The work has a high risk of distortion effects, “the actual effect of homeopathic remedies could therefore be overestimated,” write researchers led by Gerald Gartlehner from Danube University Krems in the journal “BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine”.
Many unregistered studies
For the scientists, the high proportion of unregistered or post-registered homeopathy studies they found suggests that their publication tends to depend on the results. You call such distorting effects on the study situation “reporting bias”. “One can assume that many studies were not published because they did not show the desired result,” says Gartlehner.
Published homeopathy studies would likely only report the attractive results and therefore provide a skewed picture of homeopathy’s effectiveness. “As a result, the actual treatment effect of homeopathic remedies can be overestimated,” write the researchers at Danube University Krems in their work.
Source: Nachrichten
