Homeopathy Research Institute Reveals Flaws in Australian Study

The HRI or Homeopathy Research Institute does an incredible amount of scientific analysis and research.

The anti-homeopathy report published by the Australian Research Council has been questioned by their scientific experts and others. The HRI make some impressive points and bring up significant doubts about the report’s validity which have yet to be addressed by the Australian Council.

• NHMRC did the homeopathy review twice, producing two reports, one in July 2012 and the one released to the public in March 2015.
• The existence of the first report has never been disclosed to the public – it was only discovered through Freedom of Information (FOI) requests.
• NHMRC say they rejected the first report because it was poor quality despite it being undertaken by a reputable scientist and author of NHMRC’s own guidelines on how to conduct evidence reviews.
• FOI requests have revealed that a member of NHMRC’s expert committee overseeing the review process – Professor Fred Mendelsohn – confirmed the first review to be high quality saying –  “I am impressed by the rigor, thoroughness and systematic approach given to this evaluation [….] Overall, a lot of excellent work has gone into this review and the results are presented in a systematic, unbiased and convincing manner.” 
• NHMRC said the results of the second report published in 2015 were based on a “rigorous assessment of over 1800 studies”. In fact results were based on only 176 studies.
• NHMRC used a method that has never been used in any other review, before or since. NHMRC decided that for trials to be ‘reliable’ they had to have at least 150 participants and reach an unusually high threshold for quality. This is despite the fact that NHMRC itself routinely conducts studies with less than 150 participants.
• These unprecedented and arbitrary rules meant the results of 171 of the trials were completely disregarded as being ‘unreliable’ leavingonly 5 trials NHMRC considered to be ‘reliable’. As they assessed all 5 of these trials as negative, this explains how NHMRC could conclude that there was no ‘reliable’ evidence.
• Professor Peter Brooks, Chair of the NHMRC committee that conducted the 2015 review, signed conflict of interest formdeclaring he was not “affiliated or associated with any organisation whose interests are either aligned with or opposed to homeopathy”,despite being a member of anti-homeopathy lobby group ‘Friends of Science in Medicine’
• NHMRC’s guidelines state that such committees must include experts on the topic being reviewed, yet there was not one homeopathy expert on this committee.