More than three quarters of US medical students believe that Western medicine would benefit from integrating more complementary and alternative therapies and ideas.

Or do they? The survey that produced this conclusion was sent to 126 medical schools across the US, representing 68,000 students. And just 1,770 completed questionnaires were returned (3 per cent).
 
The results have been published in Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine, an open-access journal published by Oxford University Press. Even the authors, led by Ryan Abbott of the Centre for East-West Medicine at the University of California in Los Angeles, seem a little embarrassed.
 
“The most significant limitation of this study is a low response rate” they admit It's so low the survey should never have seen the light of day, especially in a journal claiming to be evidence-based.
 
Half the medical schools approached sent no responses, and of the students who did repond, half said they had treated themselves with complementary or alternative therapies, suggesting they may be untypical. And 40 per cent of all responses were "don't know". All in all, the evidence here is even less strong than it is for most complementary therapies, and that's saying something.