Results for: "homeopathy and evidence-based medicine"

Of SBM and EBM Redux. Part IV, Continued: More Cochrane and a little Bayes

OK, I admit that I pulled a fast one. I never finished the last post as promised, so here it is. Cochrane Continued In the last post I alluded to the 2006 Cochrane Laetrile review, the conclusion of which was: This systematic review has clearly identified the need for randomised or controlled clinical trials assessing the effectiveness of Laetrile or amygdalin for...

/ March 4, 2011

Of SBM and EBM Redux. Part IV: More Cochrane and a little Bayes

NB: This is a partial posting; I was up all night ‘on-call’ and too tired to continue. I’ll post the rest of the essay later… Review This is the fourth and final part of a series-within-a-series* inspired by statistician Steve Simon. Professor Simon had challenged the view, held by several bloggers here at SBM, that Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM) has been mostly inadequate...

/ February 4, 2011

Of SBM and EBM Redux. Part III: Parapsychology is the Role Model for “CAM” Research

This is the third post in this series*; please see Part II for a review. Part II offered several arguments against the assertion that it is a good idea to perform efficacy trials of medical claims that have been refuted by basic science or by other, pre-trial evidence. This post will add to those arguments, continuing to identify the inadequacies of the...

/ January 7, 2011

Of SBM and EBM Redux. Part II: Is it a Good Idea to test Highly Implausible Health Claims?

Review This is the second post in a series* prompted by an essay by statistician Stephen Simon, who argued that Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM) is not lacking in the ways that we at Science-Based Medicine have argued. David Gorski responded here, and Prof. Simon responded to Dr. Gorski here. Between that response and the comments following Dr. Gorski’s post it became clear to...

/ December 10, 2010

Of SBM and EBM Redux. Part I: Does EBM Undervalue Basic Science and Overvalue RCTs?

During the most recent kerfuffle about whether or not Evidence-Based Medicine can legitimately claim to be science-based medicine, it became clear to me that a whole, new round of discussion and documentation is necessary. This is frustrating because I’ve already done it several times, most recently less than a year ago. Moreover, I’ve provided a table of links to the whole series...

/ November 12, 2010

Evidence-Based Medicine, Human Studies Ethics, and the ‘Gonzalez Regimen’: a Disappointing Editorial in the Journal of Clinical Oncology Part 2

NB: If you haven’t yet read Part 1 of this blog, please do so now; Part 2 will not summarize it. … At the end of Part 1, I wrote: We do not need formal statistics or a new, randomized trial with a larger sample size to justify dismissing the Gonzalez regimen. In his editorial for the JCO, Mark Levine made a...

/ September 20, 2010

Evidence-Based Medicine, Human Studies Ethics, and the ‘Gonzalez Regimen’: a Disappointing Editorial in the Journal of Clinical Oncology Part 1

Background: the distinction between EBM and SBM An important theme on the Science-Based Medicine blog, and the very reason for its name, has been its emphasis on examining all the evidence—not merely the results of clinical trials—for various claims, particularly for those that are implausible. We’ve discussed the distinction between Science-Based Medicine (SBM) and the more limited Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM) several times,...

/ September 17, 2010

H. Pylori, Plausibility, and Greek Tragedy: the Quirky Case of Dr. John Lykoudis

Mark Crislip is on vacation, but through an arduous series of shakings and succussions (beating his head against the wall?) we have channeled part of his essence: This post mostly concerns itself with infectious diseases, thanks to several recent posts on SBM that discussed the plausibility of health claims† and that touched on the recent discovery that most peptic ulcer disease (PUD)...

/ March 26, 2010

The 2nd Yale Research Symposium on Complementary and Integrative Medicine. Part II

The Main Event: Novella vs. Katz The remainder of the Symposium comprised two panels. The first was what I had come to see: a Moderated Discussion on Evidence and Plausibility in the Context of CAM Research and Clinical Practice, featuring our Founder, Steve Novella, who is also Assistant Professor of Neurology at Yale; and David Katz, the speaker who had borne the...

/ March 9, 2010

Yes, Jacqueline: EBM ought to be Synonymous with SBM

“Ridiculing RCTs and EBM” Last week Val Jones posted a short piece on her BetterHealth blog in which she expressed her appreciation for a well-known spoof that had appeared in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) in 2003: Parachute use to prevent death and major trauma related to gravitational challenge: systematic review of randomised controlled trials Dr. Val included the spoof’s abstract in her...

/ February 5, 2010