Hair analysis study flawed - Letters to the Editor - Letter to the Editor

Townsend Letter for Doctors and Patients,  April, 2004  by Lawrence Wilson

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Editor:

Dr. Alan Gaby's review of the Seidel, et. al. hair analysis report in the January 2004 issue was unfortunate. He mentioned none of the flaws in the study and just accepted its incorrect conclusion. Even JAMA published several excellent rebuttals to this terribly flawed study:

1) The authors intentionally used an illegally-operating laboratory. This one lab accounted for most of the bad result. It makes absolutely no sense for researchers to choose a bogus laboratory unless they want bad results.

2) The "study" involved only one patient. I was taught in medical school that one should never draw conclusions on the basis of one patient That is an anecdotal report, not a study. It is certainly not worth publishing in the Journal of the AMA, unless of course one's intent is to discredit hair analysis.

3) The authors compared labs that wash the hair with labs that do not, without separating them out. Anyone knowledgeable in hair analysis knows that hair is porous and washing will reduce the levels of the water-soluble elements. If the authors had separated the labs, they would have seen in their own data that the labs that do not wash the hair had superb correlation of results. This is the exact opposite of the author's conclusion.

4) The authors confused reliability with significance. They claimed they were looking at reliability, but they spent a lot of time criticizing labs for having differing normal values and different interpretations of the results. These are separate issues that have nothing to do with reliability.

Lawrence Wilson, MD

P.O. Box 54

Prescott, Arizona 86302 USA

928-445-7690

Larry@drlwilson.com

www.drlwilson.com

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