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The weird thing about homeopathy is that it's advertised as selling poison, but actually isn't. One of the ridiculous premises is that "like cures like", so it should be poison, but then there's the other ridiculous premise of diluting it to make it more powerful.

except when it is selling dangerous levels of poison:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucelee/2017/01/28/fda-toxic-b...

But isn't the lying necessary to be a placebo?

And what is the cure worth? How do you measure that?

Not necessary apparently, https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/placebo-can-work-even-kn...

How is it supposed to work as a placebo if you're told "hey, this is a glass of fresh water: drink it. And by the way, it's free'.

In other words the lie is integral to the working of the placebo. This is the whole source of the issue.

It does work even without deception, which makes it all the weirder. It's covered in the article.

What's interesting is that it seems to depend on which truth you tell. To oversimplify, "take this, it's not medicine" doesn't help. "Take this, it's not medicine but it will help you anyway" does.