Naturopath

Toothsmith

Yes - animals to do get a placebo effect, and babies do too.

But then animals and babies don't tell you if they're feeling better - it's down to your judgement.

The test here would still be to compare the proper treatment against the dummy without the person giving the treatment knowing which one it was.

absolutebounder

Toothsmith wrote: »

It doesn't 'work'.

If you line up 1000 people with a problem and give them a Smartie, but tell them that they are taking part in a scientific trial of a brand new treatment of their condition, then 150 -300 of them will get better or report an improvement in their symptoms.

This is called the placebo effect. It happens, but nobody really knows why.

If you gave people 2 Smarties, then more people would get better in that group than the group you gave 1 Smartie to. Taking a big Smartie shows better results than taking a small Smartie, and Red Smarties 'cure' more people than blue ones (or vice versa, I can't remember which way round that one is!)

For a medicine to be 'proved' as effective, it must cure more people than the Smartie.

For modern conventional medicines and therapies nowadays, the new treatment must show itself to be better than the previous best treatment - not just better than placebo.

The person taking the tablet mustn't know if it's a Smartie or the tablet, and neither should the person giving the tablet. That's called 'double blind'.

There has never been a double blind investigation of homeopathy that has shown it to work any better than placebo. Ever.

This is fine if you're just taking it because you 'feel a bit off', or minor chronic conditions. If you're one of the people affected by the placebo effect, then brilliant.

BUT - some of these jokers take themselves far too seriously and pretend that it can have an effect on things like malaria in the 3rd world, cancer, TB and as an alternative to vaccination programs.

This is serious and life threatening.

Homeopathy is fine as a bit of a laugh for people with more money than sense.

But to actually believe it's a useful therapy is dangerous.


P.S. If you CAN show homeopathy to work, there's a $1m prize from James Randi!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/2002/homeopathy.shtml

The placebo effect is very powerful.and yes some people get better simply because they believe just as people get better with faith healing. Somethings increase our succeptibility to the placebo effect. and even with the correct research there are anomalies. The scientist doesnt know how many of the patients were cured by the pill or the placebo effect. Many people report getting better and believe that have improved without doing so better known as pseudo placebo.
Giving a drug with a verbal negative spit ie "you can have this but I dont expect it will work" notably decreases the effectiveness of the drug and giving drugs without the patients knowledge tends to reduce effects. IIe putting them in the patients intravenous drip while patient is asleep. This method completely wipes out placebo results.
Homeopathy gets some results out of the power of the mind but there is no real science behind it.