EBM in action

To the Editor: I read with interest the recent correspondence in the Journal from Del Mar and Glasziou.1 Their appeal to one of their critics was to "abandon throwing bricks from the sidelines and join us in trying to help clinicians assess research evidence in [a] timely fashion". More recently, their defence in relying on generalists, rather than experts, to assess the evidence was, somewhat curiously, that "a cat may look at a king".2 In response to these comments, I believe that one of their recent presentations relating to natural remedies for osteoporosis in postmenopausal women3 falls short of current evidence-based medicine requirements. I suspect that this may be because they have no expert in the area they are reviewing to assist them in assessing the data.