I checked on Quackwatch if Schroth was listed but couldn't find it. So I sent the Schroth website to Quackwatch and asked what they thought.
I've summarized the response: (sharon's comments in green)
- They did several pubmed and OVID searches on Schroth and Scoliosis
- They only found a small number of abstracts (~30).
- None are controlled studies.
- Several are prospective studies on Scroth but NONE have large numbers of patients, NONE have long-term follow-up, and NONE have controls.
- Only abstracts can be found... no articles. (This tells me (sharon) that they are from conference proceedings and are NOT published in the refereed literature. That is grey literature at best and is not really reviewed).
- From what they can tell, most of the "journals" are not peer-reviewed (N.B. I, sharon, surmised this also but was told by someone here that pubmed only lists peer-reviewed journals. Well I doubted that then and I continue to doubt it given these Weiss pubs.)
- Weiss is a director of a Schroth clinic and so may not be objective
- Many of his articles attacking surgery contain false comments. He appears biased. (sharon says this may explain why he isn't publishing these articles in the refereed literature where peer-review would catch the falsehoods.)
- Bottom line - the lack of any prospective controlled studies will never yield a basis to use Schroth.
I've summarized the response: (sharon's comments in green)
- They did several pubmed and OVID searches on Schroth and Scoliosis
- They only found a small number of abstracts (~30).
- None are controlled studies.
- Several are prospective studies on Scroth but NONE have large numbers of patients, NONE have long-term follow-up, and NONE have controls.
- Only abstracts can be found... no articles. (This tells me (sharon) that they are from conference proceedings and are NOT published in the refereed literature. That is grey literature at best and is not really reviewed).
- From what they can tell, most of the "journals" are not peer-reviewed (N.B. I, sharon, surmised this also but was told by someone here that pubmed only lists peer-reviewed journals. Well I doubted that then and I continue to doubt it given these Weiss pubs.)
- Weiss is a director of a Schroth clinic and so may not be objective
- Many of his articles attacking surgery contain false comments. He appears biased. (sharon says this may explain why he isn't publishing these articles in the refereed literature where peer-review would catch the falsehoods.)
- Bottom line - the lack of any prospective controlled studies will never yield a basis to use Schroth.
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