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Homeopathy Turns Out To Be Useless For Treating Medical Conditions
MightyMartian writes It should prove to be no surprise for most rational people, but a group of Australian researchers have determined that homeopathy is completely useless at treating medical conditions. Researchers sifted through 1,800 research papers on homeopathy and found no reliable report that showed homeopathic remedies had any better results than placebos.
Of course, anyone with compelling evidence to the contrary (or better yet, proof to the contrary) is encouraged to post links in the comments below.
He offered $1,000,000 to anyone who could prove homeopathy works. Nobody won though some quack named George Vithoulkas, whose International Academy for Classical Homeopathy is based on an island in Greece, claims Randi backed out of a previous challenge issued early in the 21st Century; don't know about that and the new challenge was instated in 2011 and not a peep from George Vithoulkas as far as I'm aware.
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/ar...
Did you ever wake up in the morning, with a Zombie Woof behind your eyes? -- FZ
This represents a gross misunderstanding of the placebo effect.
Placebo has no physiological effect (like homeopathy). Often people taking placebo, homeopathy, etc. will *report* feeling better - but this does not mean they are better in any meaningful sense of the word.
More info here: http://www.csicop.org/si/show/...
It is very unethical to sell somebody a treatment which does not *treat* anything.
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
Significant as in statistically significant.
Things that reach statistical significance are often rather small differences clinically. So unless you clarify exactly what type of significance you are looking at it the effects can be quite small. You see this is 'regular' medicine quite a bit. A drug company will advertise a 'significant difference' between drug x and placebo, but they are looking at one of various statistical tests showing that the effect is real. However, when you look at it in clinical terms, it's perhaps 2-3% better - an effect you would never see in practice. But it's real....
Placebos can be effective in clinical terms - sometimes up to 10 - 20% effect which, although not earth shattering, is on par with many 'regular medicine' treatments. Homeopathy is basically a placebo effect. It's a fairly harmless one - if it is actually water. The caveat being it might prevent the patient from seeking 'real' medical attention in a timely fashion. That can be devastating at times, other times it can actually be useful.
It gets complicated.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
But a placebo can still be effective even if you know it's a placebo: http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/jou...
Three is my favourite number