Does Lack of Research Really Mean Lack of Efficacy?

Great site, my question is in no way a personal criticism of the important work I think your doing here, but…

I’d estimate in at least 50% of responses you guys say there is little or no research to say whether the treatment in question really works. My question is, does lack of research suggest lack of efficacy?

Like everything research is either funded publicly or privately. There’s much motivation for private industry research because there’s much money to be made, but this leads to an obvious conflict of interest. I get the feeling drug companies are running projects without appropriate methodologies because their researchers don’t think they would get significant results otherwise. It is also possible negative results are not being published because they are they obligated to register studies before running them as other fields have to?

It also appears to me there is modest government/public funded research based on the lack of large scale studies that are without funding conflicts. I imagine this could either be because baldness is not seen as something worthy of much money to gov’t, or because the researchers themselves don’t think this stuff works and don’t want to spend years running huge studies to prove something they might see as pretty obvious.

I recognize my comments might not be accurate when it comes to finasteride or minoxidil, but for most other options, and my particular interests of the shampoo and laser treatments, do you think I’m correct?

You raise a valid point. Research can be biased, and you must consider who funded it and the methods used. A good example of this is the research conducted by the laser hair industry, as we scrutinized the methods and its results (see Analyzing the Results of the HairMax Laser Comb).

Your comments echo my repeated motto — it is a buyer beware market. We live in a capitalistic society, which means that we need to have financial reasons to do research, because there may be a pot of gold under the rainbow.