Homeopathy, ha!

Dr. Novella has a look at homeopathy. He took part on a panel discussion, and wrote a report at the end of October. Also he has come back to argue and explain the issue further.





My Day with the Homeopaths - Part I

Yesterday I took part in a panel discussion titled, A Debate: Homeopathy - Quackery Or A Key To The Future of Medicine? hosted by the University of Connecticut Medical Center. You might think that the title is a bit of a false dichotomy, but in this case it is accurate, for the two sides of this debate occupied far ends of the belief spectrum with a wide gulf between us. Although I did not hear anything new from the homeopathy side, it was a very useful experience to hear both how they are formulating their claims and rationalizations these days, and the response and questions from the audience (which, by show of hands, was comprised at least half by practicing homeopaths).

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My Day with the Homeopaths - Part II

As I discussed on Friday, last week I was part of a panel discussion on homeopathy hosted by UCONN. It was an interesting experience, as I knew it would be. In part I of my report from the conference I talked about the plausibility arguments against homeopathy and Dr. Rustom Roy’s unconvincing response. Today I will complete my report, discussing the clinical evidence.

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Homeopathy, Anecdotal Evidence, and Plausibility

Reader “Pragmatic” left the following comment on my recent homeopathy entry and I wanted to respond to it because it is very typical of what I hear from homeopaths to defend their “craft”. A decent response would be long enough for a blog entry in itself, so that’s what I did.

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Sloppy Thinking about Homeopathy from The Guardian

Jeanette Winterson recently wrote a piece for The Guardian titled In Defense of Homeopathy. It’s always fascinating to read or hear people defending nonsense - in doing so they have no choice but to use bad evidence and bad logic. Homeopathy has no scientific plausibility and the clinical evidence shows that homeopathy does not work for any specific indication. So homeopathy’s defenders have a real task on their hands - thankfully they are armed with numerous logical fallacies and every manner of sloppy thinking, so they are up to the task.

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