All Evidence Is Equal, but Some Evidence Is More Equal than Others: Can Logic Prevail over Emotion in the Homeopathy Debate?

In his classic political satire Animal Farm, George Orwell described a fantasy world in which having total power gradually corrupts and distorts the initially idealized societal commandments articulated by the farm animals who have successfully risen up against a common enemy, i.e., the farmers (people). In the end, the commandment that “all animals are equal ” drifts into “all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others. ” Unfortunately, allopathic medicine, i.e., conventional mainstream medicine in its politically dominant position, has reached an analogous juncture in its history of considering evidence. The recent Shang et al. meta-analysis study (Shang 2005), and the accompanying editorials pronouncing the “end of homeopathy ” (Lancet. 2005) and the “growth of truth ” (Vandenbroucke 2005a) in the prestigious British journal Lancet expose an Orwellian selectivity and bias in considering facts, as well as an illogic, under the aegis of “evidence-based medicine. ” The Shang et al. paper concluded that “the clinical effects of homeopathy are placebo effects ” on the basis of 8 unspecified homeopathic studies and 6 unspecified conventional (allopathic) studies out of an original total of 110 studies of each type on the same variety of conventionally-diagnosed conditions. The editorial stance raises grave concerns about logic, fairness, and rationality in the