| Clicking five semi-random links on the first page of pubmed is not a comprehensive review of the literature. If you search homeopathy on Cochrane, who are somewhat the gold standard for reviews of medical evidence, 6 out of 6 that I checked concluded there's not enough evidence to say it works (there are more but I got bored and didn't check them all). > People can dismiss the science, but that doesn't seem very rational to me. On the contrary, homeopathy is like a low-level skill check for rationality. If you can be convinced homeopathy is real by a questionable grab-bag of studies, you can be convinced of anything. There are also studies and meta-analyses showing parapsychic phenomena are real. It's not that difficult to produce positive studies if you're motivated enough. It's not just a case of "mechanism of action is unknown", it's that given the nature of homeopathic remedies, any possible (non-placebo) mechanism of action for it goes against our current understanding of physics and chemistry. And any suggested mechanism for how water with not a single molecule of active ingredient is effective would additionally have to explain why it only works if it's packaged and sold at your local drugstore. Tap water should be high-strength homeopathic medicine for everything. After all I'm sure people have dumped homeopathic ingredients down the sink at some point. Water is cycled so most water should have most homeopathic properties already by now. |