Om du i den så kallade ”medicinska” marijuanans tidevarv inte läst boken Snake Oil Science av R. Baker Bausell så är det dags att göra det, inte minst för dess avslöjande av vetenskaplig forskning, särskilt av alternativ medicin.

Kapitlet "What High-Quality Trials Reveal About CAM” (Complementary and Alternative Medicine) är särskilt intressant.

Bausell skriver där bland annat att Some types of bias are obvious.  Whenever people study something that can be sold for a profit, there is a very real possibility of bias creeping into their research.  Thus it probably won't shock anyone to learn that drug research paid for by pharmaceutical companies produces more positive results - that is, greater benefits and fewer side effects - than does drug research paid for by public funds.  Nor would anyone be too surprised to learn that research conducted by advocates of a therapy tends to produce more positive results than trials conducted by more disinterested parties.

Sometimes research bias can be quite subtle and involve nothing more than putting a positive spin upon one's findings...Spinning one's results just beyond the limits of credibility, on the other hand, is disconcertingly common....There are other sources of bias, however, that involve neither data fabrications nor positive spins.  These, too, conspire to produce false positive results - which means that within the welter of published research there is a disproportionate percentage of positive findings breathlessly reporting that this or that CAM (or conventional) therapy is the greatest thing since sliced bread.

Snake Oil Science

Boken kan beställas bland annat genom adlibris