Evidence
| Claims | Proponents claim that illnesses can be treated with specially prepared extreme dilutions of a substance that produces symptoms similar to the illness. Homeopathic remedies rarely contain any atom or molecule of the substance in the remedy. |
|---|---|
| Related scientific disciplines | Chemistry, Medicine |
| Year proposed | 1807 |
| Original proponents | Samuel Hahnemann |
| Subsequent proponents | Organizations: Boiron, Heel, Miralus Healthcare, Nelsons, Zicam Individuals: Deepak Chopra, Paul Herscu, Robin Murphy, Rajan Sankaran, Luc De Schepper, Jan Scholten, Jeremy Sherr, Dana Ullman, George Vithoulkas |
| Pseudoscientific concepts | |
The medicinal claims of homeopathy are unsupported by the collective weight of modern scientific research. There is an overall absence of sound statistical evidence of therapeutic efficacy, which is consistent with the lack of any biologically plausible pharmacological agent or mechanism. Abstract concepts within theoretical physics have been invoked to suggest explanations of how or why remedies might work, including quantum entanglement, the theory of relativity and chaos theory. However, the explanations are offered by nonspecialists within the field, and often include speculations that are incorrect in their application of the concepts and not supported by actual experiments. Several of the key concepts of homeopathy conflict with fundamental concepts of physics and chemistry.
Read more about this topic: Homeopathy
Famous quotes containing the word evidence:
“You don’t decide to build a church because you have money in the bank. You build because God says this is what I should do. Faith is the supplier of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen.”
—Jim Bakker (b. 1940)
“I don’t know what it is about fecundity that so appalls. I suppose it is the teeming evidence that birth and growth, which we value, are ubiquitous and blind, that life itself is so astonishingly cheap, that nature is as careless as it is bountiful, and that with extravagance goes a crushing waste that will one day include our own cheap lives.”
—Annie Dillard (b. 1945)
“Important as fathers are, their influence on children shouldn’t be exaggerated just because they were ignored so long. There is no evidence that there is something especially good about fathers as caretakers. There are no areas where it can be said that fathers must do certain things in order to achieve certain outcomes in children. The same goes for mothers.”
—Michael Lamb (late–20th century)