Backhanded celebration of homeopathy
It’s homeopathic awareness week! Neurologica wants to take full advantage:
According to the British Homeopathic Association . . . June 14-21 is Homeopathy Awareness Week. I would like to do my part to increase awareness of homeopathy. . . I am all in favor of homeopathic awareness. The scientific community should use this week to make the public acutely aware of the fact that homeopathy is, put simply, utter rubbish.
Neurologica has put together a detailed account of the world’s most over-embellished version of the placebo effect. Consider the homeopathic advocates’ arguments for why homeopathic drugs can’t be tested:
Many homeopaths have argued that homeopathy cannot be subjected to the same type of studies as are conventional drugs. This is because each patient, from a homeopathic perspective, is unique, and cannot be lumped into a single category. Whereas conventional medicine can compare treatments of 1000 diabetics with two different medications, homeopaths cannot produce large numbers of patients with the same totality of illness requiring the exact same treatment. In making this argument, that of untestability, such homeopaths are securing their position in the halls of pseudoscience, for if their is one single quality which separates scientific theories from nonscientific ones, it is falsifiability. If homeopathic remedies cannot be tested, then they can never be grounded in science.
Neurologica’s article is well written and well documented. I agree entirely.
