Dear Sir, I totally disagree about your opinion Sir ,, because you may not have enough time even you spend your entire life time to learn and understand Homeopathy. Sorry with all due respect to you sir, you are disrespecting a tradition which has lived for thousands of years in the country India and In india you will never succeed or not even close to success of stopping the homeopathy practitioners from their practice. And also to remind you that INDIA --- The Second largest populated Country in the world and if you cannot do anything in that country about stopping Homeopathy practitioners to practice then any where else you succeed it doesn't matter--- because any field of medicine as long as serves human in my country it is appreciated and encouraged and if Homeopathy can live and survive forever and ever in INDIA then that shall be enough because there are more human to benefit in India then any other country. Thanks.

Dear Salvatore

I am not a medical practitioner. But I would say that many of the ancient medical practices have enough clinical support. So, instead of banning them, these practices should be refined and improved upon. The same applies to Homeopathy, a not so ancient and not so scientific tradition but with great placebo positive results.

Regards 

Dear Sirs, I attempt to reply to both of you, as your concerns sound quite similar. Obviously, ancient Egyptians had a good medicine...people usually died by 40, many parasites caused deaths but you could meet some older people, anyhow, though less frequently. The fact that homeopathy is a prestigious medicine, such as Ayurveda, puts the question of why Ayurveda (which contains many interesting points of issue) is not included in the western official medicine, likewise Acupuncture...This is a good question but I suggest a possible answer, yet. Modelling and hypothesis are embedded with empiricism in homepathy and when addressing topics such as physics or hard science (material) or quantum mechanics, no suitable model is forwarded to fit any tenet to the reported sound evidence in medicine. Therefore, homeopaths use a scientific terminology without grounds and appear to use certain fields of science without full awareness and with a naive perspective. This is the core of the article I attached with my question. Furthermore, I added some comment about the use of debates in this field.

Dr Mohammad Israr Khan talks about placebo. I suggest him to read a paper of mine.

Chapter Placebo effects: clinical aspects, methodological approaches...

Thanks a lot, Salvatore Sir.

Dear Salvatore Sir

Alas, I could not download your chapter, perhaps due to some problems.

Regards

Dear Mohammad Sir,

herewith attached the requested file. Thank you for your appreciation.

Regards

Thanks a lot!

Dear Vladimir, I am trying to translate your message into English, in order to allow other colleagues to comprehend it fully.

Homeopathy as a medical method has an age of 220 years and is not going to die. On the contrary! Only gaining strength. And the ability to heal almost all of the non-surgical and surgical illnesses.

Antibiotic treatment is the age of 80 years and in the last 10 years have not been developed any effective antibiotic. The effectiveness of existing antibiotics are extremely unsatisfactory. In other words, antibiotics research died in the seventieth year of life. Chemotherapy failed twice respect to homeopathy and thus powerless against chronic diseases. So she, too, is doomed.

You are not to bury.

My reply (Chirumbolo): Thank for this message. regards

dear vladimir....I realized your message is now in English! 8rather than Russan..)

Dear Vladimir, I save a very great consideration of Russian researchers, particularly for physics, but your comment might perfectly fit to ectoplasms and ghosts or the same aliens....If you are unable to explain the scientiic basis of homeopathy to doctors, you are simply dealing with medical empiricism....Sorry, this is my opinion...

I actively endorse EBM on my website because it is the medical standard today. However, for my own personal use and that of my family members who are willing... I use homeopathy and the positive difference it makes (not to mention the cost) for myriad conditions compared to conventional medical approaches is incomparable. I think that because of the skill level of the practitioner required and the extreme personalization to each patient, that it is very difficult to measure the efficacy of homeopathy in our current scientific models.

The human diversity can well be respected by pathy-diversity.

Regards

Dear Vladimir,

which Institution do you come from? Academy? Research group? Are you a researcher? An independent researcher? What?...

Dear Salvatore

I am extremely thankful to you for giving me an opportunity to read your book on placebo phenomenon. It is a fine discussion and very lucid, vivid, and informative. 

However, and that is strange enough even for me, it could not fundamentally change my opinion regarding the utility of CAM.

Regards

Hi Salvatore Sir ,

Kindly confirm you and J&J are Homeopath ?How many cases all of you have treated with homeopathy  ? What is important results or process through which it has been achieved ? Let debate discussion and investigation continue till some super brain unlock the mystery for noble prize  , but do not label it unscientific  because  you do not understand how it works .

P.K.Sethi .

Dear Vladimir,

Thank you for your comment. I agree that that there is much potential here.

 Are there any specific RCTs on homeopathy and cancer that you would recommend? I'd love to be able to make the argument for homeopathy but looking for additional research support. Anything newer than http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1948867/

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26210222

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26012051

The work of Michael Frass from Vienna is also worth mentioning.

Open these references:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26051564

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24731904

Thank you, Moshe, excellent references to be aware of!  I will check out the work of Michael Frass too.

Yes, Vladimir, and the placebo effect is less of a factor with animals too.

Dear Vladimir

The animals living in their habitats do not need even a homeopathy. They thrive on what can be called the naturopathy.

Regards

Vladimir Sir

You are right. The man is the most contagious, perhaps.

Dear Madams, Sirs, 

I think that the term "placebo" is used in a very shallow fashion. Placebo is the word to put upon any unexplained mechanism but without any real awareness of "what" should be meant with the term placebo. What is placebo? Whch is its mechanism? For example, animals perceive smells and sounds and non verbal signs in a more sensitive way that humans and this is never classified as a nocebo/placebo effect; humans perceive nocebo by neuromediators from gut and the brain-gut axis and this is never included in the so called patient practitioner relationships, either as confounders or true evidence; placebo is often linked to psychological responses but it can be aroused by physical facts...and so on. We use the word placebo without knowing its deep meaning. This occurs both in homeopaths and allopatic physicians. With the result that people laugh about homeopaths...So that funny movies show homeopathy as a hoax or a prank and this surely offends any democracy to search truth in nature....There's nothing for which bursting out laughing hysterically, my lords.....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=of-iOGr-Ur4

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

Dear Vladimir, I fully understood what you meant. Certainly, pharmaceuticals may contain a "placebo" effect, which is never considered, even as a confounder...This might bear biases in clinical trials, where placebo is used as a "negative" control but very few people commented this....Ok, my friend and colleage but...

This does not fulfil our expectation about homeopthy, which remains without grounds, as it cannot explain placebo and cannot explain chemistry (pharmacology)...whilst homeopaths are wavering between placebo and effects from potencies...in a bewildering attempt to solve any outcome as coming from using homeopathy, yet healing may come from further reasons...which aside from the sound bio-pharmaclogical explanation...is an obscure cloud without raw body....magician, spirits, quantum mechanics, memory of water......hoaxes, in few words....

This is my perception if homeopathy does not build up a new scientific modeling of its bizarre and odd tenets....Sorry, this is my opinion.... 

Whether homeopathy restores health from a wellbeing point of view you CANNOT be sure this comes from raw chemistry or psychology/anthropology or chance....If homeopathy works, its full absence of any sound explanations dampens any attempt to use this empyrical approach as SAFE and warranting for a healing practice...I mean MEDICINE....

This is my opinion...

Regards

Salvatore

Dear Vladimir, I trust there is a prejudice in our debate....Sorry, but I think you are perfectly wrong. 

OK

Let's hypothesize that your argumentation is not homeopathy but a new "strange" device able to bring you by flight from Paris to Bejing by only 1 hour...! It is neither a train, nor an airplane, nor a spacecraft....Anyway...it works!! You enter a black ball without windows, take a protective glass and a pill and UAAAAUUU!!! You reached Bejing, in China !!! And you started from Place de la Concorde!!! Gorgeous!!!

They made you informed that this "box" flies with a tremendous speed and that a toxic gas (but monitored) allows you not to feel the impact of speed on your heart and brain and feel almost fine when get your destination. Obviously, likewise any other technological device, this machinery does not work ANY TIME with the same safety...some people died. 

My question is. how many people will choose for this "box" respect to a common airplane to reach a place in the world?

Very few...because you can lost your life. Even if you hypothesize that airplanes have the same hazard probability, anyway you are prompted to trust better airplanes because YOU KNOW how they work...contrarily to the faster box...

So, knowing how homeopathy REALLY works is fundamental to select homeopathy rather than allopathy when you feel REALLY sick....

Sirs, 

This is a very heated argument between you (two) learned personalities.

We may learn something.

Regards

Actually I do not know much about homoeopathy. Anyway, I found the standards for  materials to be used for homoeopathic preparations in the British Pharmacopoeia and European Pharmacopoeia.  Some materials I am a little bit scarce for their  toxicities, ie arsenic trioxide, cadmium sulfate etc. 

Paracelsus....? Oh my God....

See you soon, Vladimir Sir.

Regards

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Can_any_one_suggest_me_research_articles_related_with_the_efficacy_of_homeopathic_medicine/1

I would like to raise a point that I do not believe is adequately addressed in this discussion. There is no doubt that some patients benefit from homeopathy. I suggest the question we should ask ourselves as 'scientific' medical practitioners is why. Dwelling on the mechanism and confining it to the mathematics of dilution I believe misses the point. The placebo effect is a real, scientific phenomenon. The exact mechanism is unknown and the subject of interesting research. I would put it to this discussion that even if this is what is happening it is a legitimate harnessing of the body's capacity to heal itself and perhaps we should be focussing on why it works rather than focusing on the maths which is clearly not all the story.

http://harvardmagazine.com/2013/01/the-placebo-phenomenon I suggest this as the beginning of reading

No one would deny that homeopathy could have strong placebo effect. The difficulty is to prove that there is nothing more than placebo effect.

Ranjit - do you mean "the difficulty is to prove that there is something more than the placebo effect"?  It seems that it needs to demonstrated that there is a greater effect from the homeopathic treatment than the control (or placebo) effect in double blind studies. 

This something more than placebo effect has to be scientifically demonstrated, as both simplistic calculations about dilutions and odd methods used to make the same, is yet hampering any serious effort to discuss about the existence of "other"....which is not placebo....

One of the difficulties for many scientists is that some studies supposedly supporting homeopathic treatments are poorly done or entirely unscientific, or even cause harm.  The link below to a MedPage blog demonstrates the problem - a study using a "homeopathic" syrup was compared to using the syrup plus antibiotics for viral coughs!!  Of course the children did better with the syrup only, because anytime an inappropriate treatment (antibiotics which kill bacteria) is used and it will cause harm when used inappropriately, as it was.  The author calls homeopathy a scam, and in this case, a study where children were improperly harmed does not advance any understanding of homeopathy - only reinforces that very bad studies are sometimes conducted as real research (and even published!).

http://www.medpagetoday.com/Blogs/KevinMD/54629?xid=nl_mpt_DHE_2015-11-11&eun=g637873d0r

Italians...of course.

The paper which Robert is referring to is appended herein. It is a "scientific product" of the 1Italian Association for Cough Study (AIST), Via Mazzini, 12, 40138 Bologna,

Italy, so neither University, nor Hospital....Sincerely I did not understand Figure 2 in the paper, where the difference between the two treatments in the observational study is not signifcant (p values are never >0.05)....Sirs....please... Science and medicine are a very serious stuff...

Salvatore, I was not trying to pick on any group of course, but did want to bring one of the problems that exists in establishing any treatment as being 'evidence based.'  I would certainly look forward to working on a paper with you (and others) who want to examine what 'homeopathic' research is actually studying, is it the 'true' principles of homeopathy or not.

Yes, Vladimir, I trust this position from yours as the only conceptual tenet of homeopaths working with patients. Anyway, while if you take a trivial pill for headache yioucould account on the certainty that there is a molecule acting on a receptor and working into a cell and there are a huge bulk of reports about, both in bench laboratory and in clinics, with homeopathy you do not possess all this. Therefore people lie all their trust on simply practitioners. yes, this may generate placebo even in allopathic medicine but there is a great difference. You have experienced that sitting on that chiar prevent you to fall down. And actually you did'nt fall down sitting on that chair. You trust your father about his warm suggestion for sitting on that chair and you were never disapoointed. You gained two experiences both: trust and factual.

You know, for homeopathy you may account only on the first....

Therefore, I choose science, factual, demonstrable science. Even for homeopathy...

Is there any REAL evidence about the presumptive efficacy of homeopathy in clinics?

Apparently yes...and always the sponor is Boiron...

Homeopahs know Taylor's past paper on BMJ about homeopathy in URTIs...Please, accept my invitation to have a glance at Table 2 in the paper herewith appended. How the authors succeeded in changing p values by comparing two different ways of measuring variability? 

Has this paper major bias?

It is easy to be confused about the difference between the standard deviation (SD) and the standard error of the mean (SEM). Here are the key differences: The SD quantifies scatter — how much the values vary from one another. The SEM quantifies how precisely you know the true mean of the population. It takes into account both the value of the SD and the sample size. Both SD and SEM are in the same units -- the units of the data. The SEM, by definition, is always smaller than the SD. The SEM gets smaller as your samples get larger. This makes sense, because the mean of a large sample is likely to be closer to the true population mean than is the mean of a small sample. With a huge sample, you'll know the value of the mean with a lot of precision even if the data are very scattered. The SD does not change predictably as you acquire more data. The SD you compute from a sample is the best possible estimate of the SD of the overall population. As you collect more data, you'll assess the SD of the population with more precision. But you can't predict whether the SD from a larger sample will be bigger or smaller than the SD from a small sample. (This is not strictly true. It is the variance -- the SD squared -- that doesn't change predictably, but the change in SD is trivial and much much smaller than the change in the SEM.)

Note that standard errors can be computed for almost any parameter you compute from data, not just the mean. The phrase "the standard error" is a bit ambiguous. The points above refer only to the standard error of the mean.

Someone is attempting to make a clinical research study...please, take into accounts statistics as a serious science...

Robert John Wolff, I agree with you.There has to be  double blind studies to prove the authenticity of homeopathy ·

I think that  the colleagues Jakub Zawiła-Niedźwiecki & Jacek Olender are right..! Every thing written in the article I can confirm based on my own clinical experience. Of course as far as Homeopathy have an positive placebo effect, I wouldn't dismiss it completely in common medical practice.:) 

Eppure lo avevo detto (and yet I stated this!)

"When plant derivatives are used in behavioral sciences, many factors contribute to make rather tricky the interpretation of the data. For example, intrinsic biases in the statistical computation are often hidden. According to some Authors, the statistical power of behavioral studies to detect relationships is quite low: the power to detect a medium effect is 39–47% and in this case only 10–20% of tests exceeded the recommended minimum criterion of 80%, as assessed by Cohen and colleagues (Cohen, 1988; Jennions and Møller, 2003). Biases can be unknowingly brought in by researchers themselves: they may be disinclined to increase sample sizes when they infer that there is no significant effect to detect and this would also yield a negative correlation between power and p value (Jennions and Møller, 2003). This is a rational, but worrying, behavior because studies with significant results are more likely to be published than those without: this is particularly true in high dilution or homeopathic research (Bonamin and Endler, 2010). Hence, in behavioral tests, not only a randomized double blinding approach and a prevention of PFC mechanism but also a biases analysis should be performed in order to assess the reliability of experimental results (Greenland, 1996)"

Statistics in homeopathy is faulty!

Pooled data???....(no comment)....

In the meanwhile I was assessed that homeopathy is an unethical practice....

 I do not know who other downvoters are, but I downvoted you for a good measure. I wonder what RG policy on homophobia is. 

Oh and by the way homeopathy is unscientific and immoral to promote or practice. 

I won't comment on the first part as this only warrants a report to RG moderators. 

As to the second part If you actually read our paper under which you are commenting you'd know that we have reviewed the homoeopathy literature extensively. It's unscientific pseudo-therapy based on pre-scientific notions, nothing more. Anyone wanting to claim otherwise would need to provide extraordinary evidence (as per David Hume's evidence on miracles). 

As a non-layman I wholeheartedly support claims and conclusions made by Zawila-Niedzwiecki and Olender in this article. Homeopathy failed to prove its efficacy over and over again. The mechanism of action proposed by the proponents make absolutely no sense from chemical and physical science perspectives. It is absolutely due to put this useless therapy to where it belongs: history. 

The discussion in this 'question' had been interesting to some extent.  A number of philosophical and perspective issues are clearly getting in the way of useful dialogue.  May I please urge all researchers to avoid personal attacks and overly dogmatic statements.  Those of you who believe that homeopathy has a scientific basis need to provide answers that give all of us insight into how all of us might understand a mechanism that explains homeopathic principles, and please give us clear clinical data that supports efficacy.  For those who do not believe there is either evidence for, or a scientific underpinning for the mechanisms used to explain homeopathy, need to provide clear arguments why the data or explanations might be incorrect. 

Это часть того, что дебаты о гомеопатии...

Robert John Wolff

>For those who do not believe there is either evidence for, or a scientific underpinning >for the mechanisms used to explain homeopathy, need to provide clear arguments >why the data or explanations might be incorrect.

Burden of proof is on the claimant not the skeptic. Authors make their argument and state that they were not able to identify any credible literature confirming clinical efficacy of homeopathy beyond placebo. This position is also the scientific consensus as far as I am aware. If proponents claim otherwise it is their obligation to provide evidence for such claims. This conversation should be about more about ethics and less about efficacy because this debate is over. 

This discussion is getting amusing. If I ever need to present what Gish Gallop is I now have perfect example. Thank you for that. 

I also learned that argument based on 2 biggest meta-analyses to date and the expert consensus pieces attached to them is flawed because it also cites a small note by an author that also wrote a book that is not even cited. Ironically apparently that book is present in our paper in homoeopathic dilution! I am not quite sure if we have potentiated it correctly though! As dr Hahnemann thought us two potentiations are the correct number. "Two shall be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be two." (Or was it three? I remember ten was too much)

I am sure this thread will deliver more amusement in the future. It would be quite interesting to learn from those who say one needs to understand "non-linear physics" how that helps make homoeopathy plausible. but my hopes of seeing that are not very high.

Dear Jakub, the "gentle" defense of homeopathy from felpudos and homeopaths, is clearly very poorly "gentle", as renowned and excellent researchers on the "scientific (??) tenet" of homeopathy are plainly reluctant to any critical debate on their papers...Therefore, fully in agreement with your thoughts....

Dear Salvatore, as usual it's a festival of motivated thinking and cognitive errors. Unfortunately human mind is very capable in reducing cognitive dissonance in all the wrong ways, often cutting people off from reality. I really reccomend Pennycook, G., Cheyne, J. A., Barr, N., Koehler, D. J., & Fugelsang, J. A. (2015). On the reception and detection of pseudo-profound bullshit. Judgment and Decision Making, 10(6), 549–563. It's basically the paper on our 'adversaries'. 

Dear Jakub, many thanks!!!

Regards

Salvatore

I think you misunderstand how academic polemics work. You are more then welcome to submit a critical commentary to JBI. I am sure reviewers will be very happy to deal with your arguments.

CIN!! CIN!!!

http://medbunker.blogspot.it/2010/06/il-topolino-ubriaco-e-lomeopata.html

http://www.chiarelettere.it/libro/reverse/salute-e-bugie-9788861903968.php

My previous question was: Is still possible to reject homeopathy as a scientific concern?

Reply....maybe not?

Some of the most regrettable absurdities:

1) homeopathic vaccination (against infectious diseases);

2) homeopathy in emergency care;

3) homeopathy against cancer;

4) homeopathy for a wide campaign serum profilaxis.

My proposal. On the next forthcoming occurrence when a homeopath is shot by a gun, crashed by a car, hit cruelty by a hammer, undergoing possible surgery, emergency care or so forth....yes...let's care him ONLY with homeopathy. If he died, you meant that you did not succeed in finding his TYPE in the Materia Medica, his "similar".... 

http://www.assis.it/vaccini-omeopatici/

This honestly scares me....

They even went to Africa during Ebola outbreak.

http://www.hwbna.org/

This scares me, too...dear Jakub...

Homeopathy: the debate in Italy

http://www.repubblica.it/salute/2016/04/04/news/allergie_riniti_dolori_gastrointestinali_e_ansia-136890486/