Research into homeopathy: data falsification, fabrication and manipulation
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Re: Research into homeopathy: data falsification, fabrication and manipulation
#2I wish more German doctors would acknowledge what utter quackery homeopathy is. Three separate doctors wanted to prescribe me homeopathy stuff last year, ended up not getting any help at all.
Re: Research into homeopathy: data falsification, fabrication and manipulation
#3Homeopathy is total BS, but the placebo effect is real. Is there a way that medical science can allow people to benefit from the latter without rewarding quacks who push the former?
Re: Research into homeopathy: data falsification, fabrication and manipulation
#4What I don't get about homeopathy is that there's not even a plausible mechanism for it to work. So research into its effectiveness is like studying how well rocks repel tigers[1]. It seems necessary to show that a homeopathic "medicine" is substantially different than plain old water first.
[1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4GzMizVAl-0&pp=ygUTc2ltcHNvbnM...
Re: Research into homeopathy: data falsification, fabrication and manipulation
#5Homeopathy is total BS, but the placebo effect is real. Is there a way that medical science can allow people to benefit from the latter without rewarding quacks who push the former?
prescribe distilled water.
Re: Research into homeopathy: data falsification, fabrication and manipulation
#6Obligatory Mitchell and Webb: Homoeopathy Accident and Emergency Ward
Re: Research into homeopathy: data falsification, fabrication and manipulation
#7Homeopathy is total BS, but the placebo effect is real. Is there a way that medical science can allow people to benefit from the latter without rewarding quacks who push the former?
Yeah, homeopathy works due to the placebo effect and further boosted by people that subscribe to the anti-allopathic or Western medicine religion. I think it should be studied similar to how people go to Godmen for healing and report success stories - placebo effect + religious faith / belief.
Re: Research into homeopathy: data falsification, fabrication and manipulation
#8> 128th ‘German Medical Assembly’ recently declared that: “the use of homeopathy … is not an option that is compatible with rational medicine, the requirement for the best possible treatment and an appropriate understanding of medical responsibility and medical ethics”.
I find this interesting because it was a German example a few years ago that demonstrated that homeopathy could be ethical in a specific case.
My mother in law (in Germany) had cancer, and eventually things reached the point where any further chemotherapy was pointless. So she went home. But they stocked her up with homeopathic "therapies" and she was quite diligent in taking them in the morning and thropugh the day. At first I was appalled, but then I realised that they gave her a sense of agency over her care. I think this had important psychological value over the beginning of the terminal phase of her life.
Now I can't believe this works for everyone -- I can't imagine I would waste my remaining time on such nonsense. But I don't think she had a good grasp of science (she always wanted one of her kids, or me, to go with her to the doctor and to explain things to her) and she never had any access to the Internet to look things up, so she was probably the ideal candidate to benefit from this nonsense. Drinking water out of tiny bottles isn't any different from praying at that stage of your life and that's considered acceptable and even unremarkable in certain circles.
PS: The Ukraine war made me think of her cancer -- it was a very unusual one and I have always believed it was due to some Chernobyl fallout.
Re: Research into homeopathy: data falsification, fabrication and manipulation
#9I wish more German doctors would acknowledge what utter quackery homeopathy is. Three separate doctors wanted to prescribe me homeopathy stuff last year, ended up not getting any help at all.
I think doctors do this when they want to give you a placebo. Pharmacies don’t carry placebos but they sure do carry a lot of products that don’t do anything except make you believe you took some medicine.
Re: Research into homeopathy: data falsification, fabrication and manipulation
#10If homeopathy "theory" says that the water retains an "imprint" of other chemicals it encountered, clearly the tap water coming into your house is horribly contaminated with the fish pee, ozone (from UV purification treatment) and the pipes themselves.
I briefly considered selling a device that would "reverse" those consequences so the water from your tap would be homeopathically neutralized. But it just seemed unethical to take advantage of the poorly educated. It's bad enough there are people selling crystals, bibles, and magic charms -- selling a scam-device like this is just as unethical.