A study into herbal medicine hit the headlines in the UK today. It was conducted by a researcher at the Peninsula Medical School, Dr Peter Carter. What his team did was trawl through the world literature to see what randomised clinical trials into “tailored” herbal treatments – this means the practice of a consultation with a herbalist who makes up a particular prescription of herbs for each individual patient. They only found three studies and only one of the three showed the herbal treatment to be better than the placebo. Now, I’ve no knowledge or experience of herbal medicine, and I’ve no axe to grind for or against (although I would declare that the belief that herbs are safe because they are natural is a silly belief which could kill you!).
I don’t have something to say about herbal medicine but what strikes me about this report are the conclusions and/or the way they are reported.
The headline to this piece on the BBC news website is
Tailored herbal medicine ‘futile’
I read the article thoroughly and can’t find the word “futile” anywhere. Is it in the original study? It’s not anywhere in the BBC’s own report. So does the study show herbal treatment is futile? Actually, it doesn’t. It shows that if you look for randomised controlled trials of herbal treatments against placebo you’ll find only three and only one of them shows statistical superiority of the herb vs the placebo. Well you certainly can’t conclude from that evidence that herbal treatments work but you can hardly claim that the fact that almost nobody has bothered to study the subject scientifically means that herbal treatment is “futile”! This study doesn’t tell you that.
This is either sloppy thinking or sloppy reporting. As doctors say “There’s a lot of it about!” Remember this?
Have you come across any other articles or studies which make claims way beyond what the original research actually shows?
Heroes Not Zombies 
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