So, a friend has recently asked me to comment on the latest video debunking Homeopathy. Watching the video, I was confronted by a number of logical fallacies, falsehoods, and even outright deceptions. So I decided to catalogue them, one by one.
1. The first problem in the video (about 2 mins into the video) is the exclusive assumption that the only possibly mechanisms for therapeutic efficacy at atomic, or molecular in nature. This is a fundamental assumption of many contemporary ideas about the nature of reality, found in modern materialism and the skeptical movement, but is not founded in the most current understanding of the sciences. Recent sciences have focused on the properties of solutes, the formation of large scale nanostructures in homeopathically prepared solutions. In short, the water and alcohol used to make homeopathic remedies is in no way the same as regular tap or distilled water not prepared this way. A summary research paper on this topic can be found here.
In a fun twist, one of the authors of that paper, a materials scientist, is fond of referring to the no atoms objection to Homeopathy as “high school chemistry”.
2. The idea of the memory of water (3 min). Many objections to the idea of a change in the properties of water having something to do with Homeopathy suggest that all water would contain an imprint of everything it ever came into contact with. This, in addition to being quite intellectually lazy, is experimentally disproven. In the research paper cited above as well as this one, a variety of experimental investigations have determine stable changes in homeopathically prepared solutions, differing from those of unprepared water.
3. The ancient allopathy fallacy (~3:20). Another objection to Homeopathy states that it’s popularity in the 19th century was due to the fact that Homeopathy was, at the least, not harmful, whereas the allopathic ( conventional) treatments of the time actively harmed the patients. This line of thinking ignored the statistics collected by Homeopaths of their work, showing mortality rates lower than would be expected from expectant treatment, and in some cases lower than those achieved with modern medicine and nursing care in the modern era. Take, for example, Pneumonia. Community acquired pneumonia has, untreated, a mortality rate of approximately 30% in the elderly, and 18% in individuals over 12 years old with competent immune systems (Kiple KF (ed.). The Cambridge World History of Human Disease. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993: 938-939.). Conventional treatment of allopathic medicine shows mortality rates ( in the present day) of about 13.7%. This rate has stayed remarkably stable historically, unlike many other infectious diseases, which wax and wane in terms of mortality. If Homeopathy was truly only not harmful, but lacked any healing power, the statistics from this time should show similar mortality rates. 
In fact they do not. Homeopathy shows consistently lower mortality rates. I have reproduced screenshot from the Homeopathic book “The logic of figures” a book compiling 19th century Homeopathic statistics. In it, a mortality rate of 5.7% of 1098 patients is reported. As well a figure from American Homeopathic hospitals ( yes, such things existed once) reported a mortality rate of 2.8% on 11 526 patients (Fiske RE. A survey of the statistics of the homeopathic treatment of lobar pneumonia. Journal of the American Institute of Homeopathy 1928; 21: 886-993.). Definitely too large to be chance, and too low to be due to non harming the patient.
4. The lifestyle objection (3:40) posits that Homeopathy has prescribed very strict lifestyle changes, which benefited the patients, and reduced the course and severity of their disease apart from the effect of Homeopathic medicines. This ignores the effect of Homeopathy on infectious disease, sampled above, in which Homeopathy acts immediately in acute situations, without the time for lifestyle changes to take effect. It also fails to explain why similar lifestyle changes prescribed by conventional physicians, with the addition of presumably efficacious medicines, failed to have an even greater effect than the lifestyle changes of Homeopaths, prescribed with presumed placebos. If lifestyle is all that is efficacious about this therapy, results such as those listed above with pneumonia should be available to any practitioner, even in the modern era, with appropriate lifestyle recommendations.
5. The modern medicine idea (4:20). The idea that western society is the longest living and healthiest society that has ever existed on the planet, and that this is exclusively due to modern western medical care, is again, categorically false. Modern Western societies life expectations are dropping (particularly in the United States). A number of historical societies enjoyed extremely long lifespans, with some having a longer life expectancy than the modern west, with no access to modern medical care. Buettner, the author of a book on the subject, reports these factors as being critical in creating these blue zones.
- family engagement
- moderate physical exercise
- purpose and meaning in life
- stress reduction
- moderate calorie diet
- largely plant derived diet
- moderate alcohol intake
- Spirituality
- active social life
I would add, that the vast majority of the increased lifespan is the work of improved sanitation and nutritional status, as well as other public health measures. A recent study described this effect, with large numbers of the public misattributing the increase in lifespan to medical care, rather than public health.
5. The idea Homeopathy has no effect beyond placebo (4:45). This stament is again categorically false. Homeopathy has been analyzed in about 8 metanalyses. Of these 6 were positive. Two were negative. Both of these were questionable methodologically and so deserve greater exploration.
The most recent and famous one, is the NHMRC report, which was recently made quite famous on the skeptical media for it’s proclamation of Homeopathy’s inability to be statistically distinguished from placebo. This conclusion however was dependent on a number of assumptions and rules added to the review process, used nowhere else in the research literature, and without justification by the authors. The authors as well made a number of methodological failures, such as inability to understand certain research designs, and failure to distinguish individualized and non individualized methodologies. As well, there was an earlier report, currently under investigation by the Ombudsman for the NHMRC, which was shelved and replaced by the current report. There is suspicion the first report was favorable to homeopathy, and the organization was outcome shopping, looking for the results they wanted and adapting their methodology to suit. A full analysis of the NHMRC reports many flaws is in the video below.
The second negative metanalysis was the 2005 Shang analysis. The absolutely massive flaws inherent to it have been discussed elsewhere on my blog, but I will give here the excellent discussion of it by the Homeopathic research institute.
6. The placebo effect (5:20). This effect has recently become something of a deus ex machina for those who debunk systems of medicine not embraced by the public health system. In short, yes it is very real. However, Homeopathy has been repeatedly demonstrated to have effects beyond that of the placebo effect, including in the highest quality trials available on the subject, as analyzed by Mathie in 2014. You can watch Mathie’s presentation on his paper below. This argument ignores the available evidence, and actually goes against it.
7. The Big Sugar argument (~6:00). The argument is that Homeopathy is a 17 billion dollar industry, engages in lobbying and thus is somehow equivalent to the pharmaceutical industry. Firstly, lets assume the 17 billion dollar argument is correct. I frankly don’t know.
The global annual revenue for pharmaceutical sales is approximately 1.1 trillion annually. This is a truly staggering amount of money, and has given rise to the pharmaceutical industry’s well known activities in lobbying, research corruption and medical education. Homeopathy in the figure given in this video (and again, I have no idea what the accuracy of this figure is) total revenues constitute approximately 1.54% of this total.
To suggest that Homeopathy is a vast and profitable business is quite simply false. While one firm (Boiron) has achieved some size, with 614 million euros in total revenue in 2016, this pales in comparison with any of the top 10 pharmaceutical companies, each of which reports tens of billions of revenue in 2016. And remember, Boiron is the leader, a very large part of the homeopathic market is dominated by smaller pharmacies operating on small budgets, making specialty products and orders with relatively low incomes and profit margins. It is a labor of love for dedicated pharmacists, not a vastly lucrative field.
To compare the efforts at systematic corruption of the Homeopathic and pharmaceutical industries is incredibly disingenuous.
8.The Homeopathy harms by omission argument. This argument has been around since Homeopathy’s earliest days, in which it was argued that Homeopathic therapeutics harmed individuals from the delay of applications of more effective therapeutics, such as bloodletting and heavy metals. This argument is based on the assumption of Homeopathy consisting solely of a placebo effect, something we have seen above, is not true, both based on clinical trials, and on our discussion of serious infectious disease like pneumonia, above.
Secondly, individuals’ consumption of holistic or alternative medicine are not correlated to less educational status, an propensity towards being deceived, or other factors. Individuals choosing holistic care tend to have higher incomes, higher educational attainments, and in my experience, higher expectations of conventional care than it is able to provide, even at the best of times. Homeopathy has traditionally be the medicine of the upper classes, and still is to a large extent in Britain. It has traditionally been favored by individuals with higher educations, and the expectation that medicine should actually cure them. Dana Ullman wrote an entire book on this subject, detailing the many famous individuals who chose Homeopathy, and why they did so. Sue Young also has a comprehensive historical blog, showing a number of leading figures, presidents, suffragettes, scientists, all individuals of discrimination and worth, who chose Homeopathy for themselves.
9. The compassion argument (6:37). A key argument against Homeopathy and it’s efficacy is the argument that our longer consultations and personal empathy fill the needs of individuals in an impersonal and sterile health systems. This is a very poor opinion of medical practitioners. I may be extremely critical of the systematic legal oppression against Homeopathy and Naturopathic medicine instituted by the current medical system, but I would not accuse medical staff of anything but the highest regard, empathy and care for their patients in the vast majority of circumstances. Furthermore, I myself have a very busy practice, with appointments running often at 10-15 minutes. Not that much long than a conventional MD’s visit length. I get stressed and overwhelmed, and can sometimes fail to connect to patients. Yet, my treatments still work, despite that failing due to economic demands.
To suggest that Homeopaths and Naturopathic doctors get better results purely to to empathy is a profound insult to the dedicated medical staff throughout the world. We get better results because of our therapies and our work in harmony with the bodies’ inherent self healing mechanisms, instead of against them, as in allopathic care.
This video piles falsehood upon falsehood, in an, admittedly, quite visually lovely piece, but one of no serious intellectual value, or any real accuracy.