Homoeopathy’s critics present contrary and paradoxical views

Dear Editor,

In their article published in the June 2008 issue of FACT (Volume 13, issue 2), Chanda and Furnham demonstrate a contrary and ultimately perverse view of research into homoeopathy.¹ In particular, their conclusions are unjustified and misleading.

Their article is a review of some of the published clinical outcome studies (and other non-randomised research) in homoeopathy, with a mostly constructive commentary on the merits and limitations of such investigation. As they acknowledge, a key virtue of outcome studies – despite their universally positive findings – is that they can help to ‘form hypotheses that may be tested by experimental studies’. However, they also manage to confuse the matter by referring to their tabulated data in terms of the ‘efficacy’ of homoeopathy. Conclusions about efficacy can, of course, arise only from the results of randomised double-blind trials, which was not the subject of this review.

It is bizarre therefore that Chanda and Furnham choose to base their concluding comments about a perceived absence of clinical trial evidence in homoeopathy on the opinions of a web-based commentary on ‘bogus therapies’!² They view the apparent mismatch between the results of clinical trials and outcome studies as a ‘paradox at the heart of the literature on the effectiveness of homoeopathy’. What the authors fail to clarify, however, is that nearly half of the clinical trials literature has actually reported statistically significant effects of homoeopathy.³ The other half is mostly non-conclusive.

The proper conclusion from the total research evidence to date is that more clinical trials are required to clarify where homoeopathy is clinically effective and where it isn’t, and that additional outcome studies are a valuable way to inform such research. Chanda’s and Furnham’s ultimate conclusion, that ‘no further work of this kind [patient-reported outcome studies] needs to be done’ is absurd – it flies in the face of the useful outcome studies they have reviewed and the clinical trial evidence they have misrepresented so superficially.

It is to be hoped that the conclusions of Part II of their review, in this issue of FACT (157–67), will salvage the authors’ credibility in following logical argument based on a full and objective presentation of the facts.

E-mail: rmathie@trusthomeopathy.org

References

1. Chanda P, Furnham A. Does homoeopathy work? Part I: A review of studies on patient and practitioner reports. Focus Altern Complement Ther 2008; 13: 82–9.
2. Beyerstein BL. Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. Why bogus therapies seem to work. [online document] <http://www.csicop.org/si/9709/beyer.html>, accessed June 12, 2008;
3. The Research Evidence Base for Homeopathy. Faculty of Homeopathy. [online document] <http://www.trusthomeopathy.org/pdf/Summaryofresearchevidence.pdf>, accessed June 12, 2008;