or: Why the phrase "He who heals is right 'is meaningless
" He who heals is right. " - "I am / my mother / my friend has helped it" - "Thousands of satisfied users confirm ..." - Who are these sentences to justify so-called "alternative medicines" have not yet heard. Can because "Thousands of satisfied users" is all wrong? Must be able to really explain it scientifically, as a means or a treatment works? The answers are: Yes and No - in that order. Let's start with the second question.
Must be able to explain how a drug works?
The short answer: no. A slightly longer answer would be: No, but it is helpful. To be scientifically determine whether a drug works or not, one must not necessarily know how it does. Basically, we clarify the effectiveness of particular drugs in clinical trials. This study is not how something works, but whether it acts. However, there are some note: Thus, for example, the study of it unconsciously be influenced by the patient knows he or she is treated. The knowledge of the practitioner can influence a study result. The selection of study participants, etc. All this leads to the sad conclusion that the majority cites clinical studies to incorrect results. A solution to this dilemma lends itself to a so-called meta-study. This examines the recent studies, classifying them according to various criteria of reliability, thus enabling the ideal case, a picture of the effectiveness. Cuts, for example, agent A in poorly blinded trials always well off, in blinded studies, however, reliably not much evidence that does not work the middle, but the study design. If there is an explanation of how something works, you will perhaps be more inclined to accept an effect as if there is no explanation for it. However, we can no matter how well inexplicable modes of action had already decided not to waive the clinical trial, because the human (or animal) just does not work under laboratory conditions.
helped me there - that's why it works.
Let me answer that statement with a question: "How do you know the agent X has helped them?" - "Well, I went poorly, I have taken mean X and a little later, I feel better. "Prove it that heals mean X?" No. It does not prove anything, because we do not know if they would have no means X does not also have gone better. We do not know if they have not done something else ... A cold lasts with Behnadlung a week and not seven days, which may have accelerated in fact the healing process
Let's look at a simple example, everyone knows the saying Let's go - I have not given me the trouble, the average to research cold duration -. even assuming that it takes an average of seven days until our immune system, the common cold virus so far brought under control, that there are no more symptoms I have now a veritable cold, I access funds X. And indeed: The next day I feel a little worse (the package insert of mean X says: It may come when applying to a so-called healing crisis) and then decays to the cold. So does middle X. Or not? Had I mean X is not taken, would be the cold probably in the same time have subsided - at least I do not know if it had not been so.
What shows us that: One can question whether an agent has healing effect only clarified by a comparison. We must clarify how the disease was with and without agents. It does, however, in practice a lot of difficulties, and that is the reason why clinical studies that do just that are often wrong. So not everyone is equal and cold is not the same cold. She likes the one without Behnadlung after a week of being away, the next five days and the next time it will take two weeks. Also, not everyone behaves the same. One remains in bed, the next goes to work on. And then there are the so-called placebo effect (but I write about another time ...).
But what we can hold in each case: the fact that it is you got better after taking mean X does not prove that this is also due to X resources. Even if at 100 or 1,000 people is the case, we do not know how it would go to these people, if you mean X instead unnoticed placebo was pushed. Briefly: anecdotes are no substitute for data.
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