Treating the common cold
Will Vitamin C really prevent or cure your cold?
What about Echinacea?
The best way to find out is to follow these simple steps:
Gather 2000 people who have the common cold
Split them randomly into two groups of 1000
Give vitamin C to one group, and a sugar pill (the placebo) to the other
Make sure the people receiving the pills and those dispensing the pills don’t know which is which (to make your trial double-blind)
Wait a bit
See if the Vitamin C group gets over their colder faster than the other group
You will of conducted a double-blind placebo controlled scientific trial.
Luckily for us, we don’t have to do it ourselves. Several of these trials have already been done. Enough trials, in fact, that one can do a Meta analysis, a statistical review and summary of all the trials.
A comprehensive meta analysis, by an unbiased organization, is the gold standard of scientific inquiry; it is our best chance of knowing the truth.
The Cochrane Collaboration is an international not for profit organisation set up 15 years ago to create transparent, systematic, unbiased reviews of the medical literature on everything from drugs, through surgery, to community interventions. And I have a cold. I read their review to find out whether Vitamin C or Echinacea would be effective in treating it.
What about Echinacea?
The best way to find out is to follow these simple steps:
Gather 2000 people who have the common cold
Split them randomly into two groups of 1000
Give vitamin C to one group, and a sugar pill (the placebo) to the other
Make sure the people receiving the pills and those dispensing the pills don’t know which is which (to make your trial double-blind)
Wait a bit
See if the Vitamin C group gets over their colder faster than the other group
You will of conducted a double-blind placebo controlled scientific trial.
Luckily for us, we don’t have to do it ourselves. Several of these trials have already been done. Enough trials, in fact, that one can do a Meta analysis, a statistical review and summary of all the trials.
A comprehensive meta analysis, by an unbiased organization, is the gold standard of scientific inquiry; it is our best chance of knowing the truth.
The Cochrane Collaboration is an international not for profit organisation set up 15 years ago to create transparent, systematic, unbiased reviews of the medical literature on everything from drugs, through surgery, to community interventions. And I have a cold. I read their review to find out whether Vitamin C or Echinacea would be effective in treating it.
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