Backhanded celebration of homeopathy

It’s homeopathic awareness week!   Neurologica wants to take full advantage:

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p style=”padding-left: 30px;”>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.

Image by raimondiphotography at Flickr (creative commons)
Image by raimondiphotography at Flickr (creative commons)

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 there 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.

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Erich Vieth

Erich Vieth is an attorney focusing on civil rights (including First Amendment), consumer law litigation and appellate practice. At this website often writes about censorship, corporate news media corruption and cognitive science. He is also a working musician, artist and a writer, having founded Dangerous Intersection in 2006. Erich lives in St. Louis, Missouri with his two daughters.

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    Erich Vieth

    Because they are unregulated, homeopathic "remedies" can be dangerous, as evidenced by nasal spray Zicam, which has destroyed the sense of smell in more than 100 consumers.

    Consumers should stop using Zicam Cold Remedy nasal gel and related products because they can permanently damage the sense of smell, federal health regulators said Tuesday.

    http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31388177/ns/health-co

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