Presently, the vociferous information network homeopathy think tank are as laugh out loud as ever in their latest opinion piece Homeopathy-A lively relic of the prescientific era1 with accusations of ‘Therapy procrastination, Conspiracy theories, and a David and Goliath effect...’
Also, a new low from the once robust Stanford researcher Ioannidis concluding ‘A null field like homeopathy can exhibit large effect sizes, high rates of favorable results, and high citation impact in the published scientific literature.’2
The Gartlehner et al.,3 conclusion that outcome reporting bias(ORB) in homeopathy ‘affects the validity of the body of evidence of homeopathic literature and may overestimate the true treatment effect’ literally breezed past the fact that ORB affects all disciplines of medical research4 - The Homeopathy Research Institute noted this study actually showed that in regard to scientific and ethical standards ‘homeopathy is out-performing conventional medicine, with lower levels of reporting bias.’5
Thankfully, the serious research group Gaertner et al., continue, scientifically, to enhance the homeopathy evidence base – their paper Bibliography of Homeopathic Intervention Studies (HOMIS) in Human Diseases6 outlining framework and introducing future projects is well worth a read.
And, robust systematic reviews published by reputable medical journals advance the scientific, transparent, unbiased, study of homeopathic medicine such as Hamre et al., who found significant positive effect well beyond placebo in their Efficacy of homoeopathic treatment: Systematic review of meta-analyses of randomised placebo-controlled homoeopathy trials for any indication7 and, evidentiary quality for efficacy of homoeopathy similar or higher than for 90% of other medical interventions.8
*Relton C, Cooper K, Viksveen P, Fibert P, Thomas K. 2017. Prevalence of homeopathy use by the general population worldwide: a systematic review. Homeopathy. May;106(2):69-78. Available from: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28552176/
Borkens Y, Endruscheit U, Lübbers CW. Homeopathy-A lively relic of the prescientific era. Wien Klin Wochenschr. 2023. Springer Nature. Mar 24:1–8. Available from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10036975/
Sigurdson MK, Sainani KL, Ioannidis JPA. 2023. Homeopathy can offer empirical insights on treatment effects in a null field. J Clin Epidemiol. Mar;155:64-72. Available from: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36736709/
Gartlehner et al., 2022. Assessing the magnitude of reporting bias in trials of homeopathy: a cross-sectional study and meta-analysis. BMJ Evid Based Med. Dec;27(6):345-351. Available from: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35292534/
Homeopathy Research Institute (HRI). HRI comment on BMJ article assessing reporting bias in trials of homeopathy. Kensington, London [Internet]. 2022 [cited 2022 Aug 20]. Available from: https://www.hri-research.org/2022/03/homeopathy-research-institute-hri-comment-on-bmj-article-assessing-reporting-bias-in-trials-of-homeopathy/
Gaertner K, Loef M, Frass M, Mittal R, Khurana A, Manchanda R, von Ammon K, Frei-Erb M, Walach H, Baumgartner S. 2023. Bibliography of Homeopathic Intervention Studies (HOMIS) in Human Diseases. J Integr Complement Med. Jan;29(1):14-21. Available from https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36190509/
Hamre HJ, Glockmann A, von Ammon K, Riley DS, Kiene H. 2023. Efficacy of homoeopathic treatment: Systematic review of meta-analyses of randomised placebo-controlled homoeopathy trials for any indication. Syst Rev. Oct 7;12(1):191. Available from: https://systematicreviewsjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13643-023-02313-2#Abs1
Howick et al., 2022. Most healthcare interventions tested in Cochrane Reviews are not effective according to high quality evidence: a systematic review and meta-analysis. J Clin Epidemiol. Aug;148:160-169. Available from: https://systematicreviewsjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13643-023-02313-2#Abs1