Research into homeopathy: data falsification, fabrication and manipulation

Basically having them "ironman" the opposite side of the argument can cause people to start to think more objectively about the issue. However, if the person says 10/10 there apparently isn't much that can be done.

I've never tried this myself as I don't have any flat earther or homeopathy believers in my entourage, but it does seem to make sense and I've used this to question some of my beliefs myself. Not saying it would work with your family members either though.

I mean, this is the allure of all quackery, conspiracy theories, cults, and other forms of "alternative" facts: The mainstream doesn't want you to know this secret that I'm sharing with you! Doctors hate this one simple trick! Your financial planner is lying to you, but if you buy my seminar, you'll learn the truth! The government is silencing us through mainstream social media, but if you come to Social Network Blah, you will be able to hear the truth! Employment is a scam, but if you join Amway you can learn the real truth about business and your own boss! My religion offers the truth that the rest hide from you!

Somehow, human beings have become vulnerable to "Truth FOMO" and when these guys really get their hooks into you and you start to base your very identity on their truth, well, you can't back out of it without invalidating your entire identity.

There are some medicines that do actually work, but they're advertised toward the people who believe in homeopathy, so they are labeled as homeopathic.

A large chunk of the problem is that many common self-selection and over-the-counter medications are only by a doctor's prescription in German speaking countries.

Low risk medications, which in other countries a consumer can safely select and administer, are only available over-the-counter at pharmacies, other low risk medications require a script - examples of these include basic pain medication(OTC), NSAIDs(RX), PPIs(RX), skin treatments(OTC), anti-fungals(RX), anti-biotic drops(RX). Pharmacies also generally have short hours on Saturday, and are not open on Sundays.

Combining these factors leads to people seeking out a "solution", and those "solutions" are either homeopathic or merely just alcohol, since neither require a health care professional's assistance. There is also no shortage of homeopathic stores that promise therapeutic benefits, such as addressing fertility issues and chronic pain. Regulators regulate medicine, so non-medicines often fly under the radar, even when they're promoting medical therapies.

There's so many ways that this system fails in comparison to modern approaches:

Should a woman not have a sufficient stock of pain killers on a sunday during period cramps, her options would be to either beg a neighbour, or got to the emergency department of a hospital. In other countries, she could simply visit a supermarket or convenience store.

Children with head lice can't receive a treatment without a doctor's prescription, but there's no shortage of proven ineffective products stocking pharmacy shelves, hoping that some desperate parent will buy it just to see if it works.

A person with conjunctivitis needs to first visit a doctor, potentially waiting hours just to get the script, then hope that the pharmacy is still open. (Doctor's offices are frequently bogged down with people visiting for minor ailments because they can't get basic medications without it.)

In the realm of sexual health: While other countries have dispensing sexual health clinics with easy access to treatments and prophylactic medications, those afflicted in Germany and similar are often needlessly waiting, or worse simply spreading disease. With some medications and inoculations only available via a hospital appointment.

Overall it breeds distrust in the medical system and promotes unhealthy, worthless, scammy "alternatives".

In the worst case scenario, they accept lack of mechanism because "there are things science doesn't know", especially if their personal experience (random charlatan demonstration) is duped into belief.

You're right that no further study is needed for homeopathy, it simply cannot work at these kinds of dilutions.

Engineers and logical types take everything too much at face value (e.g. astrology and personality types, as well as health and fitness). The reality is usually that neither camp /really/ knows what they're doing, but have plausible (to them) explanations. Though empiricism is much more mentally rigorous than woo-woo/sham.

Generally, if the treatment achieves the patient's desired goals -- I don't think it matters (barring severe ethical concerns like body integrity dysphoria). People not generally educated in a Western background are more likely to be susceptible to placebo or "magic" (this includes the less educated in the anglosphere but also the majority in foreign countries).

Barring life-saving procedures, most elective medicine is -- imco -- on a similar, if not slightly higher standing compared to homeopathy et al.

It also does affect people for sure... For things like a very real ear infection... the a-holes will leave kids in agony for weeks before parents see a proper physician for antibiotics.

Note Psychoneuroimmunology is also interesting, but a more legitimate area of scientific study. It takes a deep scientific look into induced immune system disorders, and unlike cult nonsense it has quantifiable scientific studies (usually done with rodents) that can be replicated in your own institutional labs.

Cult Homeopathy is just expensive child neglect in my opinion... offering the worst outcomes for the naive and superstitious.

But then, the next concept is "like cures like". Why do you think people are so immune to fish piss?

You see plenty of examples of this on the market already as-is in different sectors. A part for a Ford GT could cost 500 bucks where the same part for a Ford Fiesta could cost 50.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtYkyB35zkk

I thought about doing the same during COVID when people were believing ludicrous claims about nanobots in the vaccine.

I was thinking that you could make a nice chunk of coin selling those old acam magnetic bracelets that 'deactivate the nanobots so that you can get the vaccine protection without the bots'

That way people would be helped by your scam product. And another way to look at it is that these people are going to be scammed by someone, it might as well be you, some with morals and not someone who is going to use that scamoney to move onto a bigger and bigger scam until they scam their way into the office of president.

Unless one of the big names in naturopathy gives your widget the thumbs up, the whackos won't buy it. In order to get them to give your widget the thumbs up, you'd have to give them a take.

Once you get 1-2 big names on board - now all the others have to decide whether to go with the flow (while not getting paid), try to shake you down, or go against the big names.

Reiki is a good example of this bullshit. You can get "certified" to a certain level, but the first question that people want to know is "who trained you", and they essentially follow a flowchart to see if your training came from the "good" reiki practitioners.

You can rest assured that other people definitely did and indeed are still doing it. Ask me how I know.

(A couple of late-night rabbit holes, of course. From positive crystals you’re supposed to put in a water filter to magic pots that turn dead, sterilised water into the pure, living good stuff. The Internet can be very depressing).

I'd like to suggest that starting a thread based on "${specific_religion} is false" won't go well on HN.

Or was your point more about the selling of them? Sorry if I misunderstood.

Grapefruit does not "alter the metabolism." Furanocoumarin binds to a receptor in the gut which causes some medications to pass through the gut much faster than normal which affects the level of the medicine in the blood.

That has nothing to do with "metabolism."

It also only affects some medications.

You might want to refrain from commenting on medicine until you have an actual science-based education in it.

You might be interested in the work of Ted Kaptchuk and Kathryn Hall [1], for example. (Kaptchuk is a trained acupuncturist with a degree in Chinese medicine, but basically re-educated himself in western medicine, and is a highly regarded scientist.)

One of their insights is that placebo effect comes from neural modulation of pain receptors, and that the placebo effect has specific limitations. For example, the placebo effect cannot cure cancer or make a cold go away, but it can lessen pain and reduce inflammation through hormone signaling.

[1] https://www.harvardmagazine.com/node/39354

It’s like, at some point we discovered the placebo effect, which has got to have been a pretty shocking result, right? I just can’t fathom that the entire scientific community just went “ah, hm, right, placebo. I see. I guess we need to do our random-controlled-trials with a placebo control group now”. Wait, that’s it? Nobody went “wtf woa we can cure a % of people with empty pills, how does that work and how can we up the %?”

I just don’t get it, it seems to me that the existence of the placebo effect is hard evidence that there’s a mind-body connection and we can cure body stuff with mind stuff (and vice versa, probably), so why does nearly all of that remain firmly in alternative woo-woo land?

An homeopathic pollen formulation would start with 1 mg of pollen in a litter of water, a milliliter of that solution would be diluted in a liter of water and this process would be repeated a few time. In the final solution, it would be impossible to detect even a trace of the original pollen.

You don't know that it worked. This is an example of the regression fallacy.[1] This is why we have controlled trials.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regression_fallacy

> Homeopathic preparations are termed remedies and are made using homeopathic dilution. In this process, the selected substance is repeatedly diluted until the final product is chemically indistinguishable from the diluent.

If in a preparation there is a measurable quantity of the active ingredient, then it's not an homeopathic preparation.

A friend of mine is an orthopedic surgeon, and they explained to me that for mild problems, which would normally heal on their own, it's cheaper to cover a placebo rather than real medication.

It works even when you know it's a placebo.

But at the end of the day I feel like all medications should basically be handled like homeopathy products. They should be available to anyone, barring some kind of competency ruling or disagreement by the pharmacy over what they want to sell to whom, and the FDA should basically ensure that they are what they say they are on the label.

I'm glad there's skeptics out there calling BS on homeopathy but where I diverge from them is in somehow preventing it from being available. It's water, it's labeled accurately, so let people do what they're going to do. If they weren't doing this I doubt they'd be doing something more "mainstream" anyway, or complying with it. They might even be doing something even more actively harmful.

I guess I see it as a slippery slope from banning homeopathy to something much murkier where reasonable experts disagree. Real medical science can get very grey really fast and I'm not sure I trust regulatory authority figures to always make the best decisions about what to do. Better to leave it to the consumer and whichever provider they trust most.

Demand product purity, prevent health claims on the label, whatever, but I think my question is "why aren't more medications sold in American pharmacies?"

Many cold medicines have side effects, some are even abused recreationaly. Given that human bodies tend to recover with or without cold medicine (and given the shaky legs that Phenylephrine stands on), what is the issue with people using "fake medicine"?

Homeopathic remedies cannot be abused recreationaly. They aren't precursors to meth. They are better in every way (except the don't work better than a placebo). But, if all a patient needs is a placebo (people recover from the common cold just fine without medicine), homeopathic remedies are perfect.

Remember the hippocrattic oath: First of all, do no harm. Safe, well prepared homeopathic remedies shouldn't do harm. Many cold medicines do.