Why Current Statistics of Complementary Alternative Medicine Clinical Trials is Invalid

• Main Authors: Maurizio Pandolfi, Giulia Carreras
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2018-06-01
• Series: Journal of Clinical Medicine
• Subjects: complementary alternative medicine (CAM); p-value; Bayesian statistics; scientific plausibility
• Online Access: http://www.mdpi.com/2077-0383/7/6/138

It is not sufficiently known that frequentist statistics cannot provide direct information on the probability that the research hypothesis tested is correct. The error resulting from this misunderstanding is compounded when the hypotheses under scrutiny have precarious scientific bases, which, generally, those of complementary alternative medicine (CAM) are. In such cases, it is mandatory to use inferential statistics, considering the prior probability that the hypothesis tested is true, such as the Bayesian statistics. The authors show that, under such circumstances, no real statistical significance can be achieved in CAM clinical trials. In this respect, CAM trials involving human material are also hardly defensible from an ethical viewpoint.