The smoke and fire metaphors describe the difference between reducing or elminating the symptoms, vs. correcting the causes (faulty lifestyle and fictional final goal) of the symptoms.
I'm not sure if any of these "good research studies" included Classical Adlerian psychotherapy and factored in the varying skills of the psychotherapists. If you consider psychotherapy as more of an art than a science, there is no meaningful statistical way to prove the superiority of any approach. However, one could compare the case analyses and treatment demonstrations of highly skilled therapists from various approaches, utilizing the guidelines of qualitative analysis.
Adler's theoretical constructs offer outstanding tools for capturing the uniqueness of the individual client and engaging in creative, depth psychotherapy. Take a look at the stages of psychotherapy in "Classical Adlerian Theory and Practice" at
http://go.ourworld.nu/hstein/theoprac.htm.