research

Research coordination and resources by the Academy

Prof. George Vithoulkas announced more than once the importance of high quality research in homeopathy. Therefore he inaugurated me as research-coordinator of the International Academy of Classical Homeopathy. Here, I want to present myself and our future policy:

Research coordination and resources by the Academy

 

 

Prof. George Vithoulkas announced more than once the importance of high quality research in homeopathy. Therefore he inaugurated me as research-coordinator of the International Academy of Classical Homeopathy. Here, I want to present myself and our future policy:

I am a medical doctor and dealing with research-questions in homeopathy since 2010, when I was able to work with Prof. M. Frass of the Medical University of Vienna1 . At the moment I am working on a new Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis2 of homeopathic trials. In this project, my work consists in checking the existing trials for their internal, external and model validity3 . We noticed once again a conspicuously poor quality of the existing trials. The need to assist homeopaths in conducting their research projects seems evident.

Thus, we plan to provide personal advice and help from my part for the improvement of your own projects during protocol-stage and during stage of enrollment. Also, we want to coordinate planned projects, facilities and manpower. Please feel free to contact me for any questions, comments or ideas.

Further, we want to re-structure the research section of the website and provide information on the following sections:

  • Ethics: Information on international ethical guidelines for case-presentations and for the conduction of clinical research will be provided
  • Glossary: Research terminology will be provided and updated on regular basis
  • Templates/Downloads: We are going to develop documents containing basis-information on the conduction of studies in the different research sections (qualitative, laboratory and clinical research, etc.) and on different study designs
  • Ongoing projects: We will announce the research projects the Academy is involved in and projects in phase of development in order to facilitate coordination of resources
  • Literature and discussions: We are going to provide information on the most recent and important papers4 of the homeopathic research community

I am looking forward to fruitful discussions and a vivid exchange of know-how and resources!

Yours,
Dr. Katharina Gaertner
katharina@vithoulkas.com

  1. see Curriculum Vitae
  2. Structured literature review and statistical analysis of a large collection of analysis results from individual studies for the purpose of integrating the findings
  3. Clinical studies can generate discordant results. Deviant study results may be understood as an expression of spreading or scattering from a supposed true value. Checking the different forms of validity should allow to estimate to what extent the study conclusions are distorted by systematic factors of bias. While internal validity deals with the comparability of test and control groups (confidence that the trial design, conduct, and analysis has minimized or avoided biases), external validity refers to the comparability between the study population and the general population of interest (generalisability). Modell validity indicates the concordance between the study design and an ideal setting, e.g. the “state of the art” procedures.
  4. The term “paper” is used as a simplified expression for published research articles
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