Homeopathy has been causing intense debates in Italy in the past years, mainly between its supporters and the scientists and clinicians pointing out its lack of effects in comparison to placebo treatments, at least according to the most recent and influent scientific literature. This was until last september 10th, when Dr Patil and colleagues published, on Scientific Reports a paper reporting the anti-inflammatory and pain-inhibiting effects of an homeopathic preparation in rats.
Italian “believers” are often prone to blame official science of treating homeopathy with way too much prejudice, despite the lack of majour scientific publications that prove definitive efficacy of this pseudoscientific discipline (with most of the works having been published, to date, on minor or low quality -if not predatory- journals) and cheered to this new. More importantly, part of the importance of this discovery has been mounted, by many supporters, on the false conception that Scientific Reports, as being part of Nature publishing group represents a proper “Nature Journal”.
On the other hand, several scientists uprose in Italy, starting to point out several statistic and methodological imprecisions. One among these, Enrico Bucci, researcher in systems biology at Temple University in Pennysilvenia and co-founder of Resis, a society that works to provide the tool to find and fight scientific and academic misconducts in scholarly publications, found repeated figures and incongruences in the analytical details of some experiments. The same discrepancies have been identified by several Pubpeer users.
As reported on Nature News, to date, Scientific Reports editors are deeply analysing the data in the paper in order to correct or, if necessary, retract the paper, whereas last october 1st, an editorial note appeared in the paper webpage: ” Editors’ Note: Readers are alerted that the conclusions of this paper are subject to criticisms that are being considered by the editors. Appropriate editorial action will be taken once this matter is resolved.”.
Source: Nature News