Saturday, May 5, 2012

The uncanny resemblance between certain abstracts and herbal remedy claims

Dear sir,

When you state the conclusion of your study as "our results show that X depends on Y and Z", that is about as memorable and informative as the labels on those little bottles of water in the homoeopathy aisle which say "has been shown to support prostate health."  The only thing that surprises me about your vague abstract is that there isn't a star next to it that says "*These claims may be relevant to science but I don't know why."