It’s a simple question really. Many homeopaths and their national organisations like to promote themselves and their practice as scientific or at least supported by science. They are accused of bolstering that claim by cherry picking positive studies and ignoring all the null results. A fair accusation in my opinion. But would I be right in claiming there is no part of homeopathy that’s been reformed due to strong negative evidence?
No significant subgroup that’s, say, stopped using a particular substance for a particular ailment due to understanding the science in that isolated case?
I’m asking because I’d like to use that argument and I don’t want it to come back to gum me in the butt. It wouldn’t hurt much, but it’d look to an external observer like I got bitten.
My guess would be no. Since there is no science behind homeopathy, even if a substance supposedly efficacious for, say, headaches was found by some large number of practitioners to be ineffective, a number would cling to traditional thought and continue to use it. That’s true of many “ancient Chinese/Japanese/Native American” etc. remedies - the ancients/elders say it worked, therefore it must have worked then and will work now. (You’re just doing it wrong.)
I realize that’s not a very GQ answer and I will be interested to see if there are any formal repudiations of ingredients or concoctions in homeopathy, but all the same… the practice doesn’t lend itself to such organized self-censure and correction.
The closest thing I’ve seen is an acknowledgment that St John’s Wort might have some negative side effects and that it might not be a cure-all for everything. While its use has certainly not been discontinued entirely, I know some naturopaths who say they no longer recommend it. In 2000, France banned its sale entirely and that seems to be trickling into the US woo consciousness.
FWIW, most homeopathic nostrums that I’ve seen are in pill form. After diluting the “ingredient” out of existence, I think they let some of the water absorb into a lactose pill. Or something like that.
dracoi, St John’s Wort was not a homeopathic thing. You’ve made the somewhat common mistake of thinking “homeopathic” means “alternative.” It doesn’t - homeopathy is something specific and complete fantasy-magic nonsense.
Yes. St. John’s Wort is a common “alternative” treatment for which there are actually some research studies indicating that it is somewhat effective for depression. See here for an overview and some scientific references to check out. Actual St. John’s Wort that you can get from an alternative medicine shop (and even some mainstream pharmacies nowadays, at least in the US) have significant amounts of actual plant matter in them. Consult a healthcare professional before taking any.
Homeopathy, as mentioned above, is a specific kind of alternative medicine that includes two basic principles:
If a large amount of a substance causes a symptom, then a small amount will cure that symptom.
Diluting a medicine makes it stronger.
Hence, a homeopathic preparation of St. John’s Wort:
Would have very little, if any, actually St. John’s Wort in it.
Would actually be prescribed to counteract symptoms commonly observed when taking regular doses of St. John’s Wort. Since antidepressants are known to sometimes cause a side effect of diminished sexual drive, it’s plausible that a homeopath might try a highly diluted solution of St. John’s Wort as a cure for sexual difficulties.
I’ve always thought that homeopathy could be summed up as a complete misunderstanding of how vaccines and immunotherapy work. You can see how their logic went.
"If . . .
a small dose of the infectious agent scratched into the skin can prevent a killer disease,
and . . .
regular administration of tiny amounts of pollen seems to prevent major Seasonal allergy episodes,
then . . .
Surely this tiny dose of X will prevent acute/symptomatic X from occurring. Oh, but we should dilute it to be sure it’s a small enough dose. And maybe again. And then one more time. OK, yes, one more dilution will definitely make certain we’re not giving them too much . . .
A fair accusation in my opinion. But would I be right in claiming there is no part of homeopathy that’s been reformed due to strong negative evidence?
/QUOTE]
Hopefully yes,
The UK gov realised it was spending money on homeopathy, when it could just buy candy at a candy shop , or grains of rice or something small and inoccuous, and give that out as a placebo.
"The report was even more critical of homeopathy being funded by the taxpayer through the NHS, and called on government to cut its support. Providing homeopathy on the NHS damaged trust between patients and doctor, gave patients false assurance by endorsing homeopathy, and contradicted the NHS constitution, which says people have the right to expect that decisions made on drugs and treatments are based on “proper consideration of the evidence”.
Also science and convention medicine keeps getting to the media and getting statements in like “it certainly will not cure cancer and deadly diseases, and you must not delay conventional treatments”…
I’ve never heard of any homeopathic treatment being dropped for lack of effectiveness, whether or not a research study came to that conclusion.
This is characteristic not just of homeopathy, but of woo in general. Weirdly, woo-ists point to this as a strength (while sneering at mainstream medicine for dropping ineffective and/or dangerous drugs and treatments).
The occasional modern day homeopath tries to use that similarity as an argument, even though it’s totally silly, but when Hahnemann invented homeopathy vaccines weren’t around to be misunderstood in that way.
i have long maintained that the reason for today’s (general) good health is tapwater. It contains infinitesimally small amounts of every homeopathic remedy-so drink tapwater, and you will be fine.
What’s sad in a way is that Hahnemann actually did intend to do real research medicine, which barely existed in his day. He did recognize that his treatments actually did better than many mainstream techniques, which we now know were actually counterproductive (e.g. surgery without washing hands, mercury treatment, unnecessary bloodletting, etc.). He did the best that he could with 1700’s knowledge and technology. Unfortunately, homeopathy ended up becoming a quasi-religious system of doctrine rather than a continued effort to keep up with the latest science, and it lost out when “mainstream” medicine actually caught on to research and ran with it.
A homeopath turned terrorist was arrested last week after he diluted half of an aspirin tablet in a bucket of water, dumped it into Lake Michigan, and then threatened to refill the bucket with water from the lake and re-dump the contents back in unless his demands were met.
Interesting question to which I’d really like a factual answer (but am not able to provide one, hence I’m posting just to subscribe, even though I know you can do that via thread tools). Homeopathy adherents have grown immune to the ‘there’s no evidence it works’-argument, but pointing to the fact that in actual medicine, treatments are regularly dropped if they’re found ineffective is a new line of attack, and I’d like to know if it’s workable (like the OP and many of the responders, I strongly believe it is, mostly because by and large the homeopathy peddlers have never quite gotten the hang of this whole empiricism thing).
I think the factual answer is no, but since it’s a statement for which the only possible evidence is the lack of counter-evidence we’ll just all have to wait and see.
I will reveal though that whomever is running the twitter account for the Norwegian Association of Homeopaths hasn’t been able to show any evidence either. But it took a couple of “not what I was asking about” answer before they even understood what I was actually asking.
Going to write up a blog post about the homeopath view of science when the twitter-duel has run it’s course, but so far it’s just strengthened my understanding that the homeopath approach to science is still “Only positive results are interesting and you need to prove this specific study is flawed to counter it, and if you do I have a long list of more, and what’s your expertise exactly, no I don’t care that actual experts like the NHS has rejected homeopathy, or other medical experts, na na na na na na I can’t hear you!”.
