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" . . .for insomnia, you take a pill that contains super-diluted coffee." I obviously knew that the stimulant effect of coffee is diminished as you dilute it, but I had no idea there was a threshold at which it would actually start to put you to sleep.

An exception to FDA rules are a homeopathic medicines, which are subject to essentially no regulation so long as they are intended to treat "minor" conditions. Homeopathic medicines are the ones where you dilute as much as possible some "agent" that would be thought to cause a similar condition. So, for example, for insomnia, you take a pill that contains super-diluted coffee. No, I'm not making this shit up, go to your nearest whole foods and check at the homeopathic medicine section. On the back of the box (or tube or whatever) it will say ACTIVE INGREDIENT: give indications, and will nowhere say something like "these claims have not been evaluated by the FDA" (which they haven't).

Isn't "homeopathic M.D." an oxymoron? As long as we're throwing links around here are some about homeopathy:

Homeowatch (cousin of Quackwatch)
The Skeptic's Dictionary

And if you want to spew anecdotes, when my dad was in his early 60's he could barely walk across a room without being out of breath and had had a minor heart attack. With 4 weeks preparation with drugs and diet to prep for major surgery, he went through a triple bypass operation. After the recovery of a few months the results were astounding.

Bypass operations are not to be taken lightly, but that doesn't mean there aren't successful results.

There are lots and lots of Doctors (and not necessarily Medical Doctors, this includes physicists, biologists, etc.) that subscribe to some of these quackery beliefs, not even limited to simply reflexology or acupuncture. Dowsing, astrology, HOMEOPATHY all that stuff is just as unproven and fake as the next. The belief in some of these things even falls down to psychological factors (such as the ideomotor effect (2) with regards to dowsing, and placebo effect for most - if not all - alternative medicine practices). It's interesting how a physicist can believe that dowsing really works, but they are out there!

In the case of the "traditional chinese medicine", the arguement is that it has been around for 2000 years So It Must Work!. Unfortunately, just cause it's been around for a long time, doesn't mean it works either.

Aside from the personal/psychological influences that cause people to follow these things, a huge factor are the people marketing the products and therapies.

Snake oil charmers tend to be able to sell this stuff by scaring people with lies. Fear that the "industry" is out to get you. Fear that "drugs" are poisoning you. It's easy to get someone to believe that there are conspiracies (that are conveniently unprovable) working against them and that the only way out is their form of alternative medicine.

A lot of people lured to alternative medicine are done so because they feel they have been somehow wronged by the MD profession. Like they believe they have a true illness that MDs can't locate/cure (because it doesn't exist). So they go to a naturopath who is only too happy to say "Of course there's something wrong with you! Now that will be $50 a week for therapy plus $35 a month for my homeopathic pills. Don't worry, they are 100x diluted so they are SUPER-effective!". Lots of alternative medicine practitioners even go so far as to claim you have an illness you don't know about, and that only they can cure it! Colonix for example is one such thing, as well as people who say you should be taking TONS of vitamin supplements for various reasons. Anyone heard of magnet therapy (Quackwatch Info)?

The sad thing about it all, is that it's difficult to combat with logic and sense. You say "but its not proven" and they say "You just have to believe!" or "So-and-so said it worked, so it must! I don't care if science says it doesn't".

If you go to http://quackwatch.org/ there is an insane amount of information there with regards to how people get sucked in to this stuff.

A treatment is not confirmed to be working on the basis of testimony alone. There are good reasons for that and in particular the fact that following a new treatment also includes a change in lifestyle and without knowing which parameters count and which do not, you can't infer that any progress is attributable to the treatment alone.
Another reason is the lack of properly measurable quantity to actually define improvement. For some it will be subjective, for others it will be objective, but what counts is to quantify that improvement and verify it over a large sample of people being treated for the same symptoms folowing the same methods.

Honest people have come to believe very strongly in all sort of stuff because it worked for them, however it is very hard to shake the notion that it isn't enough to confirm actual effectiveness.
Would you take a treatment that was found to work in only 1% of cases?
Such a treatment wouldn't even be considered interesting, especially if others exist that have a better success rate.
Now if you're one of the 1% for which that treatment was effective -for whatever reason-, then you too would be a strong believer in that treatment because it worked for you, but that doesn't translate in it being an effective treatment that should be recommended.

The fact that homeopathy was born out of thin air 200 years ago at a time when medical science was in its infancy, and that it has not changed its practices even though progress in other sciences have been unable to find any trace of supporting evidence to those practices should be a big red signal that there is something off with homeopathy.

Homeopathy is armless (http://www.homeowatch.org/articles/jaroff.html) except that it may detract people from the treatment they actually need.

That being said, if it works for you, then by all mean use it. However, dont be too quick to see your homeopath before seing actual doctors next time you have something: Medecine's goal is to actually help patients using methods that are proven to work most of the time.

There is no such thing as "alternative medecine": medecine will use whatever works for real, that's why it actually progresses. Alternatives have to call themselve that way simply because they have not been able to make a sufficiently strong case for themselves, otherwise they would be embraced. That's the difference between herbalism and pharmacognosy for instance: the former can't prove effectiveness and is rooted in unwavering faith for "traditional wisdom" and the latter actually uses the plants that are proven to work to help people.

Not long ago (in 2002), there was a very good, very scientific test done by Horizon on the BBC using the very same technique.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/2512105.stm

It seems that part of the problem in the Belfast findings may be due to the fact that the cells that had a reaction were manually counted, possibly introducting a bias known as "the experimenter effect", of which little is really known apart from the fact that it exists (a bit like the placebo effect).
There is little doubt that the experimenter acted in good faith, but the fact was that the very controlled experiment commissioned by the Horizon (involving the Royal Society and a number of specialists in various relevant fields) ended up showing a statistical no-greater-than-chance result.

Now, before you say "how can you trust a TV show", I'll say that Horizon is no ordinary TV show. It's probably the best, most balanced and scientific accurate show ever to grace the screen. Those who are lucky enough to be able to watch it will probably agree.

There is another large scale experiment being done at the moment on homeopathy, invoving both homeopaths, scientists and people like James Randi.
Randi predicted that the experiment will show no more than we already know today, that homeopathy is not worth much as a medical practice, but that most believer will be undeterred by any amount of evidence.
The real question to test a practitionner of alternative medecine is to ask: what would it take you to admit that it doesn't work?
For many, nothing will.

But it's worth investigating anyway, I'm ready to consider that there is some benefit to it if tangible, undisputable proof was found. It would certainly help to use homeopathy if its field of action -if there is any- was actually well known, and if it is doing better there than other types of medecine. http://www.homeowatch.org/

I am sure that none of us would want to hear any jitter that sounds like ass--i.e. like this--but that doesn't mean that any of us would buy a $1900.00 USB cable. Also, the USB power is strong enough to power the iGrill (which is great, by the way, because now I don't have to carry around the bulky Zero-Point generator while I'm hunting when I have a laptop anyway), so we also don't have to worry about the power line impedance so much, unless we use kilometres long USB cables, which is not so popular as it used to be with null modems any more, since we have an easy access to the Interweb.

Now seriously, I have noticed that people usually stop listening when I start talking about the "science stuff" so they don't really care if it is Fourier series or quantum cleaning of dirty electrons, since they don't listen anyway. As long as it sounds scientific, it is scientific, for all they care. And of course I must be lying to them because I am only their friend while the guy who just sold them a wooden potentiometer knob for $500 must be an expert, because otherwise he wouldn't have a job selling expensive equipment, right? Here the cognitive dissonance kicks in: "I am not a sucker, but I have just bought an ugly wooden knob for $500, therefore people who say that buying ugly wooden knobs for $500 is dumb must be mistaken."

Now, when they say that it was an "expert" in the audiophile store who has told them--or the "expert" in the Stereophile Magazine who has written--what they are telling you about, what they need here is a good ipse dixit and argumentum ad populum, for they won't listen to any other argument at all.

At that point, I usually shout at them: "Does Deutsche Grammophon use this junk to 'purify' their music while they record it? No? Then why on Earth do you think I need it to listen?! Now, will you excuse me, I need to drink my snake oil," and I leave in furious anger. Later when I talk to them, they sometimes ask me: "Are you serious that the record industry don't use such cables? Why?" To which I answer: "Because they are not bloody idiots, that's why! Do you need to spend millions on sound equipment? Then go to the recording studio, see what they use, and buy the same stuff. You will still be a sucker to buy something that you don't need, but at least you will have something that actually works."

It is surprisingly difficult to explain the truth to anyone who have bought audiophile lacquer or the wine clip, but it is still nothing compared to e.g. homeopathy or any other quackery when we are talking about peoples' health and lives, not just some useless junk. People will just not accept that they are suckers. Remember this story?

Even opioids are rarely addictive when properly used for pain management under the supervision of a doctor. Do not mistake physical dependence (a routine, expected and manageable occurrence with long-term opioid use) for "addiction", by definition a harmful psychological disorder. Countless people suffer needlessly from chronic pain because of unfounded fears of addiction. Opioids are actually much less toxic than many over-the-counter pain drugs, especially acetaminophen (Tylenol).

If it's just a scam, you have nothing to fear. Sure a few place might have be bad for HF for a year, but that's nothing new. A scam doesn't last, doesn't grow. I've seen no sign this is a real threat.

Are you sure? What about Herbalife? What about homeopathy? What about Microsoft? What about Scientology? What about Bush? Are you sure that scams don't last and don't grow? Or maybe just because I am paranoid there are no conspiracies in the world whatsoever? I wouldn't be so sure there is really "nothing to fear." Hell, I wouldn't probably even have posted those links if I wasn't sure my arse is covered! I think it is very important to talk about the Broadband Over Power Lines scam, exactly because it is a scam.

There are also Quacks who sell Books and Bogus Cures based on Bogus Claims and Bad Science.

Here is a good place to start if you'd like to understand why Chelation Therapy and Homeopathy are bunk.

If you don't want the specific debunkings because you're afraid someone might have something negative to say about your particular "alternative health remedy" (which is obviously Not Bunk, because You're No Mere Tool of the Medical Conspiracy, and because You're Obviously Too Smart To Fall For Bunk, and because Science Doesn't Have All The Answers Anyways!), at least read the articles on How Quackery Sells 25 ways to spot it and do your own due diligence.

...because homeopathy explicitly includes the idea that things get more powerful as the dilution decreases, even past the point that the original substance no longer has even a molecule in the final product. A homeopathy practictioner would thus claim that these exposures are at far too high a level to work, and still need to be diluted by a factor of, oh, at least 10^10 to be more useful, probably more. (That number is not a typo. Yes, Homeopathy shoots right past Advogadro's Number and never looks back.) Homeopathy explicitly claims to be many times more beneficial then these low-level exposures. As they are completely wrong, they still don't win any points. (Nor is this as big a surprise as the article writer thinks it is, it merely establishes some examples of a long-known general principle.)

For those wishing to learn more about homeopathy, please see Homeowatch, and in particular this page which provides an overview of homeopathy.