In spite of this scepticism, the present author agrees with Smith that Chinese medical journals are "a treasure house of medical science available for explorers" [5] provided that we evaluate the evidence published therein with no double standard. There are examples of reviews that cover Chinese journals and evaluate the evidence available, e.g. in a recent review on the effectiveness of hand-washing in preventing SARS, among the ten case-control studies identified, four were published in Chinese journals [77] .