One interesting thing is that homeopathy researchers produce some spectacular results. Such as this: Homeopathic pathogenetic trials produce specific symptoms different from placebo Three groups receive one of three remedies, either a placebo or one of two randomly chosen homeopathic pills. They all record their symptoms, the symptoms, sans patient and group data, is then sorted by a blinded expert. And practically everyone on homeopathic pill A reported symptoms expected for pill A, an average of 6 and close to zero other symptoms. Those on pill B an average of 5 “correct” symptoms. And those on placebo none of the symptoms reported by A or B, but on average 11 others. So not only does homeopathy work amazingly well, it actually protects you from the nocebo effect.
Sounds too good to be true? Well it’s from 2009 and I can’t find a replication. The paper doesn’t give the actual distribution of symptoms, despite there only being 25 subjects all together, and the graph that’s the only full display of the results has error bars indicating subjects gave an average of zero symptoms + or - 2. Now I’m not a statistician, but I’m fairly sure that’s indicative of a flawed application of the tools, or they have some system for registering anti-symptoms …
If it doesn’t work you just dilute it 10X and try again. There’s no such thing as a negative result, even if there’s only a statistical chance of there even being a single molecule of the remedy in the mixture.
No, I know that homeopathic remedies are a subset of woo.
So I’ll rephrase that: the alternative medicine field seems to have acknowledged that St John’s wort has risks/side effects/dangers, and many are moving away from it. Since homeopathic practitioners are a sub-set of the alternative medicine field, they also appear to be moving away from it.
To be fair homeopathy has two things working for it:
Absolutely great placebo effects. Placebo is real and it works. I’m actually disgusted that mainstream medicine does not do more to raise the placebo effect of medicines.
Fascinating (as Spock would say). I especially loved the “specific symptoms” reported by the physicians taking the ultra-diluted homeopathic remedies which should have contained not a single molecule of the “active” substance. For instance, the doc who was “loquacious all day” and the multiple participants who sneezed three times (and three times only), which we are to believe is a specific effect of one type of magic water.
I would note this was a small study, conducted by (and on) people sympathetic to homeopathy, which did not demonstrate efficacy in treating any disease, and I am highly :dubious::dubious::dubious: that the findings would be replicated if the same experiment was done by non-homeopathy believers on a similarly-sized or larger group.
This report is an example of the kind of study that homeopaths and their adherents love to cite. They are much less likely to tell you about comprehensive reviews like this one:
*"Perhaps you remember when scientists debunked homeopathy in 2002. Or 2010. Or 2014. But now a major Australian study analyzing over 1,800 papers has shown that homeopathy, the alternative treatment that relies on super-diluted substances and the principle of “like cures like” is completely ineffective.
After assessing more than 1,800 studies on homeopathy, Australia’s National Health and Medical Research Council was only able to find 225 that were rigorous enough to analyze. And a systematic review of these studies revealed “no good quality evidence to support the claim that homeopathy is effective in treating health conditions.”*
Reading some responses here gives me the feeling that herbalists would be tearing their hair out if they saw them. Herbalism (i.e. the use of St. John’s Wort) is quite different from homeopathy, even if practitioners of both use variations of the same remedy. Herbalism is a form of “allopathic” medicine, in that herbal preparations are given to alleviate negative signs and symptoms. SJW has some objective value in treating mild to moderate depression; homeopathic SJW is no better than placebo.
When I could afford to shop at real stores, I made it a point to shop at independent drug stores in the area.
In one, the owner was a kindly fellow well into his 60’s. He had both in-store formulated OTC boric acid (octic) AND a commercial homeopathy display - on the pharmacy counter.
He actually suggested I try one of them and explained the ‘little bit cures’ theory as fact.
That was my first and last stop at that store. Last time I saw it, the space was a ‘gift’ shop.
The guy couldn’t even sell his business, apparently. The independent store a block away was sold and is still a drug store.
Well it’s not just the general public that’s confused about herbs versus dilutions, it’s rather common to dabble in both.
And I’m still getting a “we’re immune to negative results”-response from the homeopath. To this null result from the only trial using a protocol they linked to (they were actually trying to promote the studies cited by the protocol designer) the reply was “Yes, but do you see what’s interesting about it?” Homeopathic drug proving of Okoubaka aubrevillei: a randomised placebo-controlled trial - PMC :smack:
“Artists and scientists realize that no solution is ever final, but that each new creative step points the way to the next artistic or scientific problem. In contrast, those who embrace religious revelations and delusional systems tend to see them as unshakable and permanent…”
It is impossible to do homeopathic drug trials, because the control sample is dosed with distilled water-which is a much more effective homeopathic remedy than 100X -diluted medicine. The control sample would indcate better resuklts