Your comment is in violation of the rule (applicable to comments):
> Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents.
Avoid commenting with tangents that have nothing to do with the article. If you don't agree, the site moderator dang can explain to you with administrative action.
Homeopathic medicine is a discredited theoretical explanation for a phenomenon that empirical testing shows does not exist. For 'homeopathy' to be right, it would need the to become 'right' twice -
first: new data would need to begin existing, and then second: the homeopathic mechanisms would need to become the most plausible explanation for that data
Imagine the number of citations you could get for a solid double blind study that showed homeopathy to beat placebo. The only better impact I could imagine would be showing that climate change doesn’t actually exist.
There's enough money in 'crank health' that, if it were possible to publish something that might have a chance of lending some credibility (and thus expanding the breadth of the vulnerable customer base), then I would think it would have been done already.
This implies to me that the counter-evidence is strong and complete enough to discourage 'investment' into such a pursuit.
But there is many order of magnitude more money invested in preventing the publication of something like that..
All the "reputed" journals who gets funded by pharma would not touch such a study, despite any merits it have. This is so apparent to anyone who is not completely oblivious of how the world work that no one in their right mind will even attempt to fund such a study...
You get funding for such a study the same way you get funding for anything else: first you run cheap small studies, perhaps in mice, perhaps observational, that show an interesting effect and motivate why you need money to run a proper clinical study.
I think you should look into NCCAM funding[1], how much that was, and how many useful treatments came out of it, before speculating that 'funding for the research to be undertaken' is the issue stalling clinical acceptance of complementary/alternative treatments like homeopathy. I do believe the amount was about 2 billion US dollars.
Don't know about right, but for a while it worked better than "regular" medicine. At least it wouldn't kill you, when the alternative was intensive bloodlettings and purgatives.
The maternal mortality rate dropped from 18% to less than 2%, and he published a book of his findings, Etiology, Concept and Prophylaxis of Childbed Fever, in 1861.
Chiropractory is another pseudoscience that started early and has been surprisingly resilient in spite of the lack of evidence. I was flabbergasted when I learned in my 30s that this was a made up medicine by an OG antivaxxer and magnetic medicine proponent due to the fact that insurance would still pay for it when I was a kid at least, and real doctors still recommended it on occasion.[1][2]
The problem with making claims about the chiropractic practices is that it spans such a huge range of "absolute bullshit" to "physically grounded adjustments". Joints and vertebrae (especially) really can be out of alignment, and you can absolutely see that on imaging. Muscles in constant tension can be self-reinforcing in ways that don't easily correct themselves without an external force. My wife has significant back issues as a result of various injuries -- one leading to an SI joint that frequently pops out of place, one due to an injury that fractured most of the spinal processes -- and you can absolutely feel the "pop" when an adjustment helps something slide back in place. This is validated by imaging and sports medicine, not just chiropractic quacks.
At the same, adjusting your back isn't going to cure your cancer, no matter what idiots with fake degrees say.
The challenge is that the latter is just as stupid as homeopathy, but whereas homeopathy really has no redeeming qualities beyond the placebo effect, at least chiropractic practices actually do sometimes have groundings in reality.
The issue with changing the alignment of bones with an “adjustment” is it’s your body keeping things in that position. Physical therapy is almost always a better long term fix because it can actually strengthen muscles and increase flexibility through stretching enabling someone to actually maintain proper alignment.
Physical manipulation can work, but the most useful techniques are in widespread use such as dealing with a dislocated shoulder. Which leaves chiropractic practices with almost nothing that’s both unique and particularly useful.
Your understanding of modern homeopathy is rooted in misconceptions. Many homeopathic products actually contain a sufficient amount of the active ingredient that they absolutely can conceivably have a significant biological effect.
> The problem with making claims about the chiropractic practices is that it spans such a huge range of "absolute bullshit" to "physically grounded adjustments".
No it’s not a problem. When the founder claims he got the information from a ghost of a doctor 50 years ago, the whole thing is bullshit from the ground up. It’s pseudoscience.
Chiropractic “medicine” isn’t just claiming that they can make your joints feel better, the claim that it can cure cancer is at the core of it. It’s no better than a massage, but wants to claim the title of “medicine” or “doctor” for its practitioners when that’s as far from the truth as homeopathic “medicine”.
As I recall homeopathy does pretty fine statistically compared to many treatments. Not because the water does anything, but because the provider has time, and talks to patients about their problems and life.
A lot of doctors are shoving people out the door based on their first thought inside a short appointment as they type up a prescription.
Homeopathy is ineffective kookery, but our medical system has some well known gaps.
There is no basis to suggest that any product uses this property of water. As for homeopathy, it isn't one thing. The effects, if any, can vary greatly by the substance and the concentration. Some low-dilution products work and many high-dilution products don't. There is such a thing as excessive dilution. Anyone who is painting a simpler picture of it is almost certainly wrong.
You're speaking of classical homeopathy, not practical observation. In practice there are many homeopathic products with varying dilutions, many of which have a meaningful amount of the substance, and therefore the distinct possibility of a biological effect.
Perhaps some very traditional ones would. Most people are just concerned with addressing their symptoms.
Rightly or wrongly, homeopathic products are considered medicines, not supplements, and people in general are very mindful of spending money on medicines that don't work.
> Rightly or wrongly, homeopathic products are considered medicines, not supplements, and people in general are very mindful of spending money on medicines that don't work.
[Citation needed].
People spend enormous amounts of money on junk "cures" and have done for centuries. Homeopathy is just one of the many current such scams.
Agree! Someone once told me that homeopathic doctors often put significant amounts of allopathic medicine in their “homeopathic” concoctions. Does wonders for effectiveness! Perpetuating the classical myth in this manner is also great for business!
Of course, there are also a number of cases where western “supplements” were caught containing actual prescription medicine, not just natural precursors or such. Same idea…
That might be true but it's absolutely not what I was getting at. Certainly I have never had or even seen a supplement containing any prescription medicine.
My comment was strictly in the context of ingredients and isolated labeled products that are used only in the homeopathic space.
"Water has memory, and whilst its memory of a long lost drop of onion juice seems infinite, it somehow forgets all the poo it's had in it."
- excerpt from Storm, by Nick Minchin
Wait, wouldn't it just be "Oh, science just made a mistake, and that is how it progresses"...
Despite the "consensus" thoroughly "debunking" it conclusively many times...
Also, if it ever happens, I think it would be during course of many decades that all the existing "scientists" can save their faces, and new generations won't care about "Science" being wrong once again, despite all the projections of "certainity" back then..