A few hundred years ago, the Germans played a practical joke on the rest of the world; they invented a medical field based on the idea that you could cure a disease by using something that caused similar symptoms.
It is called homeopathy and some people still haven't caught on to the joke. Why do I say joke? It's medicine that relies on the "energetic imprint" of substances to provoke the symptoms they already have - they're often so diluted that not even a molecule of the original substance remains - and the more diluted, the more powerful the cure, they say.
How has it lasted so long? It's like how those phone sports betting services stay in business. If it's Sunday and the Steelers are playing the Cowboys and they tell 50% of their customers each team, they have gotten 50% of proven gamblers to give them multiple chances to get money out of them over and over again.
So it goes with homeopathy. Since each person is unique, each cure must be unique. You can't really be wrong if you have unlimited opportunities to be right.
Homeopathy has/had its proponents; I don't know what all Gandhi and Dizzy Gillespie agreed on but I know they agreed on that. Obviously it can have risks. If you try to cure diabetes by experimenting you could lose body parts.
Still, there is a wealth of evidence, mostly anecdotal, and it will never die as long as there is an internet. That doesn't mean it will go unchallenged. Professor Edzard Ernst of Exeter University has offered $16,000 to anyone who can show it is better than a placebo in a controlled trial.
Proponents of homeopathy say it is a publicity stunt so Ernst can sell some books. Yes, it's a publicity stunt by scientists to denigrate voodoo medicine that says mixing a million units of water with one unit of an obscure cell salt will cure maladies. Critics say homeopathy is the placebo effect in action and have 200 controlled studies to prove it.
So, do you want to earn a Nobel Prize and $16,000? Prove homeopathy works. If you do, I will prove I am Dizzy Gillespie reincarnated.
This post contains no science, nor any reference to any science, nor even a vague attempt at science, rather it descends to self-righteous jeering of the sort which makes for bad science, bad scientists, and poor outcomes for all of us, scientist or not.
Consistent with such deficient thinking is that it manages to undermine itself by employing the following description, which sounds very much like non-homeopathic principles of immunization: "...they invented a medical field based on the idea that you could cure a disease by using something that caused similar symptoms."
Had I not known the context of that quote, I would think that it was a description of how the first recorded vaccinations took place; that of introducing Cowpox deliberately so as to avoid Smallpox in the 18th Century. Reading further than what has been quoted in several of the Wikipedia citations below will bear this out.
I cite and quote the following in support...
From http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Immunology
"The humoral (antibody) response is defined as the interaction between antibodies and antigens. Antibodies are specific proteins released from a certain class of immune cells (B lymphocytes). Antigens are defined as anything that elicits generation of antibodies, hence they are Antibody Generators. Immunology itself rests on an understanding of the properties of these two biological entities."
From http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccination
"Vaccination is the administration of antigenic material (the Vaccine) to produce immunity to a disease. Vaccines can prevent or ameliorate the effects of infection by a pathogen. It is considered to be the most effective and cost-effective method of preventing infectious diseases. The material administrated can either be live, but weakened forms of pathogens such as bacteria or viruses, killed or inactivated forms of these pathogens, or purified material such as proteins."
From http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Innoculation
"Inoculation is the placement of something to where it will grow or reproduce, and is most commonly used in respect of the introduction of a serum, vaccine, or antigenic substance into the body of a human or animal, especially to produce or boost immunity to a specific disease...
"This article covers variolation, inoculation as a method of purposefully infecting a person with smallpox (Variola) in a controlled manner so as to minimise the severity of the infection and also to induce immunity against further infection. See vaccination for post-variolation methods of safeguarding as if by inoculation by administering weakened or dead pathogens to a healthy person or animal with the intent of conferring immunity against a targeted form of a related disease agent.
"Today the terms inoculation, vaccination and immunisation are used more or less interchangeably and popularly refer to the process of artificial induction of immunity against various infectious diseases. The microorganism used in an inoculation is called the inoculant or inoculum."
From http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Immunization
"Immunization, or immunisation, is the process by which an individual's immune system becomes fortified against an agent (known as the immunogen).
...
Immunisation can be done through various techniques, most commonly vaccination. Vaccines against microorganisms that cause diseases can prepare the body's immune system, thus helping to fight or prevent an infection. The fact that mutations can cause cancer cells to produce proteins or other molecules that are unknown to the body forms the theoretical basis for therapeutic cancer vaccines. Other molecules can be used for immunisation as well, for example in experimental vaccines against nicotine (NicVAX) or the hormone ghrelin (in experiments to create an obesity vaccine)."
Further, based on the article above it would appear as if no successful trials had ever been performed and that the context in which homeopathy is practiced is that it is accompanied by incantations, deity worship, ritual sacrifice. Using the "critics say" approach is gutless journalism. You say it or cite the critics.
There are many studies to support homeopathy as being a valid healing modality...
A meta-analysis as per, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1825800, has found by its reckoning nothing which would conclusively support its efficacy, but there were enough positive outcomes to suggest that there is value in there being further study.
The following page, http://www.trusthomeopathy.org/case/res_research.html, details that study and five other meta-analyses and concludes that it has already shown to be better than a placebo.
And here is another page which explores some of the ramifications for future scientific investigation of what homeopathy points to: http://www.i-sis.org.uk/nanopharmacology.php. It suggests further research into the mechanisms of homeopathy.
And lastly I would like to direct readers to a complimentary medical journal article which supports claims for better methodology for homeopathic trials, and which similarly attacks the same kind of revolting attitude displayed in the article whereupon there is a resorting to accusations of homeopathy being prima facie voodoo and that even attempting such studies is pointless: http://www.liebertonline.com/doi/abs/10.1089/acm.2000.6.49
I think what's important to take from this is that there is peer-review, and there is self-criticism. Additionally, surely we could all do with better methodology? There is no perfect experiment. The Observer Effect ensures that this is true from the get-go. Even so, experimental methodology is itself an evolving craft and must do so as more becomes known about other possible variables to be accounted for, and as practitioners execute known principles with more aplomb as experience is gained. This is true in any field of endeavour.
However, even if all of the above trials were to support the notion that there were no doubt as to its efficacy, the mechanism remains to be investigated more fully. There are real questions and sneering contempt is an anathema to this.
I welcome further investigation into anything and so should a real scientist.
To be fair, I have used and derived benefit from homeopathy.
Finally, if I am to derive a course of action for myself on some basis, then I prefer to base that direction on advice taken from someone who lives the truth of what they say. I value the opinion of a healthy person over a truck-load of medical journals. Similarly, do you ask a professor of business administration how to be rich, or do you ask the billionaire? (I'm assuming that the professor is not a billionaire!)