ReviewJournal of the Royal Society of Medicine2011
Exposing the evidence gap for complementary and alternative medicine to be integrated into science-based medicine.
Review in Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, 2011. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
16 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Barriers to the conduct and application of research in complementary and alternative medicine: a systematic review.BMC complementary and alternative medicine · 2017Pooled it
- Standardised mindfulness-based interventions in healthcare: an overview of systematic reviews and meta-analyses of RCTs.PloS one · 2015Pooled it
- Mindfulness and its efficacy for psychological and biological responses in women with breast cancer.Cancer medicine · 2017Trial
- Cost-utility and biological underpinnings of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) versus a psychoeducational programme (FibroQoL) for fibromyalgia: a 12-month randomised controlled trial (EUDAIMON study).BMC complementary and alternative medicine · 2016Trial
- How can meta-research be used to evaluate and improve the quality of research in the field of traditional, complementary, and integrative medicine?Integrative medicine research · 2024Article
- Open science practices in traditional, complementary, and integrative medicine research: A path to enhanced transparency and collaboration.Integrative medicine research · 2024Article
- Methodological proposals for developing trustworthy recommendations of integrative Chinese-Western medicine.Integrative medicine research · 2024Article
- The Brief History of Complementary, Alternative, and Integrative Medicine Terminology and the Development and Creation of an Operational Definition.Integrative medicine research · 2023Article
- Article
- Person- and Situation-Specific Factors in Discounting Science via Scientific Impotence Excuses.Europe's journal of psychology · 2021Article
- Pre-admission interventions to improve outcome after elective surgery-protocol for a systematic review.Systematic reviews · 2016Article
- Complementary and alternative medicine usage among cardiac patients: a descriptive study.BMC complementary and alternative medicine · 2015Article
- Reiki and related therapies in the dialysis ward: an evidence-based and ethical discussion to debate if these complementary and alternative medicines are welcomed or banned.BMC nephrology · 2013Review
- The effects of qigong on anxiety, depression, and psychological well-being: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Evidence-based complementary and alternative medicine : eCAM · 2013Article
- Acupuncture for 'frequent attenders' with medically unexplained symptoms.The British journal of general practice : the journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners · 2011Article
- An old herbal medicine with a potentially new therapeutic application in inflammatory bowel disease.International journal of clinical and experimental medicine · 2011Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
When people who advocate integrating conventional science-based medicine with complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) are confronted with the lack of evidence to support CAM they counter by calling for more research, diverting attention to the 'package of care' and its non-specific effects, and recommending unblinded 'pragmatic trials'. We explain why these responses cannot close the evidence gap, and focus on the risk of biased results from open (unblinded) pragmatic trials. These are clinical trials which compare a treatment with 'usual care' or no additional care. Their risk of bias has been overlooked because the components of outcome measurements have not been taken into account. The components of an outcome measure are the specific effect of the intervention and non-specific effects such as true placebo effects, cognitive measurement biases, and other effects (which tend to cancel out when similar groups are compared). Negative true placebo effects ('frustrebo effects') in the comparison group, and cognitive measurement biases in the comparison group and the experimental group make the non-specific effect look like a benefit for the intervention group. However, the clinical importance of these effects is often dismissed or ignored without justification. The bottom line is that, for results from open pragmatic trials to be trusted, research is required to measure the clinical importance of true placebo effects, cognitive bias effects, and specific effects of treatments.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.