[Nursie]

> If you think the "placebo effect" is a thing, then homeopathy is justified even if the only person who believes in it is the patient.

That depends really - some people are deterred from taking real medicine by homeopaths, and there have been a few high profile deaths where people had been persuaded that homeopathy was superior to, say, mainstream cancer treatments.

Further, even if you believe that homeopathy is somehow a 'useful' placebo, that doesn't justify any of the claims of efficacy that are made about it.

Unfortunately yes, it is quite mainstream and there are billion-dollar businesses making money from the gullible with this stuff.

[perl4ever]

Are you arguing in defense of placebos versus homeopathic medication? That is, there is a correct way to make and market "medications" that don't do anything, and a correct way to deceive patients, which is ethical and useful?

[DanBC]

Yes, isn't that obvious?

When companies get the dilution wrong people die. Here's an example of a company that got warned once, and then went on to get it wrong again, which killed at least 10 children and harmed hundreds more. This company spent years ignoring all the warnings.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/10/fda-homeopathic-teet...

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/hundreds-of-babie...

[Nursie]

Me? No I don't think that marketing placebos is honest or useful either, unless you market them directly as such* . I only really mention them in relation to what I was replying to.

(*in some cases the placebo effect appears even with a known placebo)

[perl4ever]

How do you determine a placebo is "known"? A basic pattern of thinking, when faced with contradictory information, is to assume some of it is false (whether or not you know specific reasons) and some of it is appropriate to rely on. People also rely on their sense of what everyone else is doing to figure out what to trust. So it's a false model if you assume that a disclosure means something is "known".

[Nursie]

I don't honestly care and I'm not really interested in dissecting the finer points of whether someone knows whether they're getting a placebo or not. You brought up placebos, you tell me what you think about them.

I'm in the homeopathy-is-a-load-of-horseshit camp, not the gives-two-shits-about-placebos camp.