 25% of the homeopathy group didn’t get sick. And the paper reads: “Illness episodes in children in the homoeopathic group were treated with individualised homoeopathic medicines” So, 25% of the homeopathy group didn’t receive any treatment? And it raises a question of sampling bias as well. 25% of the group is so healthy (without any treatment).
- Comment by on Homoeopathy vs. conventional primary care in children during the first 24 months of life Tuesday 22 October 2024: 09:10 In my opinion, the issue of reporting bias (which applies to both groups) is overshadowed by the deliberate study design of: ● A+B vs B, combined with ● modified intention-to-treat analysis (mITT). QUOTE Intention-to-treat analysis, Wikipedia Issues Medical investigators often have difficulties in completing ITT analysis because of clinical trial issues like missing data or poor treatment protocol adherence.[3] To address some of these issues, many clinical trials have excluded participants after the random assignment in their analysis, which is often referred to as modified intention-to-treat analysis or mITT. Trials employing mITT have been linked to industry sponsorship and conflicts of interest by the authors.[4] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intention-to-treat_analysis#Issues END OF QUOTE
- Comment by on Homoeopathy vs. conventional primary care in children during the first 24 months of life Tuesday 22 October 2024: 08:10 @Sai Krishna Dammalapati Also note that it would have been quite feasible to get at least clinician blinding, simply by having sick children diagnosed by independent physicians who are not aware of the assigned group. Any subsequent treatment can then be relegated to physicians in the unblinded group. I think this would have improved the study quality quite a bit.
- Comment by on Homoeopathy vs. conventional primary care in children during the first 24 months of life Tuesday 22 October 2024: 07:10 Yes exactly. If the parent doesn’t report, there is no question of confirmation by the physician. Are we ready to go easy on the reporting bias? Couple that up with the unblinded nature of the study. So the homeopaths and physicians working in a homeopathy institution know the participants’ group. Don’t you see the possibility of bias there?
- Comment by on Homoeopathy vs. conventional primary care in children during the first 24 months of life Tuesday 22 October 2024: 06:10 “I did seem to get that wrong.” you seem to get almost everything wrong.
- Comment by on Homoeopathy vs. conventional primary care in children during the first 24 months of life Tuesday 22 October 2024: 06:10 Edzard on Monday 21 October 2024 at 10:03 I did seem to get that wrong. It was not your father. It was your family doctor. He was a homeopath. What was he doing in your home with your father and Grand father being conventional doctors? Prescribing placebos that you would not take? You were brought up on homeopathic medicines? How did your father allow this ? ” But Ernst didn’t set out to wage war against the unconventional. Indeed, fresh from his studies, he began his career in a homeopathic hospital. “To me, homeopathy wasn’t as strange as it would be to many other people because, in a way, I was brought up on homeopathy – our family doctor was a homeopath,” he says. But something didn’t quite fit. “I had of course noticed that in medical school you don’t hear about [homeopathy] except when the pharmacologists go into a blind range about it.” So it was not just you, but the whole family. You managed to grow up and start medical career in homeopathy. Until then it was all homeopathic remedies? https://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/oct/19/edzard-ernst-outspoken-professor-of-complementary-medicine
- Comment by on Homoeopathy vs. conventional primary care in children during the first 24 months of life Tuesday 22 October 2024: 06:10 In the homoeopathic group, conventional medical treatment was added when medically indicated.
- Comment by on The ‘AECC’ changes its name to ‘Health Sciences University’ – does it deserve the new title? Monday 21 October 2024: 22:10 Bearing in mind that 93% of students at the new ‘Health Sciences University’ are taking the Chiropractic Masters degree (see the post above) and that, in the past, the Ministry of Defence has taken a dim view of chiropractic https://tinyurl.com/ys9h2bby it seems that chiropractic pseudoscience might be starting to run amok in the UK now that the university has signed The Armed Forces Covenant https://www.armedforcescovenant.gov.uk/about-the-covenant/ at a special event at its Bournemouth Campus. An X thread announcing this latest development can be viewed here: https://x.com/HealthSciUni/status/1848431968926765386 Apparently the move has involved ‘The Commanding Officer of The Royal Wessex Yeomanry, @BritishArmy, Lt Col Anthony Sharman, @DefenceHQ, @TomHayesBmouth MP (Bournemouth East), @Veterepreneurs, @WeAreWithYou, Bournemouth War Memorial Homes (BWMH), Royal Marines Base Poole (RM Poole), Special Boat Service Association, @BCPCouncil, @DorsetCouncilUK, @NHSuk, @NHSDorset, and @UHD_NHS – nearly all of whom likely won’t know about chiropractic’s spurious legitimacy.
- Comment by on Homoeopathy vs. conventional primary care in children during the first 24 months of life Monday 21 October 2024: 21:10 Re: your observation 1. The study’s primary outcome was a comparison of the number of sick days due to an acute illness experienced during the first 24 months of life by children receiving homoeopathic vs. conventional treatment. Sick days were defined as days with any acute illness (febrile or afebrile) reported by the parent and confirmed by the physician. doi:10.1007/s00431-024-05791-1
- Comment by on Homoeopathy vs. conventional primary care in children during the first 24 months of life Monday 21 October 2024: 20:10 receive either homoeopathic or conventional primary care for any acute illness over the study period. In the homoeopathic group, conventional medical treatment was added when medically indicated. First of al this is A versus B and not A+B is always more than B alone And I consider it ethically and medically correct (and so do all responsible homeopaths) to add conventional medicine if homeopathy alone does not bring about the immediate [!] clear improvements. So, apart from the lack of double-blinding [which would be ethically difficult to accept], this study is quite remarkable and by no means scandalous! It may not be entirely to your taste, but it still produces a striking result…
- Comment by on Homoeopathy vs. conventional primary care in children during the first 24 months of life Monday 21 October 2024: 17:10 Some observations on my initial reading: 1. There is a serious question on the validity of the primary outcome variable (number of sick days). It is a reported outcome by the parent. It is like saying Kerala (a state in India) is not safe for women because it sees more reported rape cases. But the fact is that Kerala sees more rape cases because Kerala women report more rape cases. The reporting bias cannot be brushed off so easily. 2. The authors themselves wrote in Discussion (Page9 Col2) that there could be several biases due to the open-label nature of this experiment. In that case, I think it is too early to claim causality (that Homeo ‘affected’ health). Causality can only be claimed after dealing with all the biases and there are a plenty here. 3. Leakages! How sure are we that parents of the conventional medicine group didn’t take their kids to other clinics? Nothing is written about this.
- Comment by on Homoeopathy vs. conventional primary care in children during the first 24 months of life Monday 21 October 2024: 16:10 I’m not holding my breath
- Comment by on Homoeopathy vs. conventional primary care in children during the first 24 months of life Monday 21 October 2024: 16:10 @DavidB Krishna knows nothing about homeopathy (or about real medicine, for that matter). And given his lies, his nonsensical claims and his colossal arrogance he must indeed be a troll. So I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for any sensible comment on that piece of HomeoPropaganda that is today’s topic. AFAICT, he never contributed even one sensible, on-topic comment.
- Comment by on Homoeopathy vs. conventional primary care in children during the first 24 months of life Monday 21 October 2024: 15:10 @Edzard: Your post about this rubbish A+B study reminded me that the idiotic, unnecessary Bavarian homeopathy study should be close to it´s completion (est. 31.01.2025). https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT05545514?a=8 I bet that the results of the great Bavarian study will finally completely change your understanding of science 😉
- Comment by on Homoeopathy vs. conventional primary care in children during the first 24 months of life Monday 21 October 2024: 10:10 Krishna, instead of making up stories about Professor Ernst’s father, would you like to give your opinion on the quality and content of the Paper that is the subject of this thread? In that way, one will be less inclined to think you a Troll……
- Comment by on Homoeopathy vs. conventional primary care in children during the first 24 months of life Monday 21 October 2024: 10:10 Why would that be unethical? To understand that, you would need to read up about medical ethics! “If I remember correctly, your father, a homeopath, did not even use conventional care in bringing you up.” You remember nothing of the sort because that is complete fantasy!
- Comment by on Homoeopathy vs. conventional primary care in children during the first 24 months of life Monday 21 October 2024: 09:10 Edzard on Monday 21 October 2024 “I feel disappointed that a decent journal published this paper without even a critical comment!” misleading? waste of resources? unethical? fraud? Why would that be so? If I remember correctly, your father, a homeopath, did not even use conventional care in bringing you up. You did good.
- Comment by on Homoeopathy vs. conventional primary care in children during the first 24 months of life Monday 21 October 2024: 08:10 “And again, I let you decide.” Well, I decided when I got to “In the homoeopathic group, conventional medical treatment was added when medically indicated. Clinicians and parents were unblinded.”
- Comment by on A further study confirms: HOMEOPATHIC REMEDIES HAVE NO SPECIFIC EFFECTS; ANY BENEFITS ARE DUE TO NON-SPECIFIC EFFECTS OF THE THERAPEUTIC ENCOUNTER, PLACEBO, ETC. Sunday 20 October 2024: 14:10 Well, as I always (jokingly!) say, “We never heard of children with ADHD when we sent them down the mines and up the chimneys”……
- Comment by on Individualized Homeopathic Medicinal Products in the Treatment of Post-COVID-19 Conditions: A Double-Blind, Randomized, Placebo-Controlled, Feasibility Trial Sunday 20 October 2024: 13:10 “Edzard is going to need a team at this rate to help him out.” Prof. Ernst had a team, until he annoyed the then HRH the Prince of Wales…..
- Comment by on Is Chiropractic Efficient in Treatment of Diseases? A Review of Systematic Reviews Saturday 19 October 2024: 19:10 A Scientific Test of Chiropractic’s Subluxation Theory. Edmund S Crelin Jr, PhD, DSc. Quackwatch. Revised 2010‑01‑21. Reference 11: Crelin ES. Functional Anatomy of the Newborn. Yale University Press, 1973. https://quackwatch.org/chiropractic/research/crelin/
- Comment by on Is Chiropractic Efficient in Treatment of Diseases? A Review of Systematic Reviews Saturday 19 October 2024: 16:10 Any claim of chiropractic effectiveness in the treatment of diseases refers, of course, to the chimeric & elusive & nonexistent chiropractic “subluxation.” For any not already familiar with it, there’s Yale University Professor Edmund Crelin’s 1973 article that definitively falsifies the theory. It’s worth reading
- Comment by on Individualized Homeopathic Medicinal Products in the Treatment of Post-COVID-19 Conditions: A Double-Blind, Randomized, Placebo-Controlled, Feasibility Trial Saturday 19 October 2024: 15:10 You mean such “evidence” that you keep presenting to us? Namely that homeopathy works? 😜
- Comment by on Is Chiropractic Efficient in Treatment of Diseases? A Review of Systematic Reviews Saturday 19 October 2024: 14:10 BS from the first line: “Chiropractic is a complementary medicine”… Chiropractic isn’t ‘complementary’ or ‘medicine’, it’s a medical parasite.
- Comment by on Is Chiropractic Efficient in Treatment of Diseases? A Review of Systematic Reviews Saturday 19 October 2024: 12:10 Chiropractic is a variant of osteopathy which originated as part of ‘magnetic therapy’ as offered by Paul Caster (essentially, a variety of hypnotism, which ammounts to the generation of response expectances or placebo effects.) No doubt can be nice to have – a ‘condimentary therapy’ but not, as the Prof says, of any benefit for having an effect on any disease process. So, not a ‘medicine’ at all! Might as well just call it ‘spinal manipulative therapy’ – a term many therapists with integrity use. But doesn’t ‘Chiropractic’ sound so much better? More attractive to the gullible and vulnerable? And you get to style yourself as a ‘Doctor’ if your ego calls for it. Sigh.
- Comment by on Individualized Homeopathic Medicinal Products in the Treatment of Post-COVID-19 Conditions: A Double-Blind, Randomized, Placebo-Controlled, Feasibility Trial Friday 18 October 2024: 19:10 Arinca 200c I need it very urgent! Seems to be a real good remedy! didn´t know it before! And: “Please remember: if you make a claim in a comment, support it with evidence.”
- Comment by on Spain’s Health Minister denounces homeopathy Friday 18 October 2024: 15:10 That does help, Pete, thank you.
- Comment by on Spain’s Health Minister denounces homeopathy Friday 18 October 2024: 08:10 “A typical Whac-A-Mole machine consists of a waist-level cabinet with a play area and display screen, and a large, soft mallet. Five to eight holes in the play area top are filled with small, plastic, cartoonish moles, or other characters, which pop up at random. Points are scored by, as the name suggests, whacking each mole as it appears. The faster the reaction, the higher the score. … If the player does not strike a mole within a certain time or with enough force, it eventually sinks back into its hole with no score. …” — Wikipedia Hope that helps.
