Almost every "scientific" argument which is used against homeopathy today was used (and answered) within 50 years of the discovery of homeopathy's principles. [...] And the only really new argument is fundamentally flawed.
There are two particular reasons why homeopathy cannot be tested properly in RCTs: the remedy has to be individualised and the sequence of remedies has to be individualised. It is a measure of the power of homeopathy that even so there are trials which show it to be successful.
"There are no tests which have shown homeopathy to work"
To begin with we need to be clear about what we mean by tests, since homeopathy has been shown to work in a number of different types of test, and this myth generally refers only to randomised control trials (RCTs).
And this is where the lack of logic kicks in. Some conventional medical treatments cannot be tested using the RCT model, and so evidence of effectiveness is based on the clinical evidence of cases. One example is surgery, another is psychiatry, and it is even the case that some drugs are prescribed on the basis of clinical evidence, rather than on the evidence from RCTs. In addition, drugs are usually withdrawn on the basis of the clinical evidence revealing dangers not identified in the RCTs, so clinical evidence is actually considered more important in the evaluation of treatent than RCTs. Homeopathy has an unequaled level of detail in its case histories which makes it possible to verify the success of treatment by study of clinical practice, and there are also good reasons for it not being easily tested using RCTs. As a result the demand for evidence from RCTs is inappropriate and intended to distort the truth.
There are two particular reasons why homeopathy cannot be tested properly in RCTs:
It is a measure of the power of homeopathy that even so there are trials which show it to be successful. A study of clinical trials of homeopathy by Kleijnen et al. (BMJ 1991; 302:316-323) concluded: ‘Overall, of the 105 trials with interpretable results, 81 trials (77%) indicated positive results.’ They also stated: ‘At the moment the evidence of clinical trials is positive but not sufficient to draw definite conclusions.’
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