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Dysfunction at Wikipedia on Homeopathic Medicine
In April, 2014, I had the happenstance to run into Jimmy Wales, the co founder of Wikipedia, on the streets of Vancouver. I was there to lecture to a group of medical professionals, while he was attending the TED talks. I expressed my appreciation to him for creating Wikipedia. I also then expressed concern to him about the "unencyclopedic" tone and information in Wikipedia's article on homeopathy. He then encouraged me to express my concerns in writing, and this is that response.
It may surprise and even shock most people to learn that, according to the Washington Post, the two most controversial subjects on Wikipedia in four leading languages (English, French, German, and Spanish) are the articles on "Jesus Christ" and "homeopathy."
Because I know that you want Wikipedia to be the best modern resource of reliable information, my intent in writing is to show you where Wikipedia is falling below your high standards, and in fact, Wikipedia's article on homeopathy is providing strongly biased, inaccurate information. This strong bias is a symptom of a deeper problem at Wikipedia in select articles on topics that challenge dominant medical and scientific worldviews. After reading the below body of scientific evidence on the subject of homeopathic medicine, I hope that we can engage in a dialogue that will help reduce the amount of misinformation that pervades certain subjects, such as homeopathy.
Evidence of the strong bias against homeopathy and against an objective encyclopedic tone is evident throughout the article. I will first focus on the second sentence of the first paragraph of the article and the 6 references which purport to substantiate these claims:
Homeopathy i/homipi/ (also spelled homoeopathy or homopathy; from the Greek hmoios "like " and pthos "suffering") is a system of alternative medicine created in 1796 by Samuel Hahnemann, based on his doctrine of like cures like, according to which a substance that causes the symptoms of a disease in healthy people will cure similar symptoms in sick people.[1] Homeopathy is a pseudoscience[2][3][4] and its remedies have been found to be no more effective than placebos.[5] [6]Hahnemann, Samuel (1833). The Homopathic Medical Doctrine, or "Organon of the Healing Art". Wakeman. pp. iii , 48 49 . "Observation, reflection, and experience have unfolded to me that the best and true method of cure is founded on the principle, similia similibus curentur. To cure in a mild, prompt, safe, and durable manner, it is necessary to choose in each case a medicine that will excite an affection similar ( ) to that against which it is employed." Translator: Charles H. Devrient, Esq.
^ Tuomela R (1987). "Chapter 4: Science, Protoscience, and Pseudoscience". In Pitt JC, Marcello P. Rational Changes in Science: Essays on Scientific Reasoning. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science 98 (Springer). pp. 83 101. doi:10.1007/978 94 009 3779 6_4 . ISBN 978 94 010 8181 8.
^ Smith K (2012). "Homeopathy is Unscientific and Unethical". Bioethics 26 (9): 508 512.
^ Baran GR, Kiana MF, Samuel SP (2014). "Chapter 2: Science, Pseudoscience, and Not Science: How Do They Differ?" . Healthcare and Biomedical Technology in the 21st Century (Springer). pp. 19 57. doi:10.1007/978 1 4614 8541 4_2 . ISBN 978 1 4614 8540 7. "within the traditional medical community it is considered to be quackery"
^ Shang A, Huwiler Mntener K, Nartey L, et al. (2005). "Are the clinical effects of homoeopathy placebo effects? Comparative study of placebo controlled trials of homoeopathy and allopathy". Lancet 366 (9487): 726 32. doi:10.1016/S0140 6736(05)67177 2 . PMID 16125589 .
Evidence Check 2: Homeopathy Science and Technology Committee , British House of Commons Science and Technology Committee, 22 February 2010, retrieved 2014 04 05
Is Homeopathy Really a "Pseudoscience"?
Wikipedia asserts that "Pseudoscience is a claim, belief or practice which is presented as scientific, but does not adhere to a valid scientific method, lacks supporting evidence or plausibility, cannot be reliably tested, or otherwise lacks scientific status."
The "editors" at Wikipedia have deemed homeopathy to be a "pseudoscience" even though randomized double blind and placebo controlled studies that have been published in many of the best medical journals in the world have shown efficacy of homeopathic treatment for many common and serious health problems (below is a partial list of such studies):
Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease: Frass, M, Dielacher, C, Linkesch, M, et al. Influence of potassium dichromate on tracheal secretions in critically ill patients, Chest, March,replica vans necklace, 2005;127:936 941. The journal, Chest, is the official publication of the American College of Chest Physicians.
Hayfever: Reilly D, Taylor M, McSharry C,replica van cleef and arpels four leaf clover necklace, et al., Is homoeopathy a placebo response? controlled trial of homoeopathic potency, with pollen in hayfever as model," Lancet, October 18, 1986, ii: 881 6.
Asthma: Reilly, D, Taylor, M, Beattie, N, et al.,van cleef and arpels necklaces replica, "Is Evidence for Homoeopathy Reproducible?" Lancet, December 10, 1994, 344:1601 6.
Fibromyalgia: Bell IR, Lewis II DA, Brooks AJ, et al. Improved clinical status in fibromyalgia patients treated with individualized homeopathic remedies versus placebo, Rheumatology. 2004:1111 5. This journal is the official journal of the British Society of Rheumatology. Homeopathic treatment of children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder: a randomised, double blind, placebo controlled crossover trial. Eur J Pediatr., July 27,2005,164:758 767.
Jimmy, can you name ONE other system of "pseudoscience" that has a similar body of randomized, double blind, and placebo controlled clinical trials published in high impact medical journals showing efficacy of treatment?
It is more than a tad ironic that this first paragraph in the Wikipedia article on homeopathy references only one article that was published in a peer review medical journal. This one article by Shang, et al. has been thoroughly discredited in an article written by Ldtke and Rutten that was published in a leading "high impact" journal that specializes in evaluating clinical research. The Shang meta analysis is highlighted on Wikipedia without reference to any critique of it. The fact that there is no hint of any problems in the Shang review, let alone a reference to the Ldtke and Rutten article that provided evidence of bias, is itself a cause for concern.
The Shang article is also the primary reference used by the widely ridiculed "Evidence Check" reports issued by the Science and Technology Committee of the British House of Commons, which also conveniently omits reference to the severe limitations of this one review of research. Further, the "Evidence Check" was signed off by just three of the 15 members of the original committee, never discussed or endorsed by the whole UK Parliament, and had its recommendations ignored by the UK Department of Health. Egger who is a well known skeptic of homeopathy and who wrote to the Lancet that his hypothesis before conducting the review was that homeopathy was only a placebo effect. Readers were never informed of this bias.
The meta analysis by Shang evaluated and compared 110 placebo controlled trials testing homeopathic medicines with 110 testing conventional drugs, finding 21 homeopathy trials (19%) but only nine (8%) conventional medicine trials were of "higher quality." Ldtke and Rutten found that a positive outcome for homeopathy would have resulted if Shang had simply compared these high quality trials against each other. However, with some clever statistical footwork, Shang chose to limit the high quality trials to only 8 homeopathic and 6 conventional medical trials, a result that led to a "negative" outcome for homeopathy. Ldtke and Rutten determined this review as biased for its "arbitrarily defined one subset of eight trials" and they deemed the entire review as "falsely negative."
By reducing the number of studies, Shang created convoluted logic that enabled his team to avoid evaluation of ANY of the above high quality studies that were all published in respected medical journals. Further, 7 of 8 homeopathic studies only tested one homeopathic medicine for everyone with the similar disease even though one of the primary tenets of homeopathy requires individualization of treatment. Many other extremely scathing critiques of the Shang research were published in the Lancet shortly after publication, including the exclusion of one high quality homeopathic study due to the questionable assertion that the researchers could not find a study in all of conventional medical research that treated patients with polyarthritis (arthritis that involves five or more joints).
Skeptics typically assert that the above high quality studies published in high impact medical journals are simply "cherry picking" the positive studies, and then, they begin cherry picking studies that had negative results. However,replica van cleef & arpels necklace alhambra, skeptics of homeopathy fail to differentiate good, sound scientific investigations that are respectful of the homeopathic method and those that are not. Just because a study was conducted with a randomized double blind and placebo controlled method does NOT mean that the study gave the appropriate homeopathic medicine for each patient or even each group of patients. This ignorance is akin to someone saying that antibiotics are ineffective for "infections" without differentiating between bacterial infections, viral infections, and fungal infections. Ironically, skeptics of homeopathy consistently show a very sloppy attitude about scientific investigations.
In April, 2014, I had the happenstance to run into Jimmy Wales, the co founder of Wikipedia, on the streets of Vancouver. I was there to lecture to a group of medical professionals, while he was attending the TED talks. I expressed my appreciation to him for creating Wikipedia. I also then expressed concern to him about the "unencyclopedic" tone and information in Wikipedia's article on homeopathy. He then encouraged me to express my concerns in writing, and this is that response.
It may surprise and even shock most people to learn that, according to the Washington Post, the two most controversial subjects on Wikipedia in four leading languages (English, French, German, and Spanish) are the articles on "Jesus Christ" and "homeopathy."
Because I know that you want Wikipedia to be the best modern resource of reliable information, my intent in writing is to show you where Wikipedia is falling below your high standards, and in fact, Wikipedia's article on homeopathy is providing strongly biased, inaccurate information. This strong bias is a symptom of a deeper problem at Wikipedia in select articles on topics that challenge dominant medical and scientific worldviews. After reading the below body of scientific evidence on the subject of homeopathic medicine, I hope that we can engage in a dialogue that will help reduce the amount of misinformation that pervades certain subjects, such as homeopathy.
Evidence of the strong bias against homeopathy and against an objective encyclopedic tone is evident throughout the article. I will first focus on the second sentence of the first paragraph of the article and the 6 references which purport to substantiate these claims:
Homeopathy i/homipi/ (also spelled homoeopathy or homopathy; from the Greek hmoios "like " and pthos "suffering") is a system of alternative medicine created in 1796 by Samuel Hahnemann, based on his doctrine of like cures like, according to which a substance that causes the symptoms of a disease in healthy people will cure similar symptoms in sick people.[1] Homeopathy is a pseudoscience[2][3][4] and its remedies have been found to be no more effective than placebos.[5] [6]Hahnemann, Samuel (1833). The Homopathic Medical Doctrine, or "Organon of the Healing Art". Wakeman. pp. iii , 48 49 . "Observation, reflection, and experience have unfolded to me that the best and true method of cure is founded on the principle, similia similibus curentur. To cure in a mild, prompt, safe, and durable manner, it is necessary to choose in each case a medicine that will excite an affection similar ( ) to that against which it is employed." Translator: Charles H. Devrient, Esq.
^ Tuomela R (1987). "Chapter 4: Science, Protoscience, and Pseudoscience". In Pitt JC, Marcello P. Rational Changes in Science: Essays on Scientific Reasoning. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science 98 (Springer). pp. 83 101. doi:10.1007/978 94 009 3779 6_4 . ISBN 978 94 010 8181 8.
^ Smith K (2012). "Homeopathy is Unscientific and Unethical". Bioethics 26 (9): 508 512.
^ Baran GR, Kiana MF, Samuel SP (2014). "Chapter 2: Science, Pseudoscience, and Not Science: How Do They Differ?" . Healthcare and Biomedical Technology in the 21st Century (Springer). pp. 19 57. doi:10.1007/978 1 4614 8541 4_2 . ISBN 978 1 4614 8540 7. "within the traditional medical community it is considered to be quackery"
^ Shang A, Huwiler Mntener K, Nartey L, et al. (2005). "Are the clinical effects of homoeopathy placebo effects? Comparative study of placebo controlled trials of homoeopathy and allopathy". Lancet 366 (9487): 726 32. doi:10.1016/S0140 6736(05)67177 2 . PMID 16125589 .
Evidence Check 2: Homeopathy Science and Technology Committee , British House of Commons Science and Technology Committee, 22 February 2010, retrieved 2014 04 05
Is Homeopathy Really a "Pseudoscience"?
Wikipedia asserts that "Pseudoscience is a claim, belief or practice which is presented as scientific, but does not adhere to a valid scientific method, lacks supporting evidence or plausibility, cannot be reliably tested, or otherwise lacks scientific status."
The "editors" at Wikipedia have deemed homeopathy to be a "pseudoscience" even though randomized double blind and placebo controlled studies that have been published in many of the best medical journals in the world have shown efficacy of homeopathic treatment for many common and serious health problems (below is a partial list of such studies):
Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease: Frass, M, Dielacher, C, Linkesch, M, et al. Influence of potassium dichromate on tracheal secretions in critically ill patients, Chest, March,replica vans necklace, 2005;127:936 941. The journal, Chest, is the official publication of the American College of Chest Physicians.
Hayfever: Reilly D, Taylor M, McSharry C,replica van cleef and arpels four leaf clover necklace, et al., Is homoeopathy a placebo response? controlled trial of homoeopathic potency, with pollen in hayfever as model," Lancet, October 18, 1986, ii: 881 6.
Asthma: Reilly, D, Taylor, M, Beattie, N, et al.,van cleef and arpels necklaces replica, "Is Evidence for Homoeopathy Reproducible?" Lancet, December 10, 1994, 344:1601 6.
Fibromyalgia: Bell IR, Lewis II DA, Brooks AJ, et al. Improved clinical status in fibromyalgia patients treated with individualized homeopathic remedies versus placebo, Rheumatology. 2004:1111 5. This journal is the official journal of the British Society of Rheumatology. Homeopathic treatment of children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder: a randomised, double blind, placebo controlled crossover trial. Eur J Pediatr., July 27,2005,164:758 767.
Jimmy, can you name ONE other system of "pseudoscience" that has a similar body of randomized, double blind, and placebo controlled clinical trials published in high impact medical journals showing efficacy of treatment?
It is more than a tad ironic that this first paragraph in the Wikipedia article on homeopathy references only one article that was published in a peer review medical journal. This one article by Shang, et al. has been thoroughly discredited in an article written by Ldtke and Rutten that was published in a leading "high impact" journal that specializes in evaluating clinical research. The Shang meta analysis is highlighted on Wikipedia without reference to any critique of it. The fact that there is no hint of any problems in the Shang review, let alone a reference to the Ldtke and Rutten article that provided evidence of bias, is itself a cause for concern.
The Shang article is also the primary reference used by the widely ridiculed "Evidence Check" reports issued by the Science and Technology Committee of the British House of Commons, which also conveniently omits reference to the severe limitations of this one review of research. Further, the "Evidence Check" was signed off by just three of the 15 members of the original committee, never discussed or endorsed by the whole UK Parliament, and had its recommendations ignored by the UK Department of Health. Egger who is a well known skeptic of homeopathy and who wrote to the Lancet that his hypothesis before conducting the review was that homeopathy was only a placebo effect. Readers were never informed of this bias.
The meta analysis by Shang evaluated and compared 110 placebo controlled trials testing homeopathic medicines with 110 testing conventional drugs, finding 21 homeopathy trials (19%) but only nine (8%) conventional medicine trials were of "higher quality." Ldtke and Rutten found that a positive outcome for homeopathy would have resulted if Shang had simply compared these high quality trials against each other. However, with some clever statistical footwork, Shang chose to limit the high quality trials to only 8 homeopathic and 6 conventional medical trials, a result that led to a "negative" outcome for homeopathy. Ldtke and Rutten determined this review as biased for its "arbitrarily defined one subset of eight trials" and they deemed the entire review as "falsely negative."
By reducing the number of studies, Shang created convoluted logic that enabled his team to avoid evaluation of ANY of the above high quality studies that were all published in respected medical journals. Further, 7 of 8 homeopathic studies only tested one homeopathic medicine for everyone with the similar disease even though one of the primary tenets of homeopathy requires individualization of treatment. Many other extremely scathing critiques of the Shang research were published in the Lancet shortly after publication, including the exclusion of one high quality homeopathic study due to the questionable assertion that the researchers could not find a study in all of conventional medical research that treated patients with polyarthritis (arthritis that involves five or more joints).
Skeptics typically assert that the above high quality studies published in high impact medical journals are simply "cherry picking" the positive studies, and then, they begin cherry picking studies that had negative results. However,replica van cleef & arpels necklace alhambra, skeptics of homeopathy fail to differentiate good, sound scientific investigations that are respectful of the homeopathic method and those that are not. Just because a study was conducted with a randomized double blind and placebo controlled method does NOT mean that the study gave the appropriate homeopathic medicine for each patient or even each group of patients. This ignorance is akin to someone saying that antibiotics are ineffective for "infections" without differentiating between bacterial infections, viral infections, and fungal infections. Ironically, skeptics of homeopathy consistently show a very sloppy attitude about scientific investigations.
The Wall