Talk:Homeopathy/Archive 1

This is an archive of past discussions about Homeopathy. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

I added the link to faith healing because both treatments rely substantially on belief (though not necessarily religious belief) in order for the treatments to work, as well as the rejection of modern medical techniques. Is this not relevant? -- sodium

Well, I think homeopathy proponents would disagree with you that homeopathy relies on faith. They consider it to be scientifically valid. I think that a link to alternative medicine would be appropriate, though.

Ah, yet another illustration of what is wrong with Wikipedia. We had an article on homeopathy that attempted to be balanced, and I think it succeeded. Then, a series of changes were added with no interest in pursuing NPOV, complete with a long quotation from another work attacking thesubject, is added to the article. However, since deleting text is a faux pas in Wikipedia, the added text is just supposed to stand as it is and instead, presumably, for the sake of balance anyone who wants to restore a semblance of NPOV here would have to put in an equal amount of text that served as a rebuttal, so that both sides would have an equal amount of text. This does not make for an encyclopedia article.

So revert it if you want. There's no official policy against doing so. --Zundark, 2001 Dec 11

I got attacked for doing that in the feminism article. I am not even a proponent of homeopathy, but I am not about to get into another war of deletion and addition.

This does not make for an encyclopedia article.

You are incorrect. The only way to handle controversies in an encyclopedia properly is to present both sides of the controversy to the extent to which this is reasonably possible. The original article ignored facts and was therefore incomplete.

What is undesirable is to have this presentation in the form "Party X argues that .. party Y replies that .. party X responds taht .." -- if such paragraphs become the norm, the article should be split into separate pro and contra positions which can be read independently.

It is now up to the homeopathy folks to present an actual reasonable argument for homeopathy, including citations (please!). Eloquence

I totally agree. There *is* a big debate over the value of homeopathy and it should be represented in the article. The fact that one side is properly represented now should be seen as better than having no sides properly represented before, eventually the NPOV should sort itself out. -- sodium

Why do there have to be "sides" represented at all? Why not just present the facts about what is found in a belief system and let the reader decide? I dislike articles in wikipedia that have a he-said/she-said feel about them.

Well, I tried to summarize what you added and removed the long quote, but if you don't agree with what I did, then return it back to the way it was. I am not interested in getting into another fight over another article.

Sorry, you deleted critical information. Neither the nature of the quote nor its content prohibits inclusion according to the criteria of an encyclopedia. As I said, the best way to "balance" the article, if proponents of homeopathy find the current article unbalanced, is to add additional information, including quotes (which may well criticize the other side).

Why do there have to be "sides" represented at all? Why not just present the facts about what is found in a belief system and let the reader decide?

Because people disagree about what the facts are. I believe that Wikipedia should not be postmodernist and acknowledge that there is an objective reality which can be approximated, everything else would doom this project to failure. However, different perspectives on a subject deserve to be acknowledged where reasonable people may disagree. For example, I do not find "flat earth theory" worth including in the "geology" node, but only because its very premise rejects science altogether. Homeopathy at least pretends to be scientific, and this pretense must be adequately treated. --Eloquence

Oh, and who gets to decide what is reasonable? This view this does not jibe with your other statement that all proponents of all sides should get their two cents worth into an article. Either we turn the article into a dumping ground for every point of view, or we don't. If we start opening it up to various points of view, then using the article specifically to discredit an unscientific point of view isn't possible, because you have already stated that you want to present all sides. But now you are saying that you don't want to present all sides, but rather to specifically present the side that "reasonable" people believe, whoever the hell they are.

Oh, and who gets to decide what is reasonable? Don't misunderstand me: A theory or hypothesis that claims to be an attempt to approximate the truth is worth being represented even if we believe that it is "clearly" false. What would be unreasonable is to represent a point of view whose proponents argue that they, for whatever reason, are not bound by the standards of science and rationalism and do not need to defend or prove their claims: These views should be represented as "belief systems", but not in the context of statements of facts. Pseudoscience is a border case, and you know how the saying goes: in dubio pro reo.

Please don't fight, boys. I also strongly disbelieve in homeopathy, possibly as strongly as LDC disbelieves in creationism. Yet the best way to show homeopathy up for the crock it is, is to give it the most sympathetic explanation possible; then, follow up with a concise paragraph explaining its unscientific basis. --Ed Poor, reformed axe-grinder

Ed: I see no reason to be unnecessarily concise either in presentation or rebuttal. Adequacy is essential, not brevity. -- Eloquence

(from rev. 11): Proponents argue, however, that homeopathy is, in fact, effective.

This can't really be given as a serious argument. Homeopathy has not *proven* itself - both sides would probably agree that. This would simply be their opinion. Critics could then argue "that homeopathy is, in fact, not effective" etc... -- sodium

I am not a proponent of homeopathy, so I can't really give a fair treatment to this article, but it seems that this will not be an NPOV article, but instead critics of homeopathy will always get the last word in any discussion of the issues involved. I was attempting to make a feeble last gasp effort at introducing some balance to this article, but it is clearly a failed effort since Wikipedia is not a project committed to balance or NPOV.

Egern: (I know I really shouldn't tell people to, but...) calm down. There need not be any "feeble last gasp effort", Wikipedia is not going anywhere. In a few weeks it might just happen that a massive crowd of Homeopathy proponents arrive at this page and turn it completely round. After that it will be shuffled around more until eventually it reaches equilibrium. NPOV is always to be strived for, but it doesn't necessarily have to arrive immediately. -- sodium

For example when I arrived at this page this afternoon it was blatantly pro-homeopathic and had been so since Dec 2. I worked on it, but made it too anti-. Then it was re-edited etc... It is much better now than it was this afternoon though. -- sodium

It might be good to remove the link to pseudoscience, unless someone also wants to link Chiropractic to pseudoscience...

I'd leave the links in both. "Straight" chiropractic, like Homeopathy, denies the very basic scientific facts of medicine; i.e., that germs cause disease. Homeopaths and straight chiropractors both calim you can treat bacterial and viral infections with plain water and spinal manipulations. "Pseudoscience" is a good word for that. My only reservation is that most chiropractors today are not the old "straight" variety, but are rather the more sensible variety that only treat back pain and such, and refer really sick people to real doctors, so I don't want to paint them with the same brush. --LDC

Homeopathy denies that germs cause disease? Can you provide a source for that?

Well, Hahnemann's codexes make no mention of bacteria or viruses. His treatments were based entirely on symptoms; he made no allowances at all for the source of disease. If two patients have the same symptoms, they get the same treatment according to the codex. It doesn't matter whether one of them has Tuberculosis and one of them has AIDS--they both get the same distilled water. Modern Homeopaths might accept basic germ theory, but they are still restricted to making their magic potions according to the codex. --LDC

I think there is no question that modern homeopaths do accept that germs cause disease. So your earlier statement that homeopaths deny that germs cause disease just isn't true. It is true that their approach to treating disease doesn't focus on, or even care about, the pathogen that causes the disease. Instead, it attempts (in theory, and perhaps it is a totally bogus theory) to use the body's natural defenses to fight the disease, rather than using modern medicine's method of attacking the pathogen directly via powerful drugs. Clearly this mechanism doesn't depend on the pathogen per se. Maybe the homeopathic remedies are nothing but useless "magic potions", as you describe it, but let's at least be accurate and not accuse them of something that isn't true.

I said no such thing, and I don't appreciate being misquoted. What I said was that Homeopathy denies the germ theory, and that is true, regardless of whether ot not particular homeopaths do (even if all of them do). This is an article on homeopathy, the theory and practice, not individual human homeopaths. And the issue (remember, we had a topic of discussion here) was whether or not the link to "pseudoscience" was appropriate. If the theory is pseudoscience, it clearly is, regardless of individual beliefs in the theory. --LDC

No, it is not true. Homeopathy neither denies nor affirms germ theory. Germ theory is simply irrelevant to the remedies that it proposes. That is why homeopaths can be homeopaths and still accept germ theory. To assert that homeopathy denies germ theory is simply incorrect.

Oh, all right, how about "...fails to acknowledge the germ theory of disease as the primary means of understanding and treating illness."? At any rate, that's still not what we're talking about--I only used that as an example. What we were talking about is whether or not the link to "pseudoscience" was a good idea, and I maintain that it is, since the theory itself--being encoded in an unchanging set of books--resists scientific discovery and improvement. --LDC

• Hahnemann had one very good reason for not mentioning germs. He lived from 1755 until 1843. Pasteur's groundbreaking observations about childbirth fever took place in 1856. Doesn't this qualify Hahnemann's personal efforts as protoscience? Eclecticology

I am not a proponent (or an opponent of homeopathy), and there are aspects of it I don't know much about. If it is really true that homeopathy resists any investigation into new ways to apply, alter, or improve upon its method, then I would agree that it is unscientific. On the other hand, I am curious how much scientific research is even being done on ways to alter the homeopathic method that some hypothetical dogmatic homeopathic practitioners would be resisting. -- Egern

At least in the US, homeopathy is tolerated as an "alternative" medicine without any oversight only because their preparations are known to be harmless (because they don't contain anything). If homeopaths started producing products that had actual effects and measurable amounts of active ingredients, those preparations would be considered normal medicine and would fall under regulation by the FDA, and homepaths wouldn't be allowed to dispense them. This has already happened to a small degree: there are a few preparations loosely based on homepathic principles except that they aren't diluted as much, and therefore actually contain medicine. These are advertised as "homepathic", but they require a prescription from a real doctor and can't be sold by homepaths. Vertigoheel, for example, contains measurable amounts of some ingredients (including hemlock!), and is used to treat dizziness (which is a side-effect of larger amounts of those ingredients). It is sold as "homeopathic", but it's really just a medicinal herb mixture that requires a doctor's prescription because its ingredients are dangerous. Typical of the homepathy business, they market it by pointing to a study that compared it to another drug--betahistine--which is commonly prescribed, but that did not properly compare it to a placebo. Although betahistine is commonly used, it has never been adequately tested either, so their study proves nothing; it is only a deliberately dishonest tactic to give their drug an undeserved reputation by comparing it to a non-homeopathic drug with an existing undeserved reputation. --LDC

I'm not sure that's entirely true -- lots of homeopathic remedies in the US are not the dilute formulae recommended by Hahnemann at all -- they are just some formulation of whatever the substance is -- often just straight herbal remedies. As such, many are unregulated, not because of potency, but because herbal remedies, unless proven to be either efficacious or harmful, aren't normally regulated.

That's true of many herbal things, but homeopaths are specifically allowed to use even illegal herbs, because their final products don't contain measurable amounts. Sure, anyone can sell you feverfew or St. John wort, and that's almost totally unregulated. But homeopaths can sell you diluted preparations of opium, marijuana, and other things--so long as they are prepared according to the codex and diluted to the vanishing point. Some homeopaths might also sell St. John's wort, but calling that "homeopathic" is disingenuous.

What you are describing is the marketing of a non-homeopathic substance that is incorrectly called "homeopathic", so the comparison you mention is between two non-homeopathic drugs. That has nothing to do with the efficacy or validity of homeopathy, though, and has everything to do with marketing. -- Egern

Hi, I haven't returned to this site since I put in the original entry, and to be honest I'm both thrilled and disappointed. Thrilled because people have obviously felt strongly enough about the issue to write so much about it, but disappointed becuase of the fact that so many stereotypes about homoeopathy have been used here and that people have obviously not actually made much effort to really find out whether what they are arguing is valid. However, I do think that everyone is entitled to their view and in a sense that is what the whole issue is about. I am a 'proponent' of homoeopathy, because it has worked for me on many different levels (it corresponds to my social and political beliefs as well as simply improving my health and well-being). Essentially the discourse in the West about health and healing has been dominated by a small groups of health practitioners who benefit economically and socially from their privileged position as 'doctors', and the focus on drugs and hi-tech equipment for surgery has chiefly served the interests of the pharmaceutical companies that produce them. This is not a question about 'science' because science itself it subservient to the system. 'Science' as we commonly understand it is a result of the conditions of its production, someone mentioned earlier in the discussion that:

This is an article on homeopathy, the theory and practice, not individual human homeopaths

Now, in fact pure science is a myth, because humans are fallible, and humans produce scientific knowledge. This does not mean that science does not produce useful knowledge, it is just that it is not too be accepted on faith. Otherwise why would scientific theory need to be modified. (For a more eloquent desciption of this argument, see Thomas Kuhn's work on the structure of scientific revolutions)

I am not asking people to discount 'scientific' medicine, because it has undoubtedly done so much to improve the quality of people's lives. Things such as hip replacements, anaesthetic, insulin for diabetics and incubators are wonderful. Just do not assume that what it says now will never change, just think about what 'scientific' doctors were prescribing for people a hundred, or even fifty years ago, that now seem antiquated. There have been articles in the BMJ and the Lancet that demonstrate that homoeopathic medicines have an effect beyond placebo, there is also beginning to be more research into the unusually powerful effect of extreme dilutions. Our current theories in science can not account for these effects, but are we so arrogant and to presume that we know all there is to know. I don't believe so. And it is just because these effects could not be hypothesised by current understandings that they are so under- researched.

One last point before I sign off, earlier discussions mentioned that homoeopathy 'fails to acknowledge germ theory a the primary means of understanding and treating illness'. The response that homoeopathy by no means denies the importance of germs, it is just not relevant to the way that dis-ease is treated, I agree with. However, that is not my point. It is that I think that most orthodox doctors today would be most offended if you were to suggest to them that germ theory was their 'primary' source of understanding about disease. The majority of ill-health that the health services deal with in the West, and certainly (for the money conscious) the most expensive, is chronic illness, such as heart disease and cancer, and these are such complex phenomena that they are not reducible to a single or even a combination of 'germs'.

Just don't assume that something we don't fully understand (yet?) is necessarily without any worth. -Nicola

(Addition not written by Enter the Dragon, just on his computer)

I don't agree with you that there is some kind of conspiracy between doctors and pharmaceuticals. Any student who goes in to medicine to "benefit economically and socially from their privileged position" is going to be sadly disapointed, working in the city gives a better paid and very much less stressful job than as a health practitioner. I also disagree with your statement about the "stereotypes of homeopathy" present, any examples? The trials have been included but in context--there has been both success and failure and this is why whether homeopathy works is still debateable. Also why the quote marks around " 'scientific' medicine" and 'germs'?

I dunno....all this talk of meta-analyses (with all the problems of selective publication of results) being required to show statistically detectable effects from dilutions containing no molecules of active agent sounds remarkably like Irving Langmuir's definition of Pathological science, particularly his first two criteria.... Malcolm Farmer

Surely conventional medicine entirely rejects the idea that symptoms (as a group) are the body's attempt to fight disease. Sure, some symptoms of some diseases are the byproducts of immune system actions, but to make that claim *in general* doesn't stand up to scientific scrutiny. --Robert Merkel

• Well, but fever and inflammation are both considered symptoms, aren't they? According to my understanding - and I am not medically trained - both are mechanisms by which the body attempts to raise its temperature (globally or locally) to fight off bacterial infections. Likewise, nausea can plausibly be seen as a biological attempt to expell an offending substance as soon as possible...

• Now, if someone is claiming that this is any sort of "planned attack", then I would agree that there's no concious action here - just a reaction that happens to be largely beneficial and therefore has been favored in natural selection. Of course, in individual cases, the reactions can also work against the body's global best interests, as very high fevers, arthritic inflammations, et cetera. -- April

As the "esteemed gentleman" would no doubt say, I should not have merely copied his Talk comment verbatim into the article. I admired his way with words, but I apologize and withdraw the admiration :-) -- a repentant User:Ed Poor

There is little doubt that the proponents of homeopathy bear the burden of proof when it comes to establishing the validity of their practice. However, where a critic has made a comment that double-blind experiments have been made to disprove homeopathy, he owes us a little more than that bare statement. The critic's new burden of proof is to lead us to the alleged studies so that we can evaluate them ourselves, and see whether they are "falsifiable". Eclecticology

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