4 ms·

I know I'm going to get downvoted for this, but the peer-reviewed literature actually does support some beneficial effect of homeopathic remedies for some very

I know I'm going to get downvoted for this, but the peer-reviewed literature actually does support some beneficial effect of homeopathic remedies for some very specific conditions. Simply go to pubmed and type in homeopathy and you'll find the first few results showing meta-analyses of the available literature (which is actually quite a lot of studies) and you'll find evidence for the effect being more than just placebo. I think unfortunately homeopathy has been demonized because I'm sure there is plenty of snake oil being sold as homeopathic remedies, but this has led to people dismissing it entirely. I guess the biggest reason people dismiss homeopathy is we don't have an understandable mechanism for its effect, but it does seem that there is indeed an effect greater than just a placebo. People can dismiss the science, but that doesn't seem very rational to me.

beached_whale 4y ago
To be blunt, no you won’t
- civilized 4y ago
  I do not believe that homeopathy has an effect exceeding placebo, but... it is very easy to verify that the GP comment is at least partially correct: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=homeopathy https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=homeopathy Click on the link and you'll see that the top few results from PubMed for homeopathy do indeed include meta-analyses. On my side, the very first result is: #1 Homeopathy: meta-analyses of pooled clinical data. Hahn RG. Forsch Komplementmed. 2013;20(5):376-81. doi: 10.1159/000355916. Epub 2013 Oct 17. PMID: 24200828 Free article. Review. I highly doubt that the results depend on the user searching. The thing is, meta-analyses just don't prove as much as they're claimed to. There are meta-analyses "proving" all sorts of nonsense, like ESP: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/04/28/the-control-group-is-out-of-control/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/04/28/the-control-group-is-o... Meta-analysis can't turn garbage into gold. If the studies in a meta-analysis are overwhelmingly low quality, the meta-analysis will also be unreliable.
  - beached_whale 4y ago
    Thats the thing, homeopathy is an expensive placebo and not harmless when taken outside the vacuum. The linked papers are often either saying homeopathy is not efficacious or they are homeopathy groups claiming that the filtering of low quality studies are not correct, ultimately it comes down to belief in magic or greed. but in what is testable, they are expensive placebos often to the exclusion of things that work
- JadeNB 4y ago
  That was three paragraphs of claims. Which are you denying?
oaktrout 4y ago
Please share one of these meta-analyses.
- canadiantim 4y ago
  I chose not to provide my own sources so I wouldn't be accused of cherry-picking. Instead I showed how anyone could find the evidence for themselves, if they so choose. Which is to say, simply go to pubmed and type in homeopathy. You'll find plenty of peer-reviewed literature, meta-analyses even, suggesting an effect for homeopathy greater than just placebo (within limited domains of application, of course)
  - oaktrout 4y ago
    That might be understandable, but I'm a lazy skeptic and don't want to make your argument for you. You made the claim, why must I support it? If I find a meta analysis that agrees with your claim, but has obvious methodological flaws you could simply say "you picked the wrong one" or "that wasn't one of the limited domains of application". I did as you asked anyway, in my pubmed search 5 out of the top 10 results are by the same author and are published in the journal "Homeopathy". I have no doubt there are many positive studies in that journal, just as there are many true sasquatch sightings in "Sasquatch Magazine".
prego_xo 4y ago
I wouldn't argue that they're all super bad and dangerous, but it's the presentation that matters. When dubious products are put next to decades-old tried-and-true FDA-approved products, it gives the customer the illusion that they're of similar quality and thus effect. Some homeopathic drugs work on some, but not for others, and to frame it as though they're as trustworthy as their neighbor could be dangerous.
- canadiantim 4y ago
  That's a very fair point. Definitely they are nowhere near as trustworthy as other FDA-approved products
neaden 4y ago
Homeopathy is dismissed because the fundamental idea it claims, that like cures like after it is diluted to an undetectable amount to the point where there might not be a single molecule of it in the dose, is reliant on claims about physics, chemistry, and biology that quite simply have no credibility in our modern understanding of how the world works.
- lolinder 4y ago
  I'm very skeptical of homeopathy, and what you list here is a big part of why, but I will point out that it is not a scientific approach to rejecting homeopathy. If homeopathy truly has no effect, medical trials should show that. If medical trials show an effect, then it is possible that our model is wrong.
  - neaden 4y ago
    I disagree. If there is no physical plausibility for a claim it does not need experimental evidence to be dismissed. Homeopathy is essentially a claim of magic, if I claim I can cast spells on people on another continent to give them diseases you don't need to conduct a clinical trial, you can just say that I'm a fraud.
    - manytree 4y ago
      The issue with this argument is that it’s trying to assert that “science says” something isn’t true (generally one of the most valuable things laypeople derive from science, but not the spirit of reasoning that is responsible for its original determinations) rather than observing the actual phenomena and creating falsifiable hypotheses which may be tested. As a thought experiment, this line of reasoning appears akin to past epochs of scientific understanding that were not enriched with more nuanced understandings developed by looking carefully into the threshholds of prior understanding. I.e. “it’s absurd to say that a particle can be both a wave and a particle, since science says nothing about this” or for that matter suggestig that light may be be quantized at all. I actually think the “placebo effect” is actually quite fascinating and worthy of deeper understanding, yet in conversations like this the phrase appears as a dismissal like “just the placebo effect”. Which is rather a lot like saying “just this small corner of our medical understanding which, due to its apparently small scope, can have no significant impact on our broader theory but rather will be reduced to 0 at some point”. Which of course was the same response to black body radiation at the onset of early development in the theory of quantum mechanics. The placebo effect is of course a grouping of unknown mechanisms of healing, and at the very least is the very standard against which new pharmaceuticals are tested (and which is often only barely exceeded by trials of medecine that go to market).
greenshackle2 4y ago
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.

beached_whale 4y ago

To be blunt, no you won’t

civilized 4y ago
I do not believe that homeopathy has an effect exceeding placebo, but... it is very easy to verify that the GP comment is at least partially correct: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=homeopathy https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=homeopathy Click on the link and you'll see that the top few results from PubMed for homeopathy do indeed include meta-analyses. On my side, the very first result is: #1 Homeopathy: meta-analyses of pooled clinical data. Hahn RG. Forsch Komplementmed. 2013;20(5):376-81. doi: 10.1159/000355916. Epub 2013 Oct 17. PMID: 24200828 Free article. Review. I highly doubt that the results depend on the user searching. The thing is, meta-analyses just don't prove as much as they're claimed to. There are meta-analyses "proving" all sorts of nonsense, like ESP: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/04/28/the-control-group-is-out-of-control/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/04/28/the-control-group-is-o... Meta-analysis can't turn garbage into gold. If the studies in a meta-analysis are overwhelmingly low quality, the meta-analysis will also be unreliable.
- beached_whale 4y ago
  Thats the thing, homeopathy is an expensive placebo and not harmless when taken outside the vacuum. The linked papers are often either saying homeopathy is not efficacious or they are homeopathy groups claiming that the filtering of low quality studies are not correct, ultimately it comes down to belief in magic or greed. but in what is testable, they are expensive placebos often to the exclusion of things that work
JadeNB 4y ago
That was three paragraphs of claims. Which are you denying?

oaktrout 4y ago

Please share one of these meta-analyses.

canadiantim 4y ago
I chose not to provide my own sources so I wouldn't be accused of cherry-picking. Instead I showed how anyone could find the evidence for themselves, if they so choose. Which is to say, simply go to pubmed and type in homeopathy. You'll find plenty of peer-reviewed literature, meta-analyses even, suggesting an effect for homeopathy greater than just placebo (within limited domains of application, of course)
- oaktrout 4y ago
  That might be understandable, but I'm a lazy skeptic and don't want to make your argument for you. You made the claim, why must I support it? If I find a meta analysis that agrees with your claim, but has obvious methodological flaws you could simply say "you picked the wrong one" or "that wasn't one of the limited domains of application". I did as you asked anyway, in my pubmed search 5 out of the top 10 results are by the same author and are published in the journal "Homeopathy". I have no doubt there are many positive studies in that journal, just as there are many true sasquatch sightings in "Sasquatch Magazine".

prego_xo 4y ago

I wouldn't argue that they're all super bad and dangerous, but it's the presentation that matters. When dubious products are put next to decades-old tried-and-true FDA-approved products, it gives the customer the illusion that they're of similar quality and thus effect. Some homeopathic drugs work on some, but not for others, and to frame it as though they're as trustworthy as their neighbor could be dangerous.

canadiantim 4y ago
That's a very fair point. Definitely they are nowhere near as trustworthy as other FDA-approved products

neaden 4y ago

Homeopathy is dismissed because the fundamental idea it claims, that like cures like after it is diluted to an undetectable amount to the point where there might not be a single molecule of it in the dose, is reliant on claims about physics, chemistry, and biology that quite simply have no credibility in our modern understanding of how the world works.

lolinder 4y ago
I'm very skeptical of homeopathy, and what you list here is a big part of why, but I will point out that it is not a scientific approach to rejecting homeopathy. If homeopathy truly has no effect, medical trials should show that. If medical trials show an effect, then it is possible that our model is wrong.
- neaden 4y ago
  I disagree. If there is no physical plausibility for a claim it does not need experimental evidence to be dismissed. Homeopathy is essentially a claim of magic, if I claim I can cast spells on people on another continent to give them diseases you don't need to conduct a clinical trial, you can just say that I'm a fraud.
  - manytree 4y ago
    The issue with this argument is that it’s trying to assert that “science says” something isn’t true (generally one of the most valuable things laypeople derive from science, but not the spirit of reasoning that is responsible for its original determinations) rather than observing the actual phenomena and creating falsifiable hypotheses which may be tested. As a thought experiment, this line of reasoning appears akin to past epochs of scientific understanding that were not enriched with more nuanced understandings developed by looking carefully into the threshholds of prior understanding. I.e. “it’s absurd to say that a particle can be both a wave and a particle, since science says nothing about this” or for that matter suggestig that light may be be quantized at all. I actually think the “placebo effect” is actually quite fascinating and worthy of deeper understanding, yet in conversations like this the phrase appears as a dismissal like “just the placebo effect”. Which is rather a lot like saying “just this small corner of our medical understanding which, due to its apparently small scope, can have no significant impact on our broader theory but rather will be reduced to 0 at some point”. Which of course was the same response to black body radiation at the onset of early development in the theory of quantum mechanics. The placebo effect is of course a grouping of unknown mechanisms of healing, and at the very least is the very standard against which new pharmaceuticals are tested (and which is often only barely exceeded by trials of medecine that go to market).

greenshackle2 4y ago

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.