And why do alt med practitioners fail to understand it?
Homeopaths claim that such are not suitable for their quackery. However, since homeopathy claims to be medicine, then shouldn't it be evaluated the same way drugs are?
dave
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Homeopaths say "there's so many different cures for different people for the same illness, how can you compare a drug or a placebo to homeopath?"
Quire simple sunshine. You have 100 people with an illness and treat them with ANY homeopathic preparation you like. Then this will be compared against the 100 people just using, say, water (oh the irony) as a placebo. If homeopathy shows ANY effect above placebo it'll be quite obvious.
(Actually of course this has been done a few times with no benefit shown whatsoever, but homeopaths tend to overlook this).
JLI
Some practitioners (at least those believing in TCM) firmly believe that it is "unethical to test something that you know works". And if they have costumers enough they just don't have enough incentive to try and persuade the rest of us that their favourite alternative therapy works better than a placebo. Another theoretical possibility is that a study showing effect beyond placebo would lead to that altie treatment becoming a part of conventional medicine - thus depriving the practitioners of an income. History is full of examples of "absurd" ideas becoming mainstream after scientific documentation.
In all fairness some altie flavours are hard to double blind, because of the way the therapies are given. For instance an acupuncturist will know if he has given real or sham acupuncture - just as a surgeon knows if he has performed a full surgical procedure or just an incision in the skin. That is not an excuse that is useful for homeopaths. That being said there is no reason to believe that a high quality randomised single blinded study can't be performed. As part of such a study design you would have to include some kind of scripting preventing verbal cues as to whether real or sham therapy has been given. In such a study it is a good idea to check if the placebo was credible (For instance by asking the subjects afterwards if they believe they received placebo or treatment).
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They have had to find arguments to dismiss properly conducted trials because they show fairly conclusively that homeopathy is a placebo. If they admitted RCTs where a valid way to test homeopathy they would be admitting that homeopathy is fake
@ the witch. Nearly went to a party with the baby dressed as a pumpkin. So cute but in the end we decided to give ourselves a break.
Jordyn W
Ok so you would assign subjects numbers and use a random number generator to assign people to your study. Then another group of people would be given the treatments to administer to the subjects of your study, but they would not know what the treatments were. Only the unbiased outside party would know.
I thinks it's not that they don't understand it, I just think that it is easier to manipulate the study if you know whats going on.
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Nothing but special pleading and goal post moving. Anything to keep their delusions alive.
Oh, but Dave, you're forgetting that the water could be having an actual effect beyond placebo. You know, like the sham acupuncture where the needles don't penetrate the skin? Perhaps just pushing on the skin has an effect beyond placebo, therefore, acupuncture works!
Wait a minute...that's bullshit. Lost my mind for a second.