Enlarge / If homeopathic remedies had this much nonwater material in them, we probably wouldn’t be having this discussion. (credit: Iryna Veklich / Getty Images)

One of the more productive ways that the methods of science can be used is to look at the scientific process itself. A “meta-science” study (like a recent one published on brain scans) can help tell us when research approaches aren’t producing reliable data and can potentially show what we might need to change to get those approaches to work.

Now, someone’s applied a bit of meta-science to an area of research where we shouldn’t expect to see improvements: homeopathy. A group of Austrian researchers looked into why a reasonable fraction of the clinical trials on homeopathy produce positive results. The biggest factor, the researchers found, is that the trials that show homeopathy is ineffective are less likely to get published.

A method to the madness

There are plenty of ways to test potential treatments but, over the years, problems have been identified in almost all of them. That’s left the double-blind, randomized clinical trial as the most trusted method of getting rid of some of the biases that make other approaches less reliable. But even in double-blind trials, problems can creep in. There’s always a bias toward publishing positive results—ones where the treatments have an effect.