Thanks for this. I have trouble with these statements: “the ASA will only accept peer-reviewed evidence of — wherever possible — robust, applicable, double-blinded, randomised, controlled trials as substantiation for any claims made.” “CNHC will conduct a review of evidence base for regulated therapies.” In the first case, “wherever possible” leaves the door open to poor studies. What is their expertise? Also, quacks have their own “peer-reviewed” magazines and, when one is a quack one’s peers are quacks; i.e., incompetent to perform proper review. Furthermore, their understanding of blinding and controls (etc.) is substandard. For example, I recently reviewed “controlled, blinded” study where the control was not at all like the treatment and the blinding was only with respect to the person who collected the subject’s reports and entered the data. The statement by CNHC is similarly dubious because it is a quack organization and if they don’t always submit to the ASA, they are going to allow a lot of quackery. But, hey, they already do. If the CNHC cracks down, they may lose a lot of business (by which I mean their subscribers). So, it’s great that they upheld Simon’s objections; but how long and well will they do that? It is nice to see some quackery being limited. Reply
I don’t think CNHC will be around long enough to ‘regulate’ anything. The maths go something like this: Total funding £800,000 to £900,000 – Now almost all spent. Annual running costs approx. £350,000. Quacks who parted with £30 to join = less than 1500 in first year Total annual income approx £45,000 No more funding after last £127,000 in April 2011. If they double their customer base in the next year they will STILL be going into the red to the tune of £250,000 PA No wonder the Department of Health don’t want the CNHC performance indicators released. Reply
This is a blatant self-plug on Zeno’s coat-tails, but I took a look at the recently released reports and documented my findings at http://moteprime.org/article.php?id=37 And I came to much the same conclusions as PC. Reply
JJM I was saying that there may well be some cases where RCTs are not the best way to determine whether or not a claim can be substantiated. However — particularly for quackery — the ASA has been pretty good at rejecting anything that isn’t robust, including studies only published in quack comics. Of course, many advertisers have tried to sway the ASA with poor quality evidence and OfQuack may well not go as far as the ASA might (but at least they seem to have consulted the ASA). Whether they go far enough is something we’ll need to look at once they start publishing anything. I would assume that, even if they don’t publish anything themselves, they will keep the DH informed so FOIA requests will be important. They are being watched closely and they know it. OfQuack got a mention on Monday at the House of Commons Science and Technology Select Sub-committee. After the less than impressive performances from the witnesses, I wonder if we could be in the situation where the Government continues to fund homeopathy on the NHS, but its ‘regulator’ doesn’t allow any claims for effectiveness to be made because there is no evidence for them? Reply
Not a problem Sean! The finances will be interesting, but the implications must have been considered by OfQuack? Surely? Well, maybe. Reply