~Sigh~

Here we go.

The PROOF you wanted was provided by wiki itself. Had you taken the time to actually read the references that wiki provided, you would realise that in fact the only large multi-centred RCT that really came up with glucosamine did not provide any benefit over placebo is the one done by Clegg et al,USA 2006. Its sports 1583 patients and shown that glucosamine or chondroitin alone does not show significant inprovement over placebo. However, when combined, the results are quite encouraging. And you ask for details for people who have benefitted. Go see the results. Glucosamine provided is 3.9% superior to placebo in the primary endpoint, while 11.4% superiority over placebo in the secondary endpoint. More patients have been benefited from glucosamine, however health care professionals consider them as insignificant beacuse p value is larger than 0.05. This is because the benefit maybe due to chance. Should the trial be scaled 10times to include more than 10000 patients and if the percentage of benefit remains, then the values may become significant.

Other studies range from 80+ patients to 200+ patients came up with glucosamine not significantly superior to placebo. On other hand many meta-analysis have proven glucosamine superior. But meta-analysis being meta analyses, the results are less reliable, but in depth reviews are required to appraise their worth.

As with my first post I've already gone through the 4 references provided by wiki in as layman as I can and you still ask for proof and details. As for proof, you have found them, the details, you have to go read it for yourself. I'm not going to go through with you how to appraise journals, and what are the strenghts and weaknesses of each paper.

Healthcare professionals have gone through much training in analysing these papers so much so that many have to repeat this module because english is not their native language, and statistics is not everyone's forte.

So if you've decided to sit down and read those papers, be sure you understand what is p value, odds ratio, hazards ratio, numbers to treat, confidence interval, WOMAC index and read up how to appraise journals before you start shouting for PROOF and DETAILS. Btw, read the other links that nimloth32 provided as well before making conclusions.

Please do not jump around and state claims with weak basis, and when educated otherwise, fail to see the points others made, scream for the obvious answer that you already have, and thus making a fool out of yourself.

That is all from me. Until you make an educated rebuttal with your own proof, evidence and analysis, I urge all healthcare professionals in this forum to ignore the TS as this is really a waste of time.

edit: typo

edit 2: Btw your anecdote on the Newton's Laws of Force and Einstien's Theory of Relativity is most inadequate. May I ask why Newton's Laws are still taught in schools? Because at non relativistic proportions, it is still very applicable. Not everyone can understand Einstien's Theory of Relativity, hence the still applicable and easier to manage Newton's Laws are still taught. Hence that may be the reason why your pharmacist asked you to try glucosamine for OA without showing you piles of research papers, because the average public doesn't need to know all the statistical jargon, and whether a paper is reliable or not.