EBM is meant to be serious science, but there's been a real effort to co-opt it for quackery. SBM is an attempt to inject science back into it. The difference c

EBM is meant to be serious science, but there's been a real effort to co-opt it for quackery. SBM is an attempt to inject science back into it. The difference comes down to how they treat evidence. For example, homeopathy states that a remedy becomes stronger the more dilute it becomes - i.e. the lower the dose, the stronger the effect. This defies the dose-response relationship between an active ingredient and its effect. Further, it states that even when no more of the active ingredient remains, it can still have an effect. SBM would say homeopathy isn't worth studying because it has no plausibility based on what we know of medicine and physics. EBM would say let's test it and see what we get. The problem is that if you test the same thing enough times, or measure enough variables, and then discard the ones that don't meet your desired outcome, you can gather "evidence" for basically anything. SBM would say weak evidence for a claim like homeopathy is meaningless, as the claim is extraordinary (it overturns physics), so you need stronger evidence than you might accept for a less exceptional claim. EBM doesn't make that judgment, it treats all evidence as equally valid.