Doing science is tough – it’s expensive and time-consuming. It’s no surprise that companies trying to sell the latest therapy gadget, lotion, potion or the most technical method of curing your horse’s pain with certain exercises, often are marketed without any science used to support them.
Doing good science is challenging, and even the best science experiments are never perfect.
So why should we always ask to see the research evidence when we read social media campaigns for miracle cures? Are our expectations too high?
Does it really matter if the product actually does what people say it does?
Yes of course it matters!
Most of these supposed fixes are expensive, and most involve an investment of time, but seemingly worse is the investment in a false belief that finally someone is on the road to recovery for a problem that is genuinely causing the upset and potentially animal pain.
When we look at science, we do not always expect expensive long studies that have groups with active treatment versus groups with a placebo. Or with groups that are measured by somebody that doesn’t know which is receiving the active treatment. These are very high standards of research and multiple trials like this evaluated together, in the form of a meta-analysis, would ultimately be gold standard support for a product. However, in reality, these types of research studies are very rare in the equestrian world. A simple study with a robust methodology can be exactly what is needed and will suffice when there is no other research available.
One person reporting results on one equine subject is an anecdote, and multiple results on a few horses is a case series. These are important for reporting trends and starting to suggest plausibility in the treatment, and they are useful for information. However, case studies are only one step up from anecdotes and ultimately are not what is reliable in a research sense. In case studies it’s unlikely that people are testing a placebo version of the product and they often start out with a bias towards the product working in the first place.
A trend I have seen when some companies are asked to present the evidence from research about their product is that the question is often ignored or dismissed. I find it really interesting that either the company know they should be doing research and are hiding the fact they’re not doing research, or they don’t know that they should be doing research. Alternatively, they share a link to a study that actually is using a different treatment, or on a different species. An example recently is a study on laser used to support the use of LED – these have different mechanisms of effect and plausibility of effect in horses.
One reason these companies should be doing research is because of the ethics and morality of claiming a product is effective when at the least it could do nothing, and at the worst, it could cause more problems. This could make the situation worse, for instance, a cream on a skin condition could cause more problems or delay healing, but more importantly, it could stop the owner from going to the vet to get the problem sorted quickly and sometimes less expensively.
Whilst it seems that we sit on our high horse demanding evidence and dismissing everything related to lab work or studies on different species, I would be slightly happier if some of these companies actually acknowledged what they should be doing, and told me they were going to invest in some research about their product.
Do not take everything you read at face value, even if they seem to share a link to what seems an amazing research study. If you’re not sure ask them to explain it in plain English. They should not baffle people with science, they should present clearly how the information they are sharing relates to their product, acknowledge the limitations and be open to suggestions from those that are more interested in science than marketing!
