With thanks to the One Click Group 2.2.12 and the Financial Times‘ Science Editor, Clive Cookson:

UK research is plagued with misconduct, according to a survey of 2,700 scientists by the British Medical Journal. It found that 13 per cent had first-hand knowledge of UK-based researchers deliberately altering or fabricating data, while 6 per cent were aware of misconduct that had not been properly investigated.

The British Medical Journal released the results at a conference in London where experts pushed for stronger action to tackle what they said was a problem being ignored by many universities, hospitals and other scientific institutions. Fiona Godlee, BMJ editor, said the survey showed “that there is a substantial number of cases and that UK institutions are failing to investigate adequately, if at all. “The BMJ has been told of junior academics being advised to keep concerns to themselves to protect their careers, being bullied into not publishing their findings, or having their contracts terminated when they spoke out,” she added.

Speaker after speaker at the meeting said Britain should not be complacent just because the most publicised cases of fraud in recent years had taken place in other countries. “The British public do not know what is going on,” said Dr Godlee. “People need to realise that misconduct is affecting patients every day and it is a misappropriation of public funds.”

Journal editors were often the first to come across cases of misconduct, when they spotted inconsistencies in scientific or medical papers, said Elizabeth Wager, chair of the Committee on Publication Ethics, a forum for editors and publishers. “But they are not the right people to investigate misconduct,” she said. “That responsibility lies with the researchers’ institutions.”

“This BMJ survey chimes with our experience from COPE where we see many cases of institutions not co-operating with journals and failing to investigate research misconduct properly,” Dr Wager added.

Ginny Barbour, a senior editor with the PLoS group of journals, said one-third of authors could not find the original data to back up figures in scientific papers when these were questioned.

Unlike some other countries, the UK has no official national body to deal with research misconduct. The closest equivalent is the UK Research Integrity Office, established in 2006 as a voluntary body funded mainly by universities “UK RIO is a fairly modest organisation and we have had a bumpy ride [getting established] because some players wanted us to die a death,” said vice-chair Mike Farthing, vice-chancellor of Sussex University. But he hoped for more institutional support to expand its activities in future.

See http://avilian.co.uk/2012/01/reporting-of-research-ghosts-in-the-machine/

See Why Most Published Research Findings Are False Ioannidis JPA (2005) Why Most Published Research Findings Are False. PLoS Med 2(8): e124. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124 ‘… There is increasing concern that most current published research findings are false. The probability that a research claim is true may depend on study power and bias, the number of other studies on the same question, and, importantly, the ratio of true to no relationships among the relationships probed in each scientific field. In this framework, a research finding is less likely to be true when the studies conducted in a field are smaller; when effect sizes are smaller; when there is a greater number and lesser preselection of tested relationships; where there is greater flexibility in designs, definitions, outcomes, and analytical modes; when there is greater financial and other interest and prejudice; and when more teams are involved in a scientific field in chase of statistical significance. Simulations show that for most study designs and settings, it is more likely for a research claim to be false than true. Moreover, for many current scientific fields, claimed research findings may often be simply accurate measures of the prevailing bias. In this essay, I discuss the implications of these problems for the conduct and interpretation of research…’

With thank to Tim Adams and the Observer 5.2.12:

It is not often, in liberal north London, that you come face to face with a heretic, but Rupert Sheldrake has worn that mantle, pretty cheerfully, for 30 years now. Sitting in his book-lined study, overlooking Hampstead Heath, he appears a highly unlikely candidate for apostasy; he seems more like the Cambridge biochemistry don he once was, one of the brightest Darwinians of his generation, winner of the university botany prize, researcher at the Royal Society, Harvard scholar and fellow of Clare College.

Rupert Sheldrake’s web site is here: http://www.sheldrake.org/B&R/booksusa/

All that, though, was before he was cast out into the wilderness. Sheldrake’s untouchable status was conferred one morning in 1981 when, a couple of months after the publication of his first book, A New Science of Life, he woke up to read an editorial in the journal Nature, which announced to all right-thinking men and women that his was a “book for burning” and that Sheldrake was to be “condemned in exactly the language that the pope used to condemn Galileo, and for the same reason. It is heresy”.

For a pariah, Sheldrake is particularly affable. But still, looking back at that moment, he still betrays a certain sense of shock. “It was,” he says, “exactly like a papal excommunication. From that moment on, I became a very dangerous person to know for scientists.” That opinion has hardened over the years, as Sheldrake has continued to operate at the margins of his discipline, looking for phenomena that “conventional, materialist science” cannot explain and arguing for a more open-minded approach to scientific inquiry.

His new book, The Science Delusion, is a summation of this thinking, an attempt to address what he sees as the limitations and hubris of contemporary scientific thought. In particular, he takes aim at the “scientific dogmatism” that sets itself up as gospel. The chapters take some of the stonier commandments of contemporary science and make them into questions: “Are the laws of nature fixed?”; “Is matter unconscious?”; “Is nature purposeless?” “Are minds confined to brains?”

Sheldrake is a brilliant polemicist if nothing else and he skilfully marshals all the current thinking that undermines these tenets – from apparent telepathy in animals, to crystals having to “learn” how to grow, to some of the more fantastical notions of theoretical physics. On the morning I meet him, his book is sitting near the top of the science bestseller list on Amazon. It has also, unlike most of his previous work – Seven Experiments That Could Change the World, Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home – been generally reviewed respectfully. Perhaps it is something in the air.

One of the habits in nature that Sheldrake is interested in is polarity, and if he has a natural nemesis then it is Richard Dawkins, arch materialist and former professor of public understanding of science at Oxford. The title of his book seems to take direct aim at Dawkins’s The God Delusion. Was that, I wonder, his express intention in writing it?

“Slightly,” he suggests. But the title was really his publisher’s idea. “It is dealing with a much bigger issue. But Richard Dawkins is a symptom of the dogmatism of science. He crystallises that approach in the public mind, so to that extent, yes, it is a pointed title.”

Sheldrake is the same age as Dawkins – 70 this year – and though their careers began in an almost identical biochemical place, they could hardly have ended up further apart. If Sheldrake’s ideas could be boiled down to a sentence, you might borrow one from Hamlet: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Richard, than are dreamt of in your philosophy…”

“What we have in common,” Sheldrake says, “is that we are both certain that evolution is the central feature of nature. But I would say his theory of evolution stops at biology. When it comes to cosmology, for example, he has little to say. I would take the evolutionary principle there, too. I think that the ‘laws of nature’ are also prone to evolve; I think they are more like habits than laws. Much of what we are beginning to understand is that they clearly have evolved differently in different parts of the universe.”

Sheldrake talks a good deal of the fact that, as all good Brian Cox viewers know, 83% of the universe is now thought to be “dark matter” and subject to “dark energy” forces that “nothing in our science can begin to explain”.

Despite this, he suggests, scientists are prone to “the recurrent fantasy of omniscience”. The science delusion, in these terms, consists in the faith that we already understand the nature of reality, in principle, and that all that is left to do is to fill in the details. “In this book, I am just trying to blow the whistle on that attitude which I think is bad for science,” he says. In America, the book is called Science Set Free, which he thinks is probably a better title. “They were aware that if they called it The Science Delusion it would be seen as a rightwing tract that was anti-evolution and anti-climate change. And I want no part of that.”

The evolution of Rupert Sheldrake, would, you guess, be a worthwhile scientific study in itself, but one for which you might struggle to attract funding. Like all heretics worth their salt, he started out in good faith, a true believer, but he has been beset by increasing doubt ever since.

“I went through the standard scientific atheist phase when I was about 14,” he says, with a grin. “I bought into that package deal of science equals atheism. I was the only boy at my high Anglican boarding school who refused to get confirmed. When I was a teenager, I was a bit like Dawkins is today, you know: ‘If Adam and Eve were created by God, why do they have navels?’ That kind of thing.”

Over a period, he found the materialist view of the universe – that matter was all that life consisted of, that human beings were in Dawkins’s term “lumbering robots” – did not accord with his own experience of it. Sheldrake was a gifted musician and “electrical changes in the cortex didn’t seem able to fully explain Bach”. Likewise: “To describe the overwhelming life of a tropical forest just in terms of inert biochemistry and DNA didn’t seem to give a very full picture of the world.”

The other thing that troubled him about scientific orthodoxy might be condensed into a single word: pigeons. As a boy in Newark-on-Trent, Sheldrake had kept animals – a dog, a jackdaw and some homing pigeons. He would place these pigeons in a cardboard box and cycle all morning with them and then release them to marvel how they would always beat him home. Newark happened to be a hub of pigeon racing. “Every weekend in the season, people would bring piles and piles of wicker baskets containing their birds; my father would take me there and the porters would let me help release the pigeons. Hundreds would fly up and circle round, then you would see them form into little groups and head off around Britain, back home. Pigeon fanciers were mostly plain working men, but they were fascinated by this mystery, which they did not understand.”

They were not alone. When Sheldrake won his scholarship to Cambridge several years later, he asked various scientists how they thought this happened. The scientists talked about the sun’s position and an internal clock and scent traces, but what “they weren’t prepared to say was that it was a total mystery”. That refusal, and others like it, troubled Sheldrake. “There is a lot of science that you can’t directly experience,” he says, “but to concentrate on quantum physics when we couldn’t begin to explain homing pigeons seemed to me,” he suggests, “a great distortion.”

For a decade or so, Sheldrake kept some of these thoughts to himself, but as his career developed his doubts about the idea that “conventional, materialist” science would one day explain everything seemed increasingly wrong-headed. He took a job working at the University of Malaya on ferns and rubber trees and to get there travelled for some months through India and Sri Lanka. It was 1968 and India was a very interesting place to be. “I met people, highly intelligent people, who had a completely different world view from anything to which I had been exposed.”

Returning to Cambridge, Sheldrake became interested in a notion of biology and heredity that shared close affinities with Carl Jung’s ideas of a collective unconscious, a shared species memory. He was profoundly influenced by a book called Matter and Memory by the philosopher Henri Bergson. “When I discovered Bergson’s idea that memory is not stored in the brain but that it is a relation in time, not in space, I realised that there might potentially be a memory principle in nature that would solve the problem I was wrestling with.”

In 1974, Sheldrake returned to south-east Asia and took a job at an agricultural institute near Hyderabad developing new varieties and cropping systems in chickpeas. “By day, I was working on these practical things,” he recalls, “but in the evening I was reading a lot about crystallography and the philosophy of form.” He had become friendly with an eccentric woman called Helen Spurway, widow of JBS Haldane, the great British biologist. She lived in a remote full of animals, with a tame jackal and wasps’ nests in the living room; Haldane’s library was being eaten by termites; Sheldrake felt right at home.

“At around the same time,” he recalls, “I had some exposure to psychedelics, and that opened me up to the idea that consciousness was much richer than anything my physiology lecturers had ever described. Then I came across transcendental meditation, which seemed to give some access to that without drugs.” Alongside that, to his surprise, Sheldrake began to realise that there was “a lot more in my makeup that was ‘Christian’ than I cared to admit. I started praying and going to church.”

Did he pray with a sense of its efficacy?

“Well,” he says, “I still say the Lord’s Prayer every day. It covers a lot of ground in our relation to the world. ‘Thy will be done’, that sense that we are part of a larger process that is unfolding that we do not comprehend.” By the time Sheldrake went to live at the ashram of the exiled Christian holy man, Father Bede Griffiths, he had been confirmed in the Church of South India and was the organist of St George’s, Hyderabad. It was at about that time, “living in a palm-fringed hut under a banyan tree”, that Sheldrake decided to set out his decade’s worth of thinking about memory being a function of time, not matter, shared by all living things, that he called “morphogenetics”.

Was he aware that the book would be incendiary?

“Well,” he says, “I wrote it to try to find a broader framework for biology. A more holistic one, proposing the argument that the laws of nature were also evolving in time.”

For the first three months after it was published, the speculative book got a generally favourable reception. But then the “book for burning” editorial was written in Nature, by its editor, Sir John Maddox, and Sheldrake’s new life began, as a discredited scientist and bestselling author.

Far from refuting his ideas in the face of this broadside, Sheldrake went on the offensive. His research since then has concentrated almost entirely on the kinds of phenomena that science dismisses out of hand “but which people are generally fascinated by and made to feel stupid about”. He has a long-running experiment that collects data about how dogs “know” when their owners are coming home; another is concerned with the apparently strong deviations from chance in human ability to predict when they are being stared at from a distance. He retains an interest in subjects as diverse as the mysteries of crystal formation, the efficacy of Chinese medicine, the forces that trigger migrations of birds and animals over vast distances, and the nature of consciousness.

None of these pursuits has enhanced his standing in the professional scientific community. Sheldrake is unrepentant. He cites Darwin as an example. “If you look at his books, almost all the data there come from amateur naturalists, practical breeders, gardeners. TH Huxley, meanwhile, ‘his bulldog’, was very much against amateurs, largely because many of them were vicars and he was very anti-religious. He wanted to marginalise anyone who saw science and faith as compatible and mutually reaffirming.”

Though he remains at best a contentious figure, and to some an irredeemable charlatan, Sheldrake sees some evidence that this old opposition is breaking down, that doubt and wonder might be returning to science.

“I think one of the reasons why my book has – so far – been well received is that times are changing,” he suggests. “A lot of our old certainties, not least neoliberal capitalism, have been turned on their head. The atheist revival movement of Dawkins and Hitchens and Dennett is for many people just too narrow and dogmatic. I think it is a uniquely open moment…”

His hope is that there will be a “coming out” moment in science. “It’s like gays in the 1950s,” he suggests. “I think if people in the realm of science and medicine came out and talked about the limitations of purely mechanistic and reductive approaches it would be much more fun…”

The imminence of Sheldrake’s three score years and ten has made questions of mortality and consciousness seem a little more pressing to him. He almost came face to face with his morphic energies in 2008; speaking at a consciousness conference in Santa Fe, New Mexico, he was attacked with a knife by a Japanese paranoid schizophrenic. He suffered a huge wound in his thigh, which just missed his femoral artery. “Apparently,” he says, “he was aiming at my heart and stumbled at the last moment. It certainly made death a bit more present.”

Given his speculative nature, I wonder what he imagined, as his life flashed before him, would happen next?

“I’ve always thought death would be like dreaming,” he says, “but without the possibility of waking up. And in those dreams, as in our dreams in life, everyone will get what they want to some degree. For the atheists convinced everything will go blank, maybe it will.” He trusts in a more colourful future for himself. After Sheldrake shows me out, I walk to work across the heath, imagining how his dream eternity might work out: hammering out The Goldberg Variations on his Hyderabad organ, while the jungle grows around him, wondering all the time how he got here.

The personality of homeopaths: a cross-sectional survey of the personality profiles of homeopaths compared to a norm sample. Rise MB, Langvik E, Steinsbekk A. Source 1 Department of Public Health and General Practice, Norwegian University of Science and Technology , Trondheim, Norway . J Altern Complement Med. 2012 Jan;18(1):42-7.

Abstract

Abstract Objectives: The Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R) was used to describe the personality profiles of homeopaths in Norway. It was hypothesized that the homeopaths would score higher than the norm sample on Openness, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness.

Design: The NEO-PI-R describes personality scores on five traits; Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness. A cross-sectional survey of 128 (39%) members of the Norwegian association for homeopaths was compared with the Norwegian population norm sample.

Results: Compared to the norm population score with a mean of 50, the homeopaths scored significantly higher on the personality traits Openness (54.7) and Agreeableness (58.0). Significant, but small differences were also observed with a higher score on Conscientiousness (52.3) and a lower score on Extraversion (48.3). There were no significant differences on Neuroticism (49.7).

Conclusions: People who work as homeopaths can be described as open to new and different ideas, and as caring, understanding, and altruistic persons. Therefore, there is reason to believe that these dispositions are central in choosing homeopathy as an occupation. Further research should investigate whether personality traits are associated with important occupational areas such as job satisfaction, occupational stability, or income.

Read about more about scientific research on homeopathy

With thanks to the One Click Group Reporting of research: Ghosts in the machine 31.1.12:

By Peter T Wilmshurst, Consultant Cardiologist, Royal Shrewsbury Hospital, Shrewsbury SY3 8XQ 31 January 2012

If I tried to make money by deceiving people that a picture that I had painted was the work of some great artist, the law would call it fraud. Yet when pharmaceutical and medical device companies make money by deceiving doctors and patients that their articles were written by medical opinion leaders we call it ghost writing and gift authorship.[1]

This double standard is because this form of financial “fraud” is so prevalent amongst the most influential opinion leaders in the profession and so many journals and organisations profit from it that we have institutionalised this dishonesty in which everyone profits except perhaps the patients who may get inappropriate treatment and potentially those who pay for it – in the UK that is usually the tax-payer.

Dr Tony Rickards was a great cardiologist. His memory has been sullied because he was unusually both a “ghost” and a gift author on publications about the MIST Trial. He died in May 2004,[2] before the trial started in November 2004. He was not on the trial design committee: I know because I was. Despite satisfying none of the criteria for authorship of the most highly cited cardiology journal, Circulation, he was listed as an author of the paper.[3] One other member of the trial steering committee and I refused to be authors because of errors in the paper and because the sponsor refused to allow us to see all the data.

After persistent pressure from me Circulation eventually published a correction (700 words), data supplement (4 pages) and new version of the paper.[4-6] Before the correction was published the editors of Circulation knew that Dr Rickards had died and did not meet the criteria for authorship. They did not remove his name from the corrected version of the paper. Because Dr Rickards was dead, the sponsors could dispense with the customary payment to eminent gift authors.

Circulation published in 2009 a letter responding to correspondence about the MIST paper in which Dr Rickards had moved up to be the fourth author (from fifteenth author on the paper), even though the editors of Circulation knew that he had died 5 years earlier.[7] Dr Rickards was named as an author of a letter he had no part in writing, which responded to correspondence he had not read, about a paper he had not seen or written, which describing research in which he had not participated. If editors ignore their rules on authorship why should anyone else obey the rules?

References
1. Hendrick R. Ghosts in the machine. BMJ 2011;343:d7860.
2. Caroline Richmond. Obituary: Anthony Francis Rickards. BMJ 2004;329:234.
3. Dowson A, Mullen MJ, Peatfield R, Muir K, Khan AA, Wells C, Lipscombe SL, Rees T, De Giovanni JV, Morrison WL, Hildick-Smith D, Elrington G, Hillis WS, Malik IS, Rickards A. Migraine intervention with STARFlex Technology (MIST) Trial: a prospective, multicenter, double-blind, sham- controlled trial to evaluate the effectiveness of patent foramen ovale closure with STARFlex septal repair implant to resolve refractory migraine headache. Circulation 2008;117:1397-1404.
4. http://circ.ahajournals.org/cgi/content/full/circulationaha;120/9/e71
5. http://circ.ahajournals.org/cgi/content/full/CIRCULATIONAHA.107.727271/DC1
6. http://circ.ahajournals.org/cgi/content/full/117/11/1397
7. Dowson A, Mullen MJ, Khan AA, Rickards A, Peatfield R, Muir K, et al. Response to letter regarding article “Migraine Interventions with STARFlex Technology (MIST) Trial”. Circulation 2009;119:e194.

Competing interests: Peter T Wilmshurst says: My involvement is described in the letter. I have no financial conflicts.

With thanks to the One Click Group 30.1.12 ‘Scientific research emperor is marching around buck naked. The British Medical Journal’:

See Research misconduct The emperor is marching around buck naked. BMJ 2012; 344 doi: 10.1136/bmj.e541 (Published 24 January 2012) Cite this as: BMJ 2012;344:e541.

The validity and quality of research underpin the entire research enterprise worldwide. However, a number of studies have shown that many researchers take “shortcuts” and that perhaps 1-3% of research is grossly false, fitting into the category of research misconduct.

Research misconduct has been defined in US federal law as fabrication, plagiarism and/or falsification. Identified cases have been few, often limited to easy-to-identify falsified figures in published papers.

However, these may be the tip of the iceberg:

Godlee’s report of widespread research misconduct is disturbing and, I believe, generalises to the US.1 2 It’s not just the fact that it is happening, but that it reflects a culture within which new researchers are socialised. Previous research indicates the motivators for dishonesty include a high pressure achievement oriented environment, where “if everybody else is doing it, it must be OK.”3

The problem also underscores how important are reanalysis and replication of reported research, a recent topic on the US Institutional Review Board Forum (www.irbforum.org/forum/). But, get this, “Ginny Barbour, a senior editor with the PLoS group of journals, said one third of authors could not find the original data to back up figures in scientific papers when these were questioned.” I wonder how many journal editors seek to discover and reject such authors. I wonder how meticulous the US Food and Drug Administration is in policing the input it receives in support of marketing approval for new drugs and medical devices.

These behaviours are beyond the reach of surveillance by institutional review boards and research ethics boards, and they indicate the need for a new end product quality control system.4 The simplifying assumptions about the efficacy of peer review and professional ethics and responsibility fail miserably when the emperor is discovered marching around buck naked.

References

1. Godlee F. Research misconduct is widespread and harms patients [Editor’s Choice]. BMJ2012;344:e14. (5 January.)

   FREE Full Text
2. Martinson BC, Anderson MS, deVries R. Scientists behaving badly. Nature435;2005:737-8.
3. Vedantam S. Cheating is an awful thing for other people to do. Washington Post2006. www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/20/AR2006082000501.html.
4. Noble JH Jr. Peer review: quality control of applied social research. Science1974;185:916-21.

   FREE Full Text

See http://avilian.co.uk/2011/10/retractions-in-the-medical-literature-how-many-patients-are-put-at-risk-by-flawed-research/

See A key player in stoking this Swine Flu hysteria was Dr Iain Stephenson, a Consultant at University Hospital of Leicester NHS Trust who has been found guilty of vaccine research fraud on a grand scale by the General Medical Council (GMC).

See Thirteen per cent of scientists or doctors have said they know of colleagues who have fabricated data in order to get research published. More than one in ten (13%) scientists or doctors have witnessed colleagues intentionally altering or fabricating data to get published or during their research, a poll suggests. The survey of almost 2,800 experts in the UK also found 6% knew of possible research misconduct at their institution that has not been properly investigated. The poll, for the British Medical Journal (BMJ), is being presented at a meeting aimed at tackling research misconduct in the UK. 13 January 2012

See Mental scores decline precipitously at 30 months after anthrax vaccine, but CDC spins study to say vaccine safe Thursday, January 12, 2012

See Research misconduct is widespread and harms patients, BMJ 2012; 344 doi: 10.1136/bmj.e14 (Published 5 January 2012), Cite this as: BMJ 2012;344:e14

See ‘…it is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published…‘

See The Whole Truth? Meta-Analysis of Reboxetine Trials Calls Into Question Veracity of All Industry-Sponsored Research

See Lies, Damned Lies, and Medical Science

See Science for Sale: Protect Yourself From Medical Research Deception

See British Medical Journal – now only 11% of NHS Treatments Backed by Evidence (was 13%)

See Big Pharma researcher admits to faking dozens of research studies

See CAM deaths 0 Iatrogenic deaths 999,936 annually

See Big Pharma Bias at Harvard Medical School

See Andrew Wakefield demands retraction from BMJ after documents prove innocence from allegations of vaccine autism data fraud

See Reporting of Conflicts of Interest in Meta-analyses of Trials of Pharmacological Treatments. Michelle Roseman, BA; Katherine Milette, BSc; Lisa A. Bero, PhD; James C. Coyne, PhD; Joel Lexchin, MD; Erick H. Turner, MD; Brett D. Thombs, PhD. JAMA. 2011;305(10):1008-1017. doi: 10.1001/jama.2011.257

Contribution of world health organization in the global acceptance of Ayurveda. Chaudhary A, Singh N. Department of Rasa Shastra, Faculty of Ayurveda, Institute of Medical Sciences, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India. J Ayurveda Integr Med. 2011 Oct;2(4):179-86.

Abstract

Amongst the mandates of United Nations, health of mankind is the thrust area of UN through World Health Organization (WHO). Planning and execution of policies for mainstreaming of traditional medicines (TRM) of respective countries along with conventional system of medicine (allopathy), first in the country of origin followed by the international arena, is the priority agenda of operations of WHO.

Within Indian context, WHO accorded prime focus to Ayurveda in its activities related to TRM.Sponsorship and encouragement of studies substantiating parameters of standardization, safety and efficacy of herbal medicines of Ayurveda are under chief consideration of WHO. In this review, several guidelines of WHO are summarized.

Department of Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy (AYUSH), Central Council of Research in Ayurveda and Siddha and numerous other collaborative centers of WHO in India are assigned with several Appraisal Project Work (APW) and Direct Financial Cooperation (DFC) projects that will strengthen Ayurveda as evidence-based medicine for its global acceptance. Implementation of pharmacovigilance program in Ayurveda, publication of documents for rational use and initiatives to prepare consumer guidelines for appropriate use of Ayurvedic medicines are some other contributions of WHO toward advancement of Ayurveda at national as well as global level.

Here, we suggest further exploration, interaction and interpretation of traditional knowledge in the light of contemporary core sciences and biomedical sciences that can pave the way for accreditation of Ayurveda worldwide as an established system of medicine.

Read about more about scientific research on homeopathy

Lymphocyte proliferation stimulated by activated Cebus apella macrophages treated with a complex homeopathic immune response modifiers. Coelho Moreira CO, de Fátima Ferreira Borges da Costa J, Leal MF, Ferreira de Andrade E, Rezende AP, Imbeloni AA, Pereira Carneiro Muniz JA, de Arruda Cardoso Smith M, Burbano RR, de Assumpção PP. Laboratório de Citogenética Humana, Instituto de Ciências Biológicas, Universidade Federal do Pará, Belém, PA, Brazil; Serviço de Cirurgia, Hospital Universitário João de Barros Barreto, Universidade Federal do Pará, Belém, PA 66073-000, Brazil. Homeopathy. 2012 Jan;101(1):74-9.

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: Canova is a complex homeopathic medicine that enhances a specific immunologic responses against several exogenous and endogenous conditions. Canova activates macrophages both in vivo and in vitro.

AIM AND METHOD: We evaluated the effects of macrophages activated by Canova in vivo and ex vitro in the proliferation of lymphocytes. Canova was used to activate Cebus apella macrophages in vivo or ex vitro with Canova. Lymphocytes were cultured with the macrophage culture medium. The analysis of Canova effects in cultured lymphocytes was performed according to the cell cycle phase using flow cytometry. The Interferon gamma and Interleukin-5 cytokines quantification in these lymphocyte culture media was performed by Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA).

RESULTS: We observed that Canova actives macrophages in vivo and ex vitro. The lymphocytes cultured in a supplemented medium with macrophages activated by Canova treatment presented a higher number of proliferation cells than lymphocytes not exposed to macrophages activated by Canova. The Interferon gamma and Interleukin-5 cytokines were only observed in the medium of lymphocytes exposed to macrophages activated by Canova. Thus, Canova has potential as a new adjuvant therapy.

Read about more about scientific research on homeopathy

Development of broiler chickens after treatment with thymulin 5cH: a zoo technical approach. Sato C, Listar VG, Bonamin LV. Centro de Pesquisa, Universidade Paulista, Rua Dr Bacelar, 1212. 4° andar, 04026-002 São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil. Homeopathy. 2012 Jan;101(1):68-73.

Abstract

Modulation of immune response due to thymulin 5cH has been previously observed. The aim of the present study is to evaluate the development of broiler chickens treated with thymulin 5cH by conventional zoo technical indices, phytohemaglutinin induced inflammation test and histomorphometric analysis of lymphoid organs (thymus, Fabricius bursa and spleen). Animals were divided in two groups: (a) test: birds with free access to thymulin 5cH diluted into the drink water and (b) control: birds with free access to water only, from the 1st to the 42nd day of life. All experimental procedures were done in blind. The results show that thymulin 5cH treated group had increased productivity index compared to control (391.45 versus 261.93) associated with higher viability in the 7th week (p = 0.013), and a possible shunt to B lymphocyte activity. The data suggest that thymulin 5cH could be a viable method to improve productivity in poultry production due to its immune modulation properties.

Read about more about scientific research on homeopathy

Effects of Ignatia amara in mouse behavioural models. Marzotto M, Conforti A, Magnani P, Zanolin ME, Bellavite P. Department of Pathology and Diagnostics, University of Verona (I), Italy. Homeopathy. 2012 Jan;101(1):57-67.

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Ignatia amara (Ignatia), a remedy made from the Strychnos ignatii seeds, is used for anxiety-related symptoms, but consistent evidence of its activity in reproducible experimental models is lacking. An investigation was performed in order to assess on mice, by means of emotional response models, the activity of homeopathic Ignatia dilutions/dynamizations.

METHODS: Groups of 8 mice of the CD1 albino strain were treated intraperitoneally for 9 days with 0.3ml of five centesimal (C) dilutions/dynamizations of Ignatia (4C, 5C, 7C, 9C and 30C). Control mice were treated with the same hydroalcoholic (0.3%) solution used to dilute the medicines. Diazepam (1mg/kg) was the positive reference drug. Validated test models for locomotion and emotional response, the Open-Field (OF) and the Light-Dark (LD) tests, were employed. Five replications of the same protocol were carried out, in a randomised way using coded drugs/controls.

RESULTS: In the OF the general locomotion of mice was slightly decreased by Ignatia 4C, but not by Ignatia 5C, 7C, 9C and 30C, indicating the absence of unspecific motor impairment or sedation by these dilutions/dynamizations. Ignatia and diazepam seemed to decrease the number of urine spots released in the OF during 10min, with borderline significance (P=0.083). In the LD the tested medicine showed anxiolytic-like activity (increase of time spent and distance travelled in the lit area), though to a lesser extent than diazepam. The highest and most significant difference with untreated controls (P<0.01) was observed with the 9C dilution/dynamization. Among the 5 replication experiments, the best drug effects were obtained where the baseline anxiety of mice was higher.

CONCLUSIONS: Homeopathic Ignatia dilutions/dynamizations (peak at 9C) modify some emotion-related symptoms in laboratory mice without affecting locomotion.

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Running an NHS community homeopathy clinic – 10-year anniversary 2001-2011. Bawden S. The Cornwall Road Medical Practice, 3 Frederick Treves House, St John Way, Dorchester, Dorset DT1 2FD, UK. Homeopathy. 2012 Jan;101(1):51-6.

Abstract

An outcome series was conducted over a five-year period of patients attending a community NHS homeopathy clinic in Dorchester, Dorset. 273 new patients were seen. 183 (67%) questionnaires were completed at six months after initial consultation. 44% of patients had been unwell for more than five years; 19% of all patients for more than 15 years. A wide variety of conditions were seen, the largest group with depression, anxiety or grief. For follow-up patients 75-81% indicated an improvement in their symptoms and activity while 58% recorded an improvement in their overall wellbeing. Six months after the initiation of treatment 155 (84.7%) felt an improvement in their condition with 148 (81%) attributing this to homeopathy. Nobody reported deterioration due to homeopathic treatment; conventional drug use was reduced in 46 patients (25%).

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