Why are people bothering with getting colds anymore? The site www.coldcure.com has been around for a couple years now and the product for stopping common cold symptoms is available in many places (Wal-Mart for one). Could you check out that site and apply your skills to either (1) debunk it or (2) confirm it?
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Let’s look at this objectively, William. Somebody announces Surefire Cold Cure number 1,000. Previous attempts have gone 0-for-999. You believe this one’s different. The rest of the world evidently doesn’t (although the thing has gotten loads of publicity). You may think you’ve got a better grasp of the science, but the world’s got a better grasp of the odds.
81979: George Eby’s three-year-old daughter starts coming down with a cold. Since her immune system has been suppressed following leukemia treatment, he fears that she’s in for a nasty one. She sucks on a zinc pill. Two hours later her symptoms have vanished. Whoa, thinks George. He begins researching zinc’s curative powers.
81996: A team of researchers at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation publish a study claiming that patients who took zinc gluconate lozenges got over their colds in 4.4 days on average, compared to 7.6 days for patients taking a placebo. The antizinc camp objects that the Cleveland study has fallen into the same trap as the Eby study–the subjects could tell which lozenges contained zinc, so their responses were biased. Were not! the Cleveland researchers riposte. But their conclusions are based mostly on the testees’ personal assessment of their symptoms rather than on objective clinical measures, which doesn’t give you much confidence.
