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. |
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| 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 |
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Pseudoscientific concepts |
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The medicinal claims of homeopathy are unsupported by the collective weight of modern scientific research – outside of the CAM community, scientists have long regarded homeopathy as a sham. 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. For instance, quantum entanglement is not possible as humans and other animals are far too large to be affected by quantum effects, and entanglement is a delicate state which rarely lasts longer than a fraction of a second. In addition, while entanglement may result in certain aspects of individual subatomic particles acquiring each other's quantum states, this does not mean the particles will mirror or duplicate each other, or cause health-improving transformations.
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