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Wendy Moore concludes that Hahnemann was an excellent clinician who
was able to recognise theoretical misconceptions of his time. But why
should he be wrong about homeopathy? Is it because of the 19th century
conviction that chemical reactions are the only possible mechanism of
action? A specialist in the field of water-structure, Martin Chaplin
(http://www.lsbu.ac.uk/water/chaplin.html) can give us a number of
possible mechanisms of action for homeopathy.
Or is it because of an analysis by Shang, Egger et al in the Lancet (27
August 2005)? This meta-analysis failed to mention the 8 trials (out of
110) on which the negative conclusion was based. After revealing this
information (www.ispm.ch) it appeared that this was a highly heterogeneous
set of trials. A slightly different set of trials would have given the
opposite result. According to the Cochrane Collaboration conclusions
cannot be drawn in case of much heterogeneity. Furthermore, hypotheses
should be predefined. The predefined hypotheses of this analysis were that
low quality could explain the positive results of homeopathy, and
especially low quality in smaller trials. There were 21 (19%) good quality
homeopathy trials in this analysis (9 for conventional medicine). ‘Smaller
trial’ was not defined by Shang, but there were 14 homeopathy trials of
good quality with n<100, against 2 conventional trials.
Was Hahnemann really misguided?
Wendy Moore concludes that Hahnemann was an excellent clinician who
was able to recognise theoretical misconceptions of his time. But why
should he be wrong about homeopathy? Is it because of the 19th century
conviction that chemical reactions are the only possible mechanism of
action? A specialist in the field of water-structure, Martin Chaplin
(http://www.lsbu.ac.uk/water/chaplin.html) can give us a number of
possible mechanisms of action for homeopathy.
Or is it because of an analysis by Shang, Egger et al in the Lancet (27
August 2005)? This meta-analysis failed to mention the 8 trials (out of
110) on which the negative conclusion was based. After revealing this
information (www.ispm.ch) it appeared that this was a highly heterogeneous
set of trials. A slightly different set of trials would have given the
opposite result. According to the Cochrane Collaboration conclusions
cannot be drawn in case of much heterogeneity. Furthermore, hypotheses
should be predefined. The predefined hypotheses of this analysis were that
low quality could explain the positive results of homeopathy, and
especially low quality in smaller trials. There were 21 (19%) good quality
homeopathy trials in this analysis (9 for conventional medicine). ‘Smaller
trial’ was not defined by Shang, but there were 14 homeopathy trials of
good quality with n<100, against 2 conventional trials.
Competing interests:
homeopathic physician
Competing interests: No competing interests