How does Homeopathy work?
howdoeshomeopathywork.com
howdoeshomeopathywork.com
As it is, it feels like a knee jerk reaction that wouldn't convince people who are genuinely wondering.
http://scienceblog.cancerresearchuk.org/2009/04/17/no-convin... and the research paper http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19370613
But there's a time and place for humor as well. Not everything has to be educational.
However homoeopathy is not presented as a placebo-based treatment. The site assesses homoeopathy on its merits as presented by practitioners and supporters of homoeopathic treatments having incremental medicinal benefits. Of which there have been no appropriately controlled and reviewed studies with reproducible results. Placebo here is the 'base case'.
I submit that the question was treated with an entirely appropriate degree of respect.
If homeopath were saying to their customer "this is a placebo medicine", something that the general public understands, there would be way less aggressivity towards it.
Answer: It doesn't.
- you, one of the greatest scientist of this century how could you believe in such things.
- Well I've been told that superstition works even if you don't believe in it !
Incidentally a recent study seems to demonstrate that the placebo effect works even when you know it's placebo...
Lately there have been a lot of studies finding that while placebos are great at improving subjective factors, they don't show the same ability to elicit objective improvements. So if you come down with a respiratory infection, a placebo might have you saying you feel better a bit sooner, but you'll still be hacking up phlegm for just as long.