[steeleduncan]

I'm not sure I'd classify drinking and incredibly dilute version of the poison you have just ingested to cure you of that poison as an obvious intervention that doesn't work. It seems more of an obviously useless thing to do that doesn't work.

[throwaway934876]

I fully agree, yet here I am with many friends that swear their kids stop having gum aches after applying some stuff that contains 0.5 molecules per tube of whatever. I tell them it could be their attention, the actual rubbing, just the fact that the kid thinks he's being helped. Yet none of them is up for rubbing the kids with water in a double blind way and making structured notes of the effects. "It obviously helps, everybody happy". Yeah, especially the manufacturer of said half molecule*.

(* I get that it means there is just 1 molecule in every 2nd tube, or more likely some tubes have 0, some 1, some 2, some 3, we have to take counting statistics into account.)

[mhcolburn]

Funny story related to this:

My son, who was in training to become an EMT, came to me one day concerned that my wife had several small bottles of aromatherapy (potions?, tinctures?) on her desk. He was deeply concerned that "she believed in that stuff" and felt that we needed to stage an intervention. I assured him that I doubted that she believed they had any therapeutic value, but that I would talk to her about it.

Turns out, they were sent by an acquaintance of hers who was sending out free samples to everyone she knew hoping to drum up sales for her business. My wife was going to throw them out, but wanted to look up how to "properly dispose of the contents" and rinse out the bottles before recycling them. I just laughed: dumping the contents down the drain would likely be no different than washing them--other than saving water and time.

[joshspankit]

LSD’s dose is 100 micro grams, and that’s enough for significant effects.

I’m not saying homeopathy is valid, I’m just saying the it’s hubris to dismiss low dosages as meaningless.

[throwaway934876]

Low doses in homeopathy are indicated by a p nummer, like p13, meaning 10 times diluted, 13 times. Which brings it into individual molecules per tube territory.

[votepaunchy]

Isn’t homeopathy just a way to sell the placebo effect, for which we have ample supporting evidence as the basis for medical studies?

[drekk]

They sell placebos without you needing to give money to quacks practicing 18th century pseudoscience