CAMsters try to portray Galileo as a maverick, persecuted by science. Wrong. He was a mainstream scientist persecuted by religious dogmatics (Image via Wikipedia)
Every time I check Scoop.it I get depressed at the amount of expensive snake oil being hawked around the world, e.g.: $25 for a candle to stick in your ear (a practice that comports obvious risks and provides no discernible health benefit whatsoever). Colonic irrigation touted as “natural” (when did “natural” require lots of expensive equipment?). Adaptogens… WTF is mushroom-based coffee? So much nuttery, so little time.
Homeopathy advocates claiming their sugar pills are incredibly advanced science. Oh for fu…
I’ve had it up to here with homeopathy and its magic water. The same tired old lies and delusions get trotted out every time, with only marginal changes, presumably in the hope that they can fool some more hapless punters into parting with their money before the latest spin gets widely and publicly debunked. The new wheeze is to claim it’s science so advanced that no other branch of science on Earth can understand it, although funnily enough there is a simultaneous rejection of scientific methods for evaluating homeopathy. So let’s be clear on this: if you claim to be doing science, without using scientific methods, and basing your “research” on disproven and discredited hypotheses that you accept as fact, then you are lying.
Yes, lying. You don’t even have the safe haven of delusion, because you are knowingly using the name of science while rejecting everything it stands for.
You are lying to us.
You are lying to yourself, if you really believe the insanity you spout (and in several cases I have come to doubt this); you are lying to your family and friends.
By urging people to forsake real medicine – and don’t deny you do, as I have yet to come across a pro-homeopathy advocate that didn’t virulently attack real (or, as you call it: allopathic) medicine and, either by insinuation or explicitly, encourage people to abandon it for homeopathy – you cause harm.
If you believe in homeopathy (and I stress the word “belief”, because like all cults CAM it is a belief system, not a science) and can prove that your magic remedies are better than placebo, then go get your $1 million from the James Randi Educational Foundation.
Of course, if ever that should happen, and neither I nor the JREF are holding our breath, you will still need to come back here and prove the second part of your assertion: that homeopathy is more effective than conventional medicine. There’s another $1 million waiting for you.
Related articles
- Homeopathy as a Science (triangulations.wordpress.com) <- from a not-very-critical site, too!
- Homeopathy and “plausibility bias” versus science [Respectful Insolence] (scienceblogs.com)
- Wayne’s World of Homeopathy (nucella.wordpress.com)
- WDDTY: How homeopathy might work?
Hey ! I discovered your blog recently and so far, I like it 🙂
There’s a pretty funny article about iPhone/Android apps that pretended to cure acne:
http://web.archive.org/web/20111011124802/http://www.marketwatch.com/story/acne-cure-mobile-app-marketers-will-drop-baseless-claims-under-ftc-settlements-2011-09-08
The authors of the app have been fined, and forced to stop selling the app for “making certain health-related claims without scientific evidence”.
I was wondering how come homeopathy pharmaceutical companies *can* sell their products without facing similar charges? Maybe you have an idea?
Yes, I saw the story about the app. Mind you, it almost sounds sane when you think that homeopaths try to bottle the light of Saturn or Venus. Sadly, I fear that despite their unrelenting screams of “Big Pharma”, they get past the filters because they have a pretty powerful lobby themsleves, and since woo isn’t regulated (by definition) it’s well-nigh impossible to know just how much the industry is worth. But that’s why they don’t find themselves in front of judges more often.
I’d be prepared to bet it’s millions though. I’m an accountant. Accountants don’t make bets they’re likely to lose.
and thanks for the compliment