April 28, 2011 | Lists
Homeopathic medicine is bunk. Countless studies have demonstrated that this, the Facebook of science (like heals like 
) is nothing more than dilution delusion.
Homeopaths maintain that an “essence” of whatever homeopathic remedies water has been in contact with, has a memory, despite these remedies being diluted by several magnitudes more than the scotch you might be served at a strip club. In fact, if you were to go out drinking at a homeopathic bar, you’d be hard-pressed to believe as they do, that the potency of your drink increases relative to dilution (and you’d find yourself quite sober at the end of the night anyway, as all they’d really serve you is water).
To demonstrate how much a remedy or homeopathic cocktail as it were, would be diluted:
A homeopathic preparation though, is a mind-boggling one part per million million million million million million million million million million. This is 1 followed by 60 zeros, and, here’s a word to drop at your next cocktail party: this is called a “Novemdecillion”. By contrast, one part per mere quadrillion—1 followed by only 15 zeros, is a drop of water into a swimming pool the size of the empire state building tilted on its side.
There is no evidence to suggest homeopathic medicine’s efficacy in treating any single medical condition.
And large meta studies of homeopathy vs conventional treatments have pointed out that after removing bias and clinical trials of low quality and, like what you’d get during a shitty brewery tour—a small sample size–the clinical effects of homeopathy are indistinguishable from a placebo. Still, homeopaths insist on concocting various potions, “succussing” them (“to succuss” could also be used to describe what usually sends newborns to an ER—it means, to “shake vigorously”) and passing them off as medicine.
As Dr Ben Goldacre put it in an article in Lancet, in the most backhanded compliment ever, “Modern medicine can offer little for conditions such as many types of back pain, stress at work, medically unexplained fatigue, and most common colds. Going through a theatre of medical treatment, and trying every drug in the book, will only elicit side-effects. An inert pill in these circumstances seems a sensible option.”
1.Datori saccharum (from the Latin, givers of sugar).
2. Therapists
3. Dilutional
There is a fun discussion here on Skepticblog:
4. Fountains of Truthiness
5. SprinklersA bit of a misnomer, as watering one’s lawn has a demonstrable positive effect. Still, a sprinkler is a dispenser of water and is also associated with something as silly as homeopathy, in this case, a holdover of the 70s disco era (see this rather angry version).
7. Artifical Sweeteners
one more naming suggestion: Enema-ers because they just produce a bunch of shit!
I agree!
Thanks for exposing the homeopathic sham in an entertaining way!
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Nice to know that someone knows all, understands all, and can tell us with certainty that all homeopathic medicine is nonsense. Too bad it isn’t true. As with most products, there are good ones and suppliers who care only about profit. Unfortunately, there is now hard scientific evidence that water molecules can “cluster” together and take on characteristics of various substances. It comes from the scientific community in the form of observations about water that are completely unrelated to homeopathic medicine. Homeopathic remedies are fragile, so can be “neutralized” by variious means. To use them with good effect takes care. Not all remedies work as advertised, but some seem to be very effective. Even the medical community is discovering that homeopathic remedies can effect the body, sometimes just by holding them in ones hand without ever ingesting the remedy. They don’t understand what they see, but the evidence is hard to for a rational person ignore. So believe what you will, but take care when it comes to believing everything that the all-knowing, all-understanding person has to say.