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No, they did review them, but you didn't read the article. The excluded studies were either investigated something else, not common cold, or were so bad that th

No, they did review them, but you didn't read the article. The excluded studies were either investigated something else, not common cold, or were so bad that they failed right away. They still gave short summaries of them, and gave the reasons for exclusion: > Andrianova 2003: The definition of ARD included influenza, thus excluding it from our review. > Rafinski 1974: We excluded this study because there was no comparison group and it was a non‐randomised controlled trial. > Ushirotake 2004: As the study was not randomised or blinded, there is a high risk of bias. > Hiltunen 2007: This study did not meet this criterion as the cellulose could not be considered a standard treatment or a placebo. [...] I won't copy all of them, please go and read it yourself! If it's not a randomized, controlled, blinded trial then it's not a trial to be considered any further, their results are unreliable. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randomized_controlled_trial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randomized_controlled_trial

culi 3y ago
I have indeed read the review. I think there's some confusion here. Your comment: When there's plenty of opportunity to search for and find evidence, and multiple researchers do try, and repeatedly fail to find evidence The review: *Explicitly discluded all but one study. Here's the other thing. The ONE study they DID include did actually find a positive effect: > Key results > The included study found that people who took garlic every day for three months (instead of a placebo) had fewer colds. That is, over the three‐month period, there were 24 occurrences of the common cold in the garlic group, compared to 65 in the placebo group. When participants experienced a cold, the length of illness was similar in both groups (4.63 versus 5.63 days). The reason the analysis concluded that there's "not enough evidence" is simply because there was not more than a single study they deemed valid based on methodology. The thing is that even those discluded studies found a positive effect. In fact, all evidence points to a positive effect. The review is literally just saying there's not enough high quality evidence Comments like yours confound "not enough evidence" for "evidence against". That's all I'm pointing out

culi 3y ago

I have indeed read the review. I think there's some confusion here. Your comment: When there's plenty of opportunity to search for and find evidence, and multiple researchers do try, and repeatedly fail to find evidence The review: *Explicitly discluded all but one study. Here's the other thing. The ONE study they DID include did actually find a positive effect: > Key results > The included study found that people who took garlic every day for three months (instead of a placebo) had fewer colds. That is, over the three‐month period, there were 24 occurrences of the common cold in the garlic group, compared to 65 in the placebo group. When participants experienced a cold, the length of illness was similar in both groups (4.63 versus 5.63 days). The reason the analysis concluded that there's "not enough evidence" is simply because there was not more than a single study they deemed valid based on methodology. The thing is that even those discluded studies found a positive effect. In fact, all evidence points to a positive effect. The review is literally just saying there's not enough high quality evidence Comments like yours confound "not enough evidence" for "evidence against". That's all I'm pointing out