Posted by SLS on April 21, 2001, at 11:23:10
In reply to Re: Don't say it's just placebo-I'm a bit confused, posted by ShelliR on April 20, 2001, at 23:11:47
Me too.
I wish I had gone far enough in school to be able to interpret the numbers for myself. Statistics are pretty much a mystery to me. It would be great if someone who is strong in statistics were to go back to the full article and obtain the raw numbers (if they are given) and "crunch" the results for himself.
Although it is no guarantee of validity, the list of researchers contributing to the study includes many well-respected personages who publish very frequently. I should think that they have secured a reliable stable of statisticians over the years. Hopefully, there will be some people who will scrutinize this study as well as the authors have scrutinized those of others. My guess is that the study was performed properly and the results documented and interpreted properly given the design of the investigation. The focus of the investigation helped to determine its design. They seemingly wanted to answer the question as to whether or not St. John's Wort was effective in treating moderate to severe major depression (HAM-D > 20). Of course, it is important that these results to be repeatable and corroborated by different study designs. We'll see. In the meantime, anecdotes can sometimes be very persuasive.
- Scott
Richard C. Shelton, MD
Martin B. Keller, MD
Alan Gelenberg, MD
David L. Dunner, MD
Robert Hirschfeld, MD
Michael E. Thase, MD
James Russell, MD
R. Bruce Lydiard, MD, PhD
Paul Crits-Cristoph, PhD
Robert Gallop, PhD
Linda Todd
David Hellerstein, MD
Paul Goodnick, MD
Gabor Keitner, MD
Stephen M. Stahl, MD
Uriel Halbreich, MD
poster:SLS
thread:60343
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20010417/msgs/60684.html