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Foundations
How to read a claim, and why most natural-medicine claims are weaker than they sound
Most claims about natural medicine are not false so much as unsupported in the specific way they are stated. This section is about the machinery of that: how a trial is designed, what publication bias does to a body of literature, how a claim that sounds like it came from a study often came from an observational association instead, and how regression to the mean creates apparent cures out of nothing. Read these before deciding whether a remedy works.
5 entries
Dose, and why more is sometimes worse
Potassium lowers blood pressure and also raises it. The dose-response curve is not a slope.
guidePublication bias, and the herbal literature's positive-results problem
Positive trials get published. The absence of negative trials is not the presence of positive ones.
guideRegression to the mean: why you always feel better
The statistical trap that makes almost any remedy look effective, including the ones that do nothing.
guideThe placebo and nocebo effects, and why a real effect is not the same as a drug effect
The strongest argument for herbal medicine is also the one most often mistaken for evidence that the plant works.
guideWhat is actually in the bag
A trial used a characterised extract. The bag you buy is a different thing, and sometimes a different plant.
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