Not a great test - I think you need an inclusion criteria for the trials. If you ignore small scaler trials, and ones that are not blinded or randomised then this would be a fairer test.

This would of course bring you to the same conclusion - that it's bunk.

Well what about going to a homeopath when you are sick and see what the results bring you? Often if you observe something it will act differently so if you go to a homeopathic website you will be able to find 100% of homeopathic studies both clinical and trialed and you will get a much better understanding of what is out there. I know that because there are more than 10 studies done on homeopathy.

@Ben Morrish
I've been to see homeopaths, 3 in fact. No beneficial results.

Francis Bacon, the Enlightenment and every scientist from Galileo to Feynman would have said that personal experience is THE ONLY acceptable form of scientific evidence. Happily, lawyers and lobbyists from the international drug cartels that now dominate the education and employment of scientists, the publication of scientific papers and government science policy, have succeeded in having personal experience classed as "anecdotal" and ruled out of court.

Unfortunately, Chair of NICE, Sir Michael Rawlins, let slip his opinion in a lecture to the Royal College of Physicians last year that, ‘RCTs, long regarded as the ‘gold standard’ of evidence, have been put on an undeserved pedestal.'

Fortunately, lawyers and lobbyists from the international drug cartels are making significant progress in having that statement reversed.

Thankfully I didn't have to pay :)

Professionals charge for their services. Amateurs do it for nothing. If you didn't have to pay, what else can you expect?

If I go to a homeopathic website I will usually find either no studies, or an extremely biased selection of trials with slight positive results (and many flaws).

1) If you don't think that's even more true of drug cartel dominated websites you need to read more Ben Goldacre.

2) At least one of the world’s top-selling drugs, Prozac, has been shown to be no better than placebo. That's less than just a slight effect, so why aren't you citing that as a reason for the rejection of drug cartel dominated pharmacology?

By just taking the first 10 results from Google Scholar I was just seeking to remove any human bias in the selection of which studies to look at.

No. You are are ignoring the bias that comes from the international drug cartels spending a large portion of their mind-boggling profits on financing science education and experts; lab technicians and drug trials; ghost-writers, scientific publications and websites; PR agencies and lobbyists; and press and political junkets and inducements of every description; to make sure they appear in the top 10 of Google's page rank.

Against that kind of marketing and PR machinery, and with the three 'homeopaths you visited charging nothing and therefore having no profits to finance a counterbalancing PR and lobbying campaign of their own, then a result of '20% demonstrating a statistically significant effect in favour of homeopathy' is nothing short of amazing.

I note that you have so far failed to comment on Nobel Prize winning virologist Luc Montagnier's recent discoveries that pathogenic bacteria and viruses show a distinct electromagnetic signature at homeopathic dilutions ranging from 10^-5 to 10^-12 and possibly even up to 10^-18. If true, this would provide a firm theoretical foundation for the "spirit-like" essence "no longer perceptible to the senses" that Samuel Hahnemann discovered by experiment 70 years before James Clark Maxwell first postulated the electromagnetic field. It would also support the more recently postulated Memory of Water effect AND Jacques Benveniste's most far-flung speculations, that this effect may be transmitted over the phone lines.

Mercifully, thanks to the ground-breaking lab-work of the eminent conjurer James Randi; the marketing of the drug cartel's through mass media vehicles like Nature, the Guardian and the BBC; the closure of university science departments and the dumbing-down of science GCSEs; we have wasted very little of the past ten years trying to build on Benveniste's discoveries. Instead we have chosen to expend most of our resources ladling the likes of Benveniste with contempt whilst elevating bankers who understood squat about economics to the position of masters of the universe, and promoters of 'popular' science, who have no significant scientific discoveries to their names and are sceptical of everything except themselves, to the position of scientific gods.

That's science Ben, but not as Francis Bacon would have know it.

"The "Big Pharma" thing has nothing to do with homeopathy (even if all "Big Pharma" products were ineffective and dangerous, which they aren't, that would tell us nothing about homeopathy), yet it always seems to get brought up when the value of homeopathy is questioned."

I said absolutely nothing about "Big Pharma", Nor did I attack it. I simply drew attention to the fact that the international drug cartels pour immense funds into financing scientific education, research, press and public relations and political lobbying.

A rough estimate of the true extent of this can be gained from NHS statistics which show that, in 2007, out of a total drug prescription budget of £5,350,000,000, only £321,000 was spent on homeopathic prescriptions. Having received only 0.006% of the revenue of the their non-homeopathic competitors, its reasonable to assume that the volume of research, PR and political lobbying and associated Google page ranking would be in similar proportion.

The fact that you begin by setting up a Straw Man you call "Big Pharma", swiftly followed by the bald assertion that this "has nothing to do with homeopathy", without offering anything in the way of evidence of rational argument to support your case, shows that you are no lover of the scientific method.

Your assertion that "Big Pharma" products are neither ineffective nor dangerous is a gross generalisation which has no place in scientific enquiry.

Your attempt to cast my statements of empirically verifiable fact as an "attack" on "Big Pharma" shows an eagerness to drag the discussion into the gutter of of the worst kind of mud slinging tabloid journalism, which has nothing to do with science.

The frequency with which discussions of the scientific basis of homeopathy get derailed by this kind of hot headed, narrow minded jingoism suggests some kind of paranoid witch hunt, and good reason to believe that this thing you call "Big Pharma" may have something it needs to hide.

I'm well aware of Ben Goldacre's "A kind of magic?" I read it when it was first published two years ago. But that's old news. Science has moved on a lot since then. You may prefer to remain in the dark ages of 18th century chemistry, but my money says Uncle Ben won't.

Only those with very little understanding of science and a complete lack of imagination will have difficulty understanding the possible implications of pathogenic electromagnetic signals on health.

Only those who have no love of science and are blinded by narrow minded prejudices to the true facts will not see that demanding electromagnetic effects overturn the findings of tests to detect chemical ones is as nonsensical as demanding a television programme overturns the results of a urine test.

To say that Hahnemann had no means of detecting a "spirit-like" essence "no longer perceptible to the senses" because he had no means of detecting bacteria and viruses is as nonsensical as saying Rutherford had no means of detecting the nucleus because he didn't have Large Hadron Collider. Thankfully, both Rutherford and Hahnemann understood that the scientific method is a means of detecting hidden causes by a process of experimental design and deduction. Obviously you don't.

Hahnemann's hypothesis of miasms - "peculiar morbid derangements of the [internal] vital force" - sounds suspiciously like electromagnetic signatures to me. Refusing to accept that Hahnemann's could have detected the effects of electromagnetic signatures because he couldn't detect the external physical entities that generated them is as nonsensical as saying you can't detect radio signals if you haven't seen the transmitter, or you can't eat a chicken curry if you haven't seen the egg.

I have no doubt that in a follow-up article, the authors of the meta-analysis of trials of fluoxetine et al were at great pains to stress the "unfortunately, during its initial coverage, the media often portrayed the results as “antidepressants do not work”, which misrepresented our more nuanced pattern of findings". I don't know what "more nuanced pattern" they mean exactly, but I can make on educated guess.

What I do know is that three weeks ago, Wired magazine revealed that the increasing effect of placebo and proportionally decreasing effectiveness of tdrugs is something the international drug cartels have known about for a whole decade, but have been at great pains to keep under wraps.

http://www.wired.com/medtech/drugs/magazine/17-09/ff_placebo_effect?curr...

I also know that neither Ben Goldacre, who has made placebo his thing, nor any other of the mainstream press have chosen to make much of this. That is one of those scientifically verifiable facts that many of us consider significant. Though obviously you will fail to see what it has to do with anything.

I could go on. But your obvious lack of enthusiasm for the possibilities opened up by Montagnier's work, and eagerness to drag it down into the gutter of misinformation, sophistry and rhetoric is a depressing reminder that where once science was the realm of open minds, now it is the domain of closed ones.

""Lawyers and lobbyists from the international drug cartels that now dominate the education and employment of scientists" is what "Big Pharma" means."

No. As the father of modern chemistry, Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier, said in his "Traité Elémentaire de Chimie" in 1790, "We think only through the medium of words.... The art of reasoning is nothing more than a language well arranged."

I said "Lawyers and lobbyists from the international drug cartels that now dominate the education and employment of scientists".

You said, "is what "Big Pharma" means" which is ignoring what I said and putting false words into my mouth.

I asserted that not ALL "Big Pharma" products are ineffective AND dangerous.

Fair enough. I'll buy that. So what are we saying here exactly? The majority of? Some of? The minority of? what you call "Big Pharma's" products are ineffective and dangerous. You tell me and we can take it from there.

What relevant bits of science have "moved on a lot"?

Montagnier's recent discoveries, Wired's recent discoveries, Ben Goldacre recent revelations and Richard Dawkin's recent attempts to recast "The Selfish Gene" as an argument for cooperation and altruism. Do you need more?

Once again you go on with the derail, talking about "Big Pharma" and linking to an a Wired article about placebo and decreasing effects of conventional drugs. That doesn't have anything to do with homeopathy (unless you believe as I do that homeopathy is a placebo)

"Belief" has nothing to do with science. Anybody who talks about belief without providing the evidence fails Science 101.Your assertion that this means homeopathy is a placebo is a non sequitur.

"You rather rudely state "though obviously you will fail to see what it has to do with anything": and true enough, I don't

A scientist would not seek to pervert an accurate description with the addition of emotive and pejorative terms like "rude".

"but it seems the majority the scientific community fails to see any relevance either (unless homeopathy is now accepted by most scientists?), so I'm at least in good company!

Sure enough. You're in the "good" company of a scientific community bought-and-paid for by the international drug-pushing cartels. "Everybody stays friends, everybody gets paid, everybody has a f***ing future." Bully for you.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/organgrinder/2009/apr/29/wire-episode-11...

"hot headed, narrow minded jingoism suggests some kind of paranoid witch hunt"
This kind of hostile, emotive language strongly suggests that you are not looking for a rational scientific discussion, but an emotion-drive confrontation.

Er. No. "Paranoia" and "Witch Hunts" are well-documented in the scientific literature. Setting up Straw Men and putting words like "Big Pharma" and "attack" into my mouth are well understood indications of both conditions.

"Countless trials have been done and failed to provide evidence that homeopathy is effective"

Add the caveat that "countless trials conducted under an agenda laid down by the vested interests of the international drug-pushing cartels" and I'd agree with you.

Even if we could come up with a plausible scientific mechanism by which homeopathy could operate (and sure, Montagnier's work could possibly be a step towards doing that), that wouldn't matter if the evidence continues to point to its lack of effectiveness.

Fair enough. My money says that in 5 year's time you'll be singing from a different hymn sheet. What does your money say?