The effectiveness of homeopathy As a treatment against any disease, it is usually based on “amimefunctionism”. If it has worked for someone or he thinks it has, he will proclaim it to the four winds. If it hasn’t worked on him, he won’t say anything and we’ll never know. With the clinical trials the same thing happens. If only those with the most positive results are published, it will give the wrong idea of what this treatment entails. And that’s what actually seems to be happening, according to a study just published in BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine in which it is shown that only the clinical trials that are most suitable for their results are registered.
Although there are still pharmacies that sell it and many people consider it a medical device, homeopathic treatments are not drugs. Therefore, they do not require going through many of the strict requirements that medications must meet. It may look like a punishment to the homeopathy, but in reality it is quite a gift, since those who investigate about it can register or publish your clinical trials only when they get the desired data.
This is a phenomenon known as reporting bias and may be causing the data to be overestimated. homeopathy results. But to what extent are the results skewed? We will see what is concluded in this study, but not without briefly recalling the history of homeopathy.
The false superpowers of homeopathy
Homeopathy was developed in the 19th century by the German physician Samuel Hahnemanwho was based on the premise that similar cures similar. The doctor came to this conclusion after trying a little cinchona, a tree bark that was used at that time to treat malaria.
He immediately experienced typical malaria symptoms, such as fever, chills, or joint pain. He was simply suffering an adverse reaction to that natural remedy, but he thought that, in reality, what was happening was that the cinchona cured malaria by producing similar symptoms. He believed that to avoid these symptoms, the ideal would be dilute a lot the compound in question. So much so that finally there would only be water left. But he had a so-called ace up his sleeve: the water memory. According to him, this precious liquid is capable of remember the effects of what has been diluted in it. All that was needed was a little vibration for this, which he achieved by hitting the dissolution with a Bible.
If we think about all that coldly, it didn’t make any sense. And he still doesn’t have it, in fact. However, two centuries later, homeopathy still has many followers, despite all the Scientific advances that have occurred in these times. In pharmacology, these advances have been presented based on clinical studies and trials. Homeopathy has not been less. There are also many published studies on it. In fact, their defenders cling to them to defend their foundation tooth and nail, despite the multitude of evidence that denies their effectiveness. But reading a few studies is not enough. In science we should not focus on just one tree. To understand a concept you have to take a look at the whole forest. And in the forest of homeopathy, more trees have been felled than necessary.
The advantages of registering and publishing only what is convenient
To carry out this study, its authors, from the Danube University (Austria), analyzed the records of clinical trials on homeopathy until April 2019.
Its objective was to check how many of those that had been started had already been registered and also how many of all those had been published. Let’s not forget that registering a clinical trial is not the same as publishing its results. With drugs everything is very regulatedbut with homeopathy it is perfectly possible to publish without registering the clinical trial, or register it but not publish any study.
When analyzing the situation of clinical trials on homeopathy, they saw that since 2002 “almost the 38% of homeopathy trials Registered trials remain unpublished, while more than half (53%) of published randomized controlled trials have not been registered. In total, “nearly a third (30%) of the randomized controlled trials published during the last 5 years have not been registered”.
A randomized controlled trial it is one in which the treatment in question is offered to only half of the participants, while the other half receive nothing or are given a placebo. Thus, you can control if there really is a benefit with respect to someone who does not take anything. It is considered one of the most reliable experimental designs in science and that is why the figures in this study are striking.
Furthermore, as explained to hypertextual its main author, Gerald Gartlehner, “unregistered trials reported more positive results than registered trials”. Therefore, it appears that “many unregistered trials were probably never published because they did not show the desired effects”. That is, some tests they were not registeredperhaps because they were not designed correctly, but their results were published because they were positive and convenient for the researchers.
In closing, it is noteworthy that “homeopathy trials were more likely to be registered after they had started (retrospectively) that before they had started (prospective registration)”. And as if that were not enough, “a quarter of the published primary results were not the same as those originally recorded.”
All this leads to a overestimation of the efficacy of homeopathy. and also to one lack of ethics by the journals that publish this type of study. For many people it is not surprising, but for others perhaps this study will be an eye opener.