A recently published paper, with the outcomes of a collaborative European Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT) undertaken in Germany and Ukraine, is making waves amongst jubilant homeopaths as yet another evidence supporting their long-held belief in the clinical effectiveness of homeopathy. Naturally, this 2016 paper in the Journal Global Pediatric Health by van Haselen et al. piqued my curiosity and I dove in to see what the hullabaloo was all about.
Ada Ao, a cancer and stem cell biologist, and aspiring science communicator writing for Nature Education‘s SciTable blog, has an interesting post put up today. She cautions that it is a tirade (according to her, of course; pffft!) against a recently-published PLoS Medicine article by Amélie Yavchitz and associates, titled “Misrepresentation of randomized controlled trials in press releases and news coverage: a cohort study” (Yavchitz et al., PLoS Med., 9(9):e1001308, 2012).
A Nature News item caught my attention this morning. It is a report by Janelle Weaver, titled: Animal studies paint misleading picture, a title which has rather unfortunate connotations, and which, in all probability, will become a rallying point for the committed anti-animal experimentation folks. The report is based on a paper in PLoS Biology, published today, by Sena et al., titled: Publication Bias in Reports of Animal Stroke Studies Leads to Major Overstatement of Efficacy. I draw your attention to the glaring discrepancy right there – this meta-analytical study focuses on acute ischemic stroke, a small subset of the entire spectrum of research that utilizes animals; yet, Ms. Weaver saw it fit to use a title for her report that tars animal experimentation with an egregiously broad brush.
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