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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.
Because research has shown placebo's do have in fact, while small, a significant effect on health. As noted this is likely purely due to psychosomatic effect rather than any medical benefit but nonetheless it happens. It is a bit of a catch 22 though, since it is psychosomatic, for it to be effective, it has to actually seem like legit treatment even though it's nothing more than a trick. We humans are very strange in that regard.
though in some cases, reporting you feel better is the same as actually BEING better. Antidepressants, for instance.
This still isn't quite correct. For example: patients may want their doctors to feel as though a treatment is working and thus report an effect that isn't real ("yeah, sure - I feel better"). But the minute they walk out the door they feel just as crappy as when they entered. Other "effects" from placebo are simply bias in the study on the part of the researchers. Or the "observer" effect where people change simply because they're being watched. Placebo is a catch-all for any reported result that isn't explained by a real treatment.
Also - something quacks^Hhomeopaths never want you to know is that any reported effect *size* is minuscule from both homeopathy and placebo. So a small percentage of people reporting a tiny improvement? Your money is best spent elsewhere.
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
The reason that so many people believe that homeopathic medicines is that most of them actually WORK, because they are "contaminated" with actual medicine. For instance, there's this zinc-based nasal spray that is advertized as homeopathic, but in fact it contains a non-trivial amount of the active ingredient. It's advertized as homeopathic (a) as a marketing gimmick for those who buy into this stuff (note: people who believe in homeopathy don't read labels or even understand what's on those labels) and (b) probably some way to get around FDA regulations.
Ever heard of grapefruit seed extract? Supposedly it's this powerful antimicrobial agent. Except it's not. Often the product also contains an actual antimicrobial compound as an "inactive ingredient."
I have no idea how companies get away with this. I mean, if it works, that's fine, but to lie through their teeth about what does what in the product?
It's not that complicated: it's really hard to make a profit selling people their own mind's ability to heal them.
We've known dogs and rats can readily detect lung and many other cancers just by smelling a person's breath since at least the 50s (or was it 20s), but when was the last time you saw a cancer-sniffing dog offering instant, non-invasive cancer screening at the hospital? You haven't - there's no profit in it. Plus I think doctors are a little insecure - they have a lot of centuries of leaches and snake oil to live down, and seem to prefer the soulless gleaming of technology over anything that might suggest they're not 100% competent today (and never mind the statistics showing how incompetent they generally are - hell, most don't even understand the basic statistics necessary to properly interpret the accuracy of a medical test - testing positive for X with a 90% accurate test does NOT mean you have a 90% chance of having X, unless X is so common that most people have it.)
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
It's not that small.
Placebos have as high as a 30% response rate for many things. That's why the gold standard is to compare double blind placebo controlled data. It isn't no response rate that matters, it is the response rate relative to sugar pills that somebody tells you are medicine. Telling somebody that roasted rat pellets (convincingly) are medicine means that you will get a positive response.
Add to this data dredging, confirmation bias driven studies, tenure decisions made in your favor only if you see a positive response in your new cancer treatment, and the fact that "significant" is generally a statistical absurdity like p = 0.05, and it's no real surprise that we end up with lots of (ultimately) silly conclusions.
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Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.
Wasn't there a study that found that placebos had positive effects even when the patients were told that they were placebos?