Better studies would prevent bad medicine

The Editor,

There's a good reason why, in the age of science and reason, we live, on average, into our 80s. It's entirely due to modern medical science - vaccines, antibiotics, engineered sanitation systems and improved nutrition have all played a major role. Our increased life spans and quality of life have nothing to do with "alternative" or "natural" medicine. Yet positive testimonials, advertisements and media coverage abound.

Psychological science is producing mounting evidence that humans are wonderfully adept at self-deception and tend to believe what we want to believe, even when faced with poor evidence.

The surprising thing is, in the case of alternative medicines, we don't even have much evidence - for the most part they simply haven't been tested properly or have not been tested at all. While there's no shortage of favourable stories to support various alternative claims, anecdotes do not amount to science, and 100 anecdotes are no better than one.

What is required are double-blind controlled studies. "Double blind" simply means that neither the patients, nor the researchers, know which subjects receive the treatments (the experimental group) and which do not (the control group). This protocol cannot be used in all scientific studies, but when it can be it should be - it is the most powerful method for battling the self-deception and bias that's responsible for much of the faulty thinking that encourages medical pseudo-science.

Even the name "alternative medicine" is misleading as it can be argued that there's no such thing - there's medicine that works and medicine that doesn't, and science lets the evidence decide. Any so-called alternative medicine that demonstrated favourable results under a number of double-blind tests would be embraced by the medical establishment and instantly become "mainstream" medicine - the stuff that works.

What could be the harm? Well, are you concerned about the shortage of money in health care these days? I'm opposed to any tax dollars being diverted from genuine health care to the ever-growing unsupported quackery that is becoming so prevalent. A number of sound arguments that demonstrate the harm of medical wishful thinking can be found at Stephen Barrett's website, quackwatch.org, and the James Randi Educational Foundation's website, randi.org

Greg Payne
Delta

posted on 05/18/2005