Many of you have probably seen the below. Feels weirdly harsh, gratuitous, odd. It's not really @sciam language - although after they published that yard and a half of bullshit about 5G a while back, maybe that's changed.

Anyway. I'm not happy with it. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/doctors-are-not-gods/

Factually, this piece contains (at least) two screwups for the business of ... let's say 'asserting evidence-based authority'.

If you want to wear the big I Have The Best Evidence hat, you better bring your A-game.

Considering what I do for work, the phrase 'credible research' jumped out at me. As might be expected.

So what's that study?

It's ... not good.

The authors, to their credit, appear to be trying. But the study is a bin fire. Magic power analysis, small samples, large amounts of multiple comparisons, some really oddly reported statistics. I can't re-create bits of it because the tests aren't reported legibly.

And I'm FAIRLY sure the right hand side columns of Tables 2 and 3 shouldn't have identical p-values if the numbers change their proportions. Depends on test (not clearly reported). Don't have wherewithal to chase it all down, I'm not @sTeamTraen and I am a leeeeetle bit hungover.

Additional: the journal isn't great. I don't know if it's "predatory" per se, but I'd definitely go as far as 'low quality'. Apparently the parent organisation threatened to sue Beall when he put them on his blacklist. Have a look at a few of the other studies. You'll see.

(And you'd think that a journal where you pay an APC would shell out for a bit of copyediting, wouldn't you?? Whoever made this PDF is an arseclown. Note: that's on the journal, NOT the authors.)

But look, that's just one citation. Are there other similar studies out there - treating thrush with natural remedies? Yes. And the first one I clicked on was *worse*. Peep the statistics on this bad boy. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6049967/

Anyway, so much for 'credible research'. Next bit.

Now this is a bit more interesting, because there's lots of fuss about xenoestrogens in the last few years, with the usual caveats - lots of bioactive molecules, lots of formulations, lots of animal studies, lots of potential damage, lots of endocrinology (ie. annoying).

This unpublished case study, uh, got published.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31393563 

Tea tree oil fuss started years ago.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17267908 

Also 'a meeting with industry sponsors' in endocrinology is... probably all of them. The research was funded by NIEHS.

A further irony of 'industry-sponsored' in this context is that some of the pushback against this work comes from essential oil peak bodies / trade associations / companies.

(There's a really good Big Oil pun to be made here, but I can't quite put it into words.)

Everyone's selective with evidence sometimes - it's hard to see it all, and biases are unavoidable.

But if you want to write a hit-piece asserting your evidence is better, well, you better make sure you know what the hell you're doing.