Guest post by Frank Van der Kooy
Some serious flaws in the scientific reporting of two acupuncture clinical trials, for the treatment of infertility and allergic rhinitis, were recently published on this blog. The overly positive way in which the researchers made their mostly negative results public, was also of concern. Both these studies were published by the researcher of the year, Prof Caroline Smith, of the National Institute of Complementary Medicine (NICM), Australia. The stream of comments and discussions that followed made me think of another commonly overlooked aspect when it comes to acupuncture clinical trials. Conflict of interest! In both these studies the authors declared to have no conflicts of interest and in other studies by this author this also seems to be the case. The question can be asked: If you are a practicing acupuncturist who runs a clinical trial of acupuncture, isn’t that, by default, a serious conflict of interest? The intention of this article is not an in-depth discussion of what a conflict of interest is, but rather to compare medical doctors with acupuncturists turned researchers. Let me explain […]
Frank van der Kooy is a pre-clinical scientist with experience in phyto-chemistry and analytical chemistry with a focus on drug discovery from medicinal plants. He served in the position of senior analytical chemist at the National Institute of Complementary Medicine (NICM), Australia.
