Study Finds Turmeric Extract Equal to Prozac for Serious Depression

[naturallyselected]

61. So much wrong with this study

I couldn't tell anything from this abstract, so I found the paper.

There are only 16 or 17 in each group - you can't tell much of anything with this small a sample.

There was no comparison to a placebo. So there was no way to find if any of the three treatments differed from no treatment at all. The p-values cited in the abstract (all of which show no differences at all) seem to come from comparisons of the groups to each other. This means that the turmeric was just as effective as the Prozac in doing .... who knows? There is no control group.

The authors say that they used no placebo group out of "ethical considerations", because these subjects all suffered from major depression.

I don't know how this got published. No control. No graphs. If one of my physiology students passed this in, they would get it back ungraded and told to try again.

As a scientist, this paper is a great example of the type of thing that frustrates me so much. I would love to see good studies of alternative treatments, both compared to pharmaceutical treatments and combined with pharmaceutical treatments, but this is the useless stuff that comes out. I don't understand why there are virtually no studies that apply sound science in looking at the effectiveness of alternative treatments.