Talk:Homeopathy

Please read before starting First of all, welcome to Wikipedia's homeopathy article. This article represents the work of many contributors and much negotiation to find consensus for an accurate and complete representation of the topic. Newcomers to Wikipedia and this article may find that it's easy to commit a faux pas. That's OK — everybody does it! You'll find a list of a few common ones you might try to avoid here. A common objection made by newly arriving editors is that this article presents homeopathy from a non-neutral point of view, and that the extensive criticism of homeopathy violates Wikipedia's Neutral Point of View policy (WP:NPOV). The sections of the WP:NPOV that apply directly to this article are: NPOV: Pseudoscience NPOV: Undue weight NPOV: Making necessary assumptions NPOV: Giving "equal validity" The contributors to the article continually strive to adhere to these to the letter. Also, splitting the article into sub-articles is governed by the Content forking guidelines. These policies have guided the shape and content of the article, and new arrivals are strongly encouraged to become familiar with them prior to raising objections on this page or adding content to the article. Other important policies guiding the article's content are No Original Research (WP:NOR) and Cite Your Sources (WP:CITE). Some common points of argument are addressed at Wikipedia's Homeopathy FAQ. Tempers can and have flared here. All contributors are asked to please respect Wikipedia's policy No Personal Attacks (WP:NPA) and to abide by consensus (WP:CON). This talk page is to discuss the text, photographs, format, grammar, etc of the article itself and not the inherent worth of homeopathy. See WP:NOT. If you wish to discuss or debate the validity of homeopathy or promote homeopathy please do so at google groups or other fora. This "Discussion" page is only for discussion on how to improve the Wikipedia article. Any attempts at trolling, using this page as a soapbox, or making personal attacks may be deleted at any time.

Wow, that little "active ingredient"!!!!!

A recent edit reminds me that I wanted to ask whether we can get a consensus for something like the following:

The dilutions in some, but not all, homeopathic remedies are extreme. Very much so. The article already says so repeatedly and tries to give the reader a feeling for how extreme the dilutions can be. Every editor who wants to add yet another sentence that describes how extreme these dilutions can get should:

1. Read all the other explanations of how little active ingredient there is (in many, but not all, cases).
2. Count the similar descriptions of superlatives in Sun or Milky Way for perspective.
3. If the edit really makes sense, remove one other sentence that describes how incredibly diluted this stuff can get.

By the way, did I mention that some of this stuff is practically pure diluent? Who would have thought it. Perhaps that's where the term "homeopathical doses" comes from. There's practically nothing there. Wow. --Hans Adler (talk) 15:04, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

The point is that you can't in any practical sense make a dilution containing less of a substance than the dilutant does. If you use watter that has impurities of only 10 ppb (unavailable in the 19th century) the most it can dilute something is by 10^-8. Beyond that what you have is a "remedy" based on the impurities in the water, not on the nominal substance. Extreme dilutions are entirely bogus. LeadSongDog (talk) 15:45, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

No. The point is that we are writing an encyclopedia, not collaborative homework for school. Apparently you still can't see the problem. This is a long article. One of the reasons is that we keep repeating the same points in different words. In Homeopathy#Dilution and succussion:

• 24X/12C is marked as the point where the dilutions stop having molecules of the original substance. (In table – details omit an assumption and seem to be the result of an incorrect calculation.)
• 60X/30C – your edit. (In table)
• 12C – under certain assumptions 0.602 molecules/liter.
• 15C – chances for retaining a molecule are negligible.
• Lake Geneva example.
• Atlantic Oceans example.
• 13C corresponds to 1 drop in all of the earth's oceans.

In Homeopathy#High dilutions:

• (Ordinary water should be treatment for every imaginable condition.)
• How huge a container 30C solution would have to be to contain a molecule.
• How much lactose would be needed to produce enough 30X pills that one contains a single molecule.

Did you actually see all these other instances? What do you think was new about what you added? Why was it needed in the particular place where you added it?

BTW, I suspect you made an incorrect "calculation". Having 0.602 molecules on average is of course not the same as a 60.2 % of having at least a single molecule. This kind of precision is preposterous anyway, when doing back-of-an-envelope computations as we are doing here. --Hans Adler (talk) 16:46, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Rereading my post from yesterday, I fear my usage of the word "you" may have been taken to mean "you, Hans Adler:, but that was not my intent. I meant it in the third-person-indefinite. Sorry if it came across wrong. To your last point, you are correct.

A more formal statistical presentation would have invoked the concept of expected value, which struck me as beyond the level of mathematics that many readers of this article would likely possess. We could use other phrasing such as "on average 0.6 molecules" if that's more acceptable to you. Please note that anyone with a rudimentary popular science grasp of quantum mechanics should have no conceptual difficulty with fractional molecules. I'm quite sure Robert Park's understanding of physics is sufficient to get this, so I infer he was engaging in oversimplification for the sake of communication or else just wasn't thinking too clearly when he made the quoted statement. Curiously, a corollary of Bell's theorem would effectively say that the entangled states of doses of remedies beyond 24C would, hypothetically achieving a single cure, render the remaining doses made from diluting that 24C to be void and hence unethical to dispense! Probably not the "spooky action at a distance" that Einstein was thinking of...

I wouldn't let the 98k article length trouble me, there are many longer at WP:FA. Still, If trimming is desired, I'd suggest that the bulk of "High dilutions" can be condensed into one para. It shouldn't be a surrogate for a "Criticisms" section, which are discouraged at Wikipedia:Words_to_avoid#Article_structure. The table can effectively replace the numeric content of the section. LeadSongDog (talk) 18:00, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

I don't have time to look into this deeply, but there is a page on Homeopathic dilution which could do with some assistance, and perhaps more references to this and more material copied there would be good. In general, things should be mentioned whenever relevant and in proportion. The question of dilution is very prominently featured in nearly all discussions of homeopathy, although I personally think it interesting and important when discussing possible mechanisms for homeopathy, it is largely irrelevant compared to the lack of evidence for any therapeutic effect (bar placebo, regression, etc). Sorry if this has all been said. Verbal chat 18:33, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

LeadSongDog, no, I didn't misunderstand you. Thanks for replying to my second point, although I am not sure that you have understand the "back-of-an-envelope" part: Saying 0.602 rather than just 0.6 amounts to lying because it gives the impression that this kind of precision makes any sense in the context. It's exactly the same kind of nonsense as the population of "19,297,729" that is mentioned in the New York article (which even says it's estimated; it says for which year, but not for which day and minute, as one would expect with this precision). I am not sure why you didn't reply to my first point, which was in short: We already had 9 instances of basically the same statement, and you added a 10th instance. --Hans Adler (talk) 22:22, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

You're right. One digit precision is more appropriate given the cumulative errors involved. I didn't get that was your concern, it's now fixed. As to your first point, the place for discussing serial dilution is in the section on Dilution and succession, not all those other places. Pick the best explanation. Put it there. Chuck the others. I've done some.

I agree that the serial dilution aspect of homeopathy is overstated in the article - especially given the new breed of infinately more concentrated (and potentially dangerous) homeopathic remidies. Arsenicum 2X anyone? There is a scary trend to mix physiologically active concentrations into modern homeopathic preparations. The article should mention the trend and the resulting debate between these 'new homeopaths' and the classical homeopaths. Naturstud (talk) 16:59, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

I have never heard of this as a recent phenomenon, although it is of course possible that it had disappeared for half a century or so and is coming back now. So far as I know this was discussed extensively among homeopaths from the beginning. If you want I can see if I find a few sources for this. --Hans Adler (talk) 17:40, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

I forgot who it was, but I think someone had removed quite a few instances. It looks like the article will soon be saturated again if we don't do something about it. --Hans Adler (talk) 17:46, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

The dilution thing is harped on endlessly by all reliable sources not promoting homeopathy. It's the key point to understanding why Homeopathy is considered so extremely dubious by the scientific side. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 21:44, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Where, of course, any source that does not "debunk" homeopathy promotes it, and be it the WHO or a mainstream scientific book explaining what homeopathy is (do we have such a thing?). And since Wikipedia is the Big Online Book of Debunking Articles the right thing to do is to follow them and repeat the same point until at least 10 % of the article (disclaimer: not sure about the exact number) is filled with it, rather than explain this point properly. Repeating the same argument 10 times in slightly different words is what you do in a school essay to get full marks with minimum effort, not what you do at university or in an encyclopedia. Is that so hard to understand? If you really want to spend so much space on dilutions, you need to give additional information. E.g., why not explain the Korsakovian method, which uses the same container in all stages? That could even save lives, because the actual concentration with this method can be dramatically higher than the nominal one. If the only message that our readers take home from this article is that homeopathic remedies contain no active ingredients at all, then some will happily take Belladonna D1, and even the most attentive readers might not worry about Belladonna 6CK. (A nominal 6C dilution using the Korsakovian dilution, so it may actually be more like 2C. Not sure how dangerous that is, but I wouldn't want to try it.)

A good encyclopedia contains interesting, informative, professional articles. Soapboxing and endless repetition are inconsistent with that. --Hans Adler (talk) 22:14, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

That could even save lives!!!??? WOW!!!!! The article should say that, and it wouldn't be soapboxing. Right, Hans? We cannot emphasize enough how absurd homeopathy is. We are talking about pure and simple water, and they claim it can cure almost every illness.--190.20.194.64 (talk) 16:23, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Not so fast. I'm not sure that Belladonna D3 and D4 are only "pure water", given how toxic Belladona is (who the hell sells D1? 1 part of Atropa belladona with 9 parts of excipient? isn't that dangerous? I'm not sure that it even qualifies as homeopathic, having so much active ingredient on it) The dilution and succusion table needs a "D" column. Oh, I just realized 1X = 1D --Enric Naval (talk) 23:48, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Not to get too far off topic, but just a couple of things I'm not too clear on here: 1.) stating that a given volume of diluent contains 0.602 solute molecules on average per sample would suggest somewhat less than a 60% chance of finding one molecule of the solute per sample, would it not? Stating a 60% chance of finding one molecule, based on the number 0.602, assumes that there are only two possibilities, zero molecules or one molecule, which is not the case. Since we might find two, three, or four molecules, per sample, we are actually more likely to find zero molecules than at least one. 2.) What does a "popular science grasp of quantum mechanics" have to do with the concept of finding 0.602 molecules of solute on average in a given sample size? Just curious, thanks.Puddin'head Wilson (talk) 12:07, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

(Just for fun, because we really don't want this kind of detail and misleadingly precise calculation in the article ...) If the average number of solute molecules in a sample is <N>, the probability that the sample contains at least molecule is p(N.ge.1) = 1-exp(-<N>), which, as you correctly point out, is always less than <N>, although close when <N> << 1. For <N> = 0.6, p(N.ge.1) = 0.45. --Art Carlson (talk) 15:49, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Citations misapplied?

Can someone explain how it's possible for a guy (SH) who died long ago to tell us what "practitioners" do today? For that matter, how is the Organon even considered a WP:RS on current practice?LeadSongDog (talk) 18:26, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

The "Organon" plays the role of the "bible" of the homeopaths, and their modern practice seems to be generally quite close to what he wrote. You are right that it's not an adequate source – if someone actually has doubts about the statement itself. You seem to be the first one – so now is the time to do the tedious work of looking for a better reference about modern practice. Thanks for notifying us of your doubts. --Hans Adler (talk) 18:48, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

That certainly seems to be the case for practitioners of "classical" homoeopathy, which is a major school. See for example the current "message of the month" on the website of the International academy of Classical Homeopathy[1] (my emphasis): "The term classical homeopathy was termed by George Vithoulkas in the mid seventies to indicate that the rules of Hahnemann, as expressed in the Organon, was to be followed, not to be transgressed or changed in order for one to claim he was practicing classical homeopathy." Brunton (talk) 12:07, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Good point. The statement in question (in first lede paragraph, about selection of treatments) is probably true to a lesser extent for "clinical" homeopaths as well, but we really need a better source. --Hans Adler (talk) 12:42, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Of course, this sort of approach to The Organon as some sort of inviolable "holy book" has been discussed here before.[2][3] Brunton (talk) 10:52, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

My understanding is that the Organon is the 'bible' only to some homeopaths, and is routinely ignored by others. It is important that the article not present the illusion that there is only one 'official' form of Homeopathy, with a dominant set of rules and common practices. I would compare the term Homeopathy to the term 'Christianity'. You can find some homeopaths who believe that remedies are only potentized if succussed against the Organon, just as you can find some Christians who see the bible as a literal description of events. Christianity holds many sects and sub-sects, some of which violently disagree with each other, and there is no central authority that governs and defines the term 'Christianity'. Similarly, homeopathy is a loose connection of ideas, not a clearly defined set of beliefs or practices. There is no central authority that will take away your license for breaking one of the Organon's aphorisms. Naturstud (talk) 16:30, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

You are making some very good points. I would really like to worry about the various viewpoints of different types of homeopaths; blur over the differences in some places to make the main points clear, and explain them in detail in others, etc. The usual things you have to do to get a good article. Unfortunately I know almost nothing about these differences and don't know good sources for them, so I can do no such thing without a dialogue with actual homeopaths of different persuasions. Unfortunately, when there were still some of them active at this article, the absurd polarisation made that impossible. --Hans Adler (talk) 22:24, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

I add to it that we the people and scientists in this world have just reached at some sub atomic levels or more or less slightly lower molecules, neutrons, protons, positrons, nano units etc.... but none has reached at a level below it. Just go beyond it and you will find homoeopathy working. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 117.96.137.60 (talk)

Sorry, but at the moment this is pure speculation (and in my eyes not even plausible speculation, but that makes no difference). I think it's not compatible with our policies to reflect such speculations in an article before they have become part of the scientific mainstream. or otherwise noteworthy. --Hans Adler (talk) 10:36, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

Worldwide prevalence

This sentence states that in 2005, around 100,000 physicians used homeopathy worldwide. It was added by Colonel Warden on April 25, and I don't know if it's inclusion was discussed here. The source doesn't look very reliable to me: it's just a news report, and maybe they got the data from a homeopath. If the numbers are accurate, I think there should be other sources to back them up. Regards.--190.20.247.97 (talk) 16:16, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

The replacement reference provided: Poitevin B, Bulletin of the World Health Organization, 1999, 77 (2) is available as PDF from the WHO (now linked.) Note that Potevin is clearly identified as a Homeopathy researcher, indeed the president of the "French Association for Homeopathy Research". Can't be counted as objective. LeadSongDog (talk) 19:53, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Homeopathy is apparently widely-used in India, so I'm not surprised that a few thousand medics use it worldwide. That WHO source is one of the few peer-reviewed sources I could find that address worldwide prevalence, but there might be something better elsewhere. Tim Vickers (talk) 20:49, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

The third paragraph in the lead is a complete mess. I'm not a big fan of homeopathy, but what is this sentence:

Regardless of whether homeopathic preparations are effective, they may make people feel better via the placebo effect. Thus, like any placebo, such remedies may improve symptoms subject to psychological or behavioral influences such as chronic pain, fatigue, anxiety or depression.

doing there? I think that should go in the second paragraph, but it doesn't seem necessary, anyway.

I also think that the last sentence would look better next to the one on current usage (just an opinion), which to me is a little bit misleading, as it seems to imply that the UK and the US are the countries where homeopathy is used the least. Looks like reliable statistics are available only for a few countries, but if worldwide usage is uncertain, maybe the article should say so.--190.20.247.97 (talk) 22:00, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

You'd be hard-pressed to wring one word of praise out of me for the current lead. It is bad prose written by a sharply-divided and fractious committee. Tim Vickers (talk) 19:52, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

I agree that the lede is bad, but perhaps not as bad as you think. The first paragraph gives an approximate definition. The second paragraph essentially says: "A lot of editors think it is scientific consensus that it's pseudoscience, but the standards for making such a statement are so high that they can't force it into the article." The third paragraph is about the place of homeopathy in society. It explains that it's mostly harmless and ineffective, and why people like it anyway. Then there is an odd mixture of statements about various countries. This part is relatively new. It is relatively "balanced", so currently there is no fighting about it, but it contains misleading statements. (E.g. homeopathy's share of a prescription budget is an exceptionally bad parameter, given that most homeopathic remedies are extremely cheap.) The problem is that part can't simply be removed, because it was introduced as a counter-weight to the very negative parts that precede it.

To say that worldwide usage is uncertain, we would need a reliable source that says so. (Unlike a scientist in a paper, we can't just say that we couldn't find such statistics, because references to the encyclopedia and its editors are not acceptable.) --Hans Adler (talk) 23:44, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

The standards cannot be too high, we are talking about pure and simple water here, there is no reason to think otherwise. It is because of the pro-homeopathy editors that the lead is a complete mess. Anyway, I think this could be counted as a better reference, but I don't know about copyright issues.--190.20.200.159 (talk) 14:40, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Well, that's the usual kind of simplistic disinformation (related to outgroup homogeneity bias - topics you don't like are always much simpler than topics you do like) to which we are used here coming from anti-homeopathy editors. If you are right, I suppose it's safe to ignore the warnings against high alcohol content in liquid homeopathic remedies, and against lactose (for the lactose intolerant) in homeopathic pills? And you are obviously one of those who would have no problem whatsoever with taking Digitalis D2. The lede is a complete mess because of extreme opinions on both sides.

I had no idea that the WHO Atlas is on Google Books. Yes, of course it's an excellent source. There are no copyright problems for us (so long as we don't copy the map), since we can simply refer to the printed copy. This seems necessary, anyway, since there seem to be some problems with the colours. Thanks for finding this! My university library has, but it's currently borrowed by someone else. --Hans Adler (talk) 16:00, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

The conclusions on the effectiveness of homeopathy highly depend on the set of analyzed trials

This discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
JOURNAL OF CLINICAL EPIDEMIOLOGY Volume 61, Issue 12, Pages 1197-1204 (December 2008) The conclusions on the effectiveness of homeopathy highly depend on the set of analyzed trials R. Lüdtkea , A.L.B. Ruttenb Accepted 18 June 2008. published online 02 October 2008. Abstract Objective Shang's recently published meta-analysis on homeopathic remedies (Lancet) based its main conclusion on a subset of eight larger trials out of 21 high quality trials (out of 110 included trials). We performed a sensitivity analysis on various other meaningful trial subsets of all high quality trials. Study Design Subsets were defined according to sample size, type of homeopathy, type of publication, and treated disease/condition. For each subset, we estimated the overall odds ratios (ORs) from random effect meta-analyses. Results All trials were highly heterogeneous (I2 = 62.2%). Homeopathy had a significant effect beyond placebo (OR50.76; 95% CI: 0.59e0.99; p50.039). When the set of analyzed trials was successively restricted to larger patient numbers, the ORs varied moderately (median: 0.82, range: 0.71–1.02) and the P-values increased steadily (median: 0.16, range: 0.03–0.93), including Shang's results for the eight largest trials (OR = 0.88, CI: 0.66–1.18; P = 0.41). Shang's negative results were mainly influenced by one single trial on preventing muscle soreness in 400 long-distance runners. Conclusions The meta-analysis results change sensitively to the chosen threshold defining large sample sizes. Because of the high heterogeneity between the trials, Shang's results and conclusions are less definite than had been presented. Keywords: Homeopathy, Randomized clinical trials, Meta-analysis, Selection bias, Heterogeneity, Sensitivity analysis Link --150.214.40.114 (talk) 18:45, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Yes, yes, we've discussed that a thousand times, and every time decided the argument is invalid and inaccurate. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 00:15, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

See also here (mostly a discussion of the associated Rutten/Stolper paper, but comments on Ludtke/Rutten and what it actually shows towards the end). Brunton (talk) 11:09, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

It debunks itself - no need to beat the dead horse.

Let's assume that the principle of homeopathy is correct for a moment, and that the water molecules retain the memory of the substance that has been diluted out and is no longer present. Now, the earth is about 4.5 billion years old, and although we get some matter infalling from meteors and whatnot, and some of our atmosphere is being ablated away by the solar wind, the amount of water on the earth has been constant for most of that time, whether it was in oceans, glaciers, rain, lakes, etc. During that time, it has been exposed to just about every bacterial or fungal toxin, dead animal and human putrefying bodies, feces, etc. So, if the water retains the memory of substances it once contacted but no longer contains, then every living thing would die upon contact with that 4 billion year-old witch's brew. --David 09:00 06 December 2008 (UTC)

"Exposure" is not enough. It needs "succussion". They say. Please don't use this space to tell us your opinion of homeopathy unless it is directly related to improving the article. --Art Carlson (talk) 09:44, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

Not necessarily. Dana Ullman, for example, has implied that Charles Darwin's studies of the effect of ammonium salts on Drosera involved "homeopathic doses" despite the solutions not having been succussed.[4][5]. Brunton (talk) 12:37, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

Well, it is a discussion page, after all. My "opinion" is that this argument reveals a striking deficit in the claims underpinning homeopathy, and perhaps another author would like to expand on this in the article itself. Do we believe everything that is stated just because it has been stated, and is perhaps supported by someone else's statements previously? Is an encyclopedia just a regurgitation of words, or should it attempt to provide the best available information? Is supression of information (by pointing out the inconsistency of the underlying claim to the entire system in question) the correct goal? --David 07:15 07 December 2008 (UTC)

The homeopath will respond with different arguments depending on the claim being made. That their system is overall inconsistent, they usually ignore. However, I don't think this argument needs to be elaborated on in the article. Verbal chat 12:53, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

Recent changes to the lead

Although an edit comment asserts that they are an "attempt at a more readable organization of the lead without changing its content", the recent edits make the lead read much more sympathetically towards homoeopathy.

A detailed discussion of the dilutions involved, which is not really appropriate for the lead, has been inserted, concluding with comment about safety (previously covered in the third paragraph).

I don't think the changes make it more readable. The inserted comments about dilutions, for example, really make it less readable, and I'm not too keen on the addition of "As such homeopathy constitutes an axiomatic theory of treatment in that it is based on postulates that are accepted at face value and do not themselves rest on further postulates or mechanisms that might account for its purported efficacy. Homeopathists evaluate its efficacy on the basis of clinical experience with suitably applied treatments, relying essentially exclusively on internal assessments and neither seeking nor heeding independent external review by the medical community at large" either.

The reorganisation and addition of additional and inappropriate verbiage has had the effect of pushing mention of the actual efficacy of homoeopathy, or any critical comment, further down the page. Even there, "Claims to the efficacy of homeopathic treatment beyond the placebo effect are unsupported by the collective weight of scientific and clinical evidence" has been changed so that the paragraph starts "Homeopathy has been actively studied by the external medical community over a long period".

We have also lost virtually the whole of the third paragraph, including the comments about prevalence and regulation, about homoeopaths advising clients to avoid conventional medicine, about homoeopathy working via the placebo effect etc.

I suggest that the changes should be reverted, and that further changes of this nature should be discussed here before being made. Brunton (talk) 12:27, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

Regardless the recent edits being more or less sympathetic towards homoeopathy, they make the lead completely unreadable.--190.20.212.215 (talk) 17:51, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

I agree that long leads are not good, and that the details of dilution can go (they're all in the body). Detail at that level does indeed make the lead unreadable, and that was a mistake on my part (I have a bad habit of getting on a roll and adding detail, which I need to cure myself of).

However I disagree that structuring the basic facts about, and rationale behind, homeopathy so as to make it clear what they are is a bad thing---in the old version, now back, these facts are not presented as clearly as they could be, as has been complained about before (see above).

The much more interesting question is whether a sympathetic treatment of a dubious theory is a bad thing. For those who just want to look up "homeopathy" in Wikipedia to see whether they should be taking it seriously, an article that gives the appearance of taking it seriously conveys the wrong first impression, which may be what you have in mind. On that basis I think it's right that the objections to homeopathy come earlier than where my excessive detail had moved them down to, certainly no later than the second paragraph.

But then in the spirit of self-contained first sentences of a lead, what is wrong with adding "but now widely discredited" after "1796" (with a suitable reference to go with the one already there)? That's a change I would not want to make myself, at least not without first raising it on the talk page, being in the nature of a confrontational addition. But the confrontation is key to the article, and is already under way by paragraph 2, and it is therefore entirely appropriate that the first sentence foreshadow the upcoming confrontation.

You're also missing out on the strategically placed links to vitalism in my version, a "proof-without-words" (i.e. purely via links) that Hahnemann's rationale for his approach was founded on a now discredited understanding of the difference between organic and inorganic matter. But this can fixed without changing the first paragraph by just linking essential qualities (near the end of the paragraph) accordingly.

The one other change I made that I still think is a good one is to make the point that homeopathy is based on two principles, the law of similars and potentisation. After reading the rest of the article one can go back to the first paragraph and see that this is what it was saying, but in the present form it is not immediately obvious from a first reading, for those not already familiar with the subject, that Hahnemann had two novel concepts, whence my proposed reorganization clearly labeling and stating them.

While I did not feel it was necessary that the lead get into details at the level of physical and psychological state, neither did I want to annoy anyone by simply moving them down to the body, so I put in the "Regarding the first principle" paragraph as a place for it, and then made my usual mistake of getting on a roll with details. But does the state stuff really even need to be in the lead at all? I would be inclined to go straight from the bald statement of Hahnemann's principles as I stated them (or something of equivalent content and organization) directly to the objections, leaving all the elaboration to the body, which is a masterpiece of exposition btw. I would also move a lot of the rest of the lead into the body so as to give a definite conclusion to the lead rather than letting it drag on the way it presently does.

But while getting to the confrontation early in the lead is a good thing, I do believe that this can be accomplished in a minimally confrontational manner. One way to do this is to present the underlying rationale neutrally, so as not to appear judgmental, but clearly, so as to make it as easy as possible for readers to draw their own conclusions that homeopathy is a house built on the sand of a long outdated view of life, supplemented with novel but unsupportable principles (the law of similars, and potentisation) governing that view. Homeopathists could care less that there are no molecules of the substance retained by potentisation, in fact that was half the point of the process, to get those toxic molecules out of the medicine, the other point being that the vital essence of the substance was not only retained but even activated and enhanced. By that logic 200C is better than 100C. Hopefully most readers will find that logic ridiculous, but if you're concerned about those who don't, explicitly saying it's ridiculous probably isn't going to get that crowd on your side anyway so you lose little or nothing by leaving "ridiculous" implicit. It is important however to say that all known treatments generally recognized as effective involve measurable phenomena (one can feel an acupuncture needle, radiation is measurable, and one can hear a patient's laughter), whether or not it is clear why they are effective, whereas no method has yet been devised to measure the difference between 100C and 200C.

If my attempt at reorganizing the lead accordingly made me sound in sympathy with homeopathy I hope I've made my position on the subject a little clearer. I also hope Hans Adler finds it more or less in accord with how he would like to see this article organized, Hans thinks very clearly about these things even when his writing does not always convey it. --Vaughan Pratt (talk) 21:07, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Incidentally one side effect of the reversion has been to restore the POV tag dated June. As I pointed out when I commented it out, the objections that presumably gave rise to it seem to have been taken care, given the paucity of neutrality complaints on this page in recent months, surely none at a level sufficiently heated to justify the tag. That sword of Damocles hanging over the article doesn't exactly enhance its credibility. Anyone have a vested interest in seeing it stay? Otherwise I suggest commenting it back out. --Vaughan Pratt (talk) 21:36, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

The POV tag should stay because the article has not been significantly improved in this respect during this time. Verbal made a brief attempt at improvement but we scarcely got a few sentences into the lede before stalling. For examples of online encyclopedic treatments with a more NPOV tone, please see NHS and NIH. Our article compares quite poorly with these and we would serve our readership better by reducing the article to a stub while providing good external links such as these. Colonel Warden (talk) 10:41, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Hello Vaughan, welcome at this article! I was very happy with large parts of your version of the lede, especially how you conveyed a lot of criticism of homeopathy elegantly and encyclopedically. Notably this part:

As such homeopathy constitutes an axiomatic theory of treatment in that it is based on postulates that are accepted at face value and do not themselves rest on further postulates or mechanisms that might account for its purported efficacy. Homeopathists evaluate its efficacy on the basis of clinical experience with suitably applied treatments, relying essentially exclusively on internal assessments and neither seeking nor heeding independent external review by the medical community at large.

Homeopathy has been actively studied by the external medical community over a long period. These independent studies overwhelmingly report finding scientific and clinical evidence only for its effect as a placebo.

There was no chance that such a big change would stick; there is too much suspicion around, and you touched too many aspects that have been carefully fine-tuned. E.g. "… overwhelmingly report … evidence only for … effect as a placebo" can be read as claiming there is a consensus that homeopathy causes a placebo effect. If you search for "placebo" further up on this page you will see that among the editors of this page there isn't even a full consensus that the placebo effect exists as something desirable. But overall I think your approach is exactly what we need: Show, don't tell.

I think some kind of POV tag is currently still needed because of the sometimes openly hostile language. The most obvious example is something that you had as the last sentence in your version of the lede:

[Convincing reasons] have caused homeopathy to be regarded as pseudoscience or quackery.

This is factually correct, but strongly POV in the way it's formulated. (How long would the following survive in George W. Bush? "His disregard for international law and human lives has caused him to be called a war criminal or butcher.") After a cursory rereading of the article body I don't remember any issues with that. Perhaps we can restrict it to POV-intro. That there isn't much discussion of actual POV problems currently seems to be a natural consequence of the fact that all regular pro-homeopathy editors left the article. In my opinion, real conflicts currently exist exclusively between pseudosceptics and sceptics.

The loss of actual experts on homeopathy is a big problem because many aspects of homeopathy are still totally underdeveloped here. Homeopathy was extremely important for the history of medicine, but we are not doing the history of homeopathy justice. And the fundamental distinction between classical and clinical homeopathy is only hinted at. These important topics were lost because they didn't play a role in the epic battle that happened here. Another aspect we should cover is the phenomenon of companies that market pseudo-homeopathic products. I found a case where they even mix this with cortisone, making it obvious quackery from a homeopathic POV. Some editors conflate the activities of such companies with homeopathy, just because they are more present in advertising and easier to attack. --Hans Adler (talk) 22:54, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Hi Hans, glad you saw some merit in my edits. Actually the bit about "[Convincing reasons] have caused homeopathy to be regarded as pseudoscience or quackery" was not something I wrote but was there before and is still there now; I disliked it for the same reason as you but knew that changing it would cause protests and therefore refrained. Even what I wrote was deleted on account of being too sympathetic to homeopathy, even though what got deleted included "Homeopathists evaluate its efficacy on the basis of clinical experience with suitably applied treatments, relying essentially exclusively on internal assessments and neither seeking nor heeding independent external review by the medical community at large." How is that "sympathetic to homeopathy"? I get the feeling that people are reverting edits without even bothering to try to understand proposed improvements! Most edit-hostile page I've been involved in, I think. --Vaughan Pratt (talk) 05:44, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

The general philosophy of many editors here seems to be "the blunter, the better". Your mistake was trying to explain what homeopathy is about. That's what Britannica does with homeopathy, and that's what Wikipedia does with Christian Science or even more problematic topics. But here it's not allowed, because even the appearance that one has taken homeopathy seriously and evaluated it with an open mind before coming to the conclusion that it's bullshit is evil. Any attempt to move the article in that direction is pro-homeopathic POV pushing. At this article, being a scientist is synonymous with supporting the science team, not with following the scientific method.

Sorry for the rant. I hope you stay around. This article only makes progress when there is a temporary influx of editors who normally have better things to do (as if I didn't), like when the present lede was created. --Hans Adler (talk) 09:47, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

I don't consider all of the edits to be without merit. The clear and brief statement of the two basic principles of homoeopathy could be retained, for example. The start of this version, as far as the words "thereby increasing its potency", with the addition of a brief description of the homoeopathic prescription process, would be an excellent replacement for the current first paragraph. Some of the wording might need a little tweaking, for example in the phrase "a suitably chosen substance that can produce ... symptoms similar to those of the illness", "substance" should perhaps be replaced by "remedy" as provings are invariably carried out using potentised remedies, and the words "suitably chosen" are possibly unnecessary, but the basic format and content of that section reads clearly and sets out the basic principles. Brunton (talk) 11:21, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

I was about to replace the POV tag (removed by Verbal, then restored by Colonel Warden) by a POV-intro tag, but this sounds as if we might be about to solve some of the problems with the lede. I agree that the passage needs some tweaking. Perhaps we can also summarise the following two paragraphs very shortly, and retain the language I highlighted above (except for the implicit claim that homeopathy is at least an effective placebo, unless we have a really good source for that; since this is my POV, I think I would remember it if I had seen one). --Hans Adler (talk) 11:35, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

We need the lead to do three things, in my opinion: (a) briefly describe what homoeopathy is, when it was established etc; (b) because we are dealing with a subject outside the scientific mainstream, we need to indicate how the mainstream regards homoeopathy (I think this may be covered by WP:FRINGE?); (c) because homoeopathy is an alternative medical system, we need to say something about its prevalence, how and whether it is regulated, and how it related to mainstream medicine. The three paragraphs of the current lead more or less do this, but there is certainly room for improvement. (Sorry if I'm stating the bleeding obvious here.) Brunton (talk) 12:12, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

I'm going to try this again. The WP:LEAD should reflect a summary what is in the content, not drive it. Fix the sections first, then come back to the lead afterwards. Let us have a moratorium on lead edits until there is some stability in the sections being summarized.LeadSongDog (talk) 15:04, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

What's wrong with the other sections? They've been stable for months, apart from the recent history section which wouldn't need mention in the lead anyhow. Verbal chat 15:26, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

A moratorium on lede edits is fine for me, as long as it is POV-intro tagged. Recall that neither "pseudoscience" nor "quackery" is even so much as mentioned in the body of the article. --Hans Adler (talk) 15:53, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

They both were, when were they removed? (no, still there Homeopathy#Medical_and_scientific_analysis - I thought I'd have noticed that removal) :) Verbal chat 16:00, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

You are right. The phrasing is very similar, and working with my tiny EeePC screen I thought this were just additional search results in the lede. --Hans Adler (talk) 16:07, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Offtopic, but "oooh I want one". They are similar but I guess there are only so many ways you can say it. Verbal chat 16:27, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Stable doesn't mean good. It just means editors have been otherwise preoccupied (with the lead). Consider the jumble of citation styles used. Many of the citations are grossly incomplete, making it implausible that a reader will assess their quality. How about starting with fixing those?LeadSongDog (talk) 16:58, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

In judging NPOV, I naturally start with the lede because that is the primary content which any reader, such as myself, will read first and which sets the tone for the whole article. I don't consider the article to be stable so much as deadlocked and moribund. There's lots of content which needs editing but working upon this article seems a poor use of time. Colonel Warden (talk) 17:00, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Indeed. In view of the wholesale reversion of my contribution I feel that the effort I put into it was time better spent on other articles where one's edits are not unilaterally reverted. I agreed already that the additional detail further down in my rewrite of the lead should be dropped and I'm happy to write off the effort there (which in any event took less time, its length notwithstanding, than my opening few sentences) to my bad judgment and as good learning experience. However I don't agree that the present first few sentences set out the nature of homeopathy with the clarity and organization of the first few sentences of my version. Edit wars are counterproductive and can be very time consuming, and I therefore leave it to others to decide whether to restore any portion of what I wrote. My preference is to contribute to those articles where the editing can be agreed on with the least angst and where two-way interaction with an editor (contacting them on their talk page if necessary) is required before simply reverting their edits. Not to do so, as happened here, is in my view the height of bad manners on Wikipedia. This article holds itself to a lesser standard of etiquette. --Vaughan Pratt (talk) 18:19, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

Size of industry

Just dropped by the page. As the old expression goes "Fools rush in where fools have been before", but I don't notice any mention of the amount of money spent on this....hmmm, how do I say this NPOV...this business? Is that okay to say?--Anna Frodesiak (talk) 15:31, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

It's hard to get exact numbers about these things. I have seen numbers from Germany that indicated that as far as prescriptions are concerned, the average price per unit is dramatically lower for homeopathy than for medicine in general. I think they are generally doing a relatively good job of keeping the prices almost as low as you would expect for something that consists mostly of diluent and doesn't need/get much research. They do have a lot of overhead for keeping remedies based on thousands of substances, in many different dilutions, apart, and distributing them separately. E.g. they recently complained to the European Union that in most member countries the less popular remedies can't be marketed because if you sell only a few dozen units the registration fees of a few hundred euros per remedy lead to an enormous increase in the unit price. If you are curious or don't believe me, I can try to dig up the references again.

On the other hand there are companies selling "homeopathic" remedies with a lot of advertising effort, and probably making a lot of money with that. Perhaps you were thinking of them, but I don't think that's fair. Homeopathy is mainly about talking with the patient, and obviously that doesn't occur in that case. --Hans Adler (talk) 17:44, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Our lede contains the statistic 0.006% of the total prescribing budget. This is orders of magnitude less than another source which says, approximately 7% of the European non-prescription pharmaceutical market, or 1% of the total European pharmaceutical market. Overall, this is a clearly a significant activity with billions of turnover. Colonel Warden (talk) 18:07, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Ah, but that source is from the European Coalition on Homeopathic and Anthroposophic Medicinal Products, while the BBC's source on the lead appears to be quoting the Prescription Pricing Authority, which appears to depend from the NHS. --Enric Naval (talk) 22:03, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

What seems more important is the scope of the statistics. The larger ones cover all of Europe and non-prescription as well as prescription. I suppose that the German contribution to these statistics has a major effect as this is the home of homeopathy and I gather that CAM treatments are more commonly available there on prescription. Anyway, our article's selection of statistics seems distorting in that a narrow statistic for a single country has been cherry-picked to give the impression that the amount of homeopathic turnover is tiny when this is not the case. Colonel Warden (talk) 22:16, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Question of dilusion

I haven't gone beyond 2nd year highschool chemistry. From rough calculations, to get about 1 mL of an active chemical in a 30C concentration, you would need to have something upon the lines of 10^27 Litres of water. (I'm probably off by a little, but even in that magnatude, it is easy to see that it would be virtually impossible to get a meaningful dose.

I just want to verify that water (or any other substance for that matter) doesn't contain a "memory" of past interactions with other substances does it?

Also, is it the idea to drink or consume a lot of these doses, or does the patient only consume 1 bottle at a time?

Seems pretty ridiculous to me... but I am no professor of chemistry. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.168.244.49 (talk) 16:54, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

You make the dilution in several steps, so you only need a small amount of water on each step. I'm not an expert, but, for example, you can dissolve 1 centiliter of active subtance in 1 liter of distiled water, then you take 1 centiliter out of the resulting substance into another 1 liter of distiled water, then you take 1 liter of that dilution, etc. so a 10 steps process will require only 9 liters of distiled water and give you 1 liter of 10C remedy as a result (same as 20X or 20D). And you can refine that so you use less water. You definitely don't need 10^27 liters of water for manufacturing the remedies, you can do a sizable amount of remedy using only test tubes on a lab (. Oh, and you are supposed to shake it at every step (succussion), or it won't work (or so say homeopaths.....), see Homeopathy#Dilution_and_succussion. (some explanation like this one should go into the article, for people with the same doubt)

The patients take small doses, one or three times a day. The frequency and potency is tailored to each pacient, the homeopaths recommend what they see fitting for a particular person according to his specific symptoms. Homeopathy guides give general guidelines and advice on how to determine the adequate dose for each individual pacient. --Enric Naval (talk) 15:12, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

The remedies are not usually drunk, by the way: they're administered in the form of sugar pills onto which the liquid preparation has been dripped and allowed to evaporate. So not only does it involve the memory of water, it also seems frequently to rely on the hearsay evidence of lactose. Brunton (talk) 15:47, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

I am not sure that's correct. I believe they are quite often administered as a water-alcohol solution. I am not even sure that the pills are more standard, although they may be. --Hans Adler (talk) 17:17, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Quin

This history appears to be the genuine source of homeopathy's popularity in Britain, including among the royal family. It should probably be included. hgilbert (talk) 17:32, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

As Hgilbert says (altough I'll check on sources before saying so on the article).

Please notice that I'll replace the "Popular guide" source with three reliable sources that Hans Adler (thanks again, Hans) kindly pointed me to Homeopathy in Perspective Homeopathic Pharmacy History & Status of Homoeopathy Around the World (please kindly check them out and point me to posible biases built on those books so I can take them into account and/or point me out to reliable sources I can use: only online versions and books that have paperback editions that I can buy on Amazon, please)

See, on the long term I would add all this info to the history section:

1. Dr. Quin's stuff: contribution to popularity on UK, Royal College of Physics opposition, first homeopathic hospital, PR stun with 30% thing (which I'll expand with explanations of why more people died on traditional medicine hospitals at that time, that's not POV, that's the reality of medicine at that time, historical articles and sections are supposed to have that sort of stuff even if we don't like it)
2. Hering and Kent's classical homeopathy,
3. Kent's repertory (upon which all modern practice of homeopathy is founded, I think, how can this not be on the article?),
4. Kent's invention of homeopathic constitutional types (and short list of them on a separate section, again something that I don't understand how it isn't even mentioned on the article),
5. apparition of Hughe's doctrine which predicated the use of low potencies
6. cisma between Kent's followers and Richard Hughes's at a delicate time for homeopathy (traditional medicine was getting into shape)
7. how the decline was affected by this cisma, finishing with the practical disparition on the 1920s
8. how the revival was done only with Kent's doctrine (which explains why today's homeopathy is based on it)

In short, a detailed historical account that doesn't lack parts that are vital to understanding homeopathy's evolution over time.

I made an extended commented on Hans' page about my wicked evil plans to expand the history section with notable content until it's long enough to *gasp* make a content fork spinout for size reasons into its own article, just like Regulation and prevalence of homeopathy did.

Finally, I would be very grateful if you would please attempt to fix the grammar failures and perceived POV problems in my edits instead of reverting wholesome my additions of relevant content as if I was doing vandalism or something, thanks. --Enric Naval (talk) 21:47, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for starting this, and sorry for my reacting first with a revert, and then not being able to help before well into the new year. --Hans Adler (talk) 22:26, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

This is what editing on this page should look like

The edits done to the "history" section in the past days should have looked like these edits from spanish wikipedia:

1. I expand an article with an outdated source[6]
2. Escarlati warns me on a friendly manner, asks if I am taking this into account, and provides me a reliable source with up-to-date information[7]
3. I tell him that I have enough problems as it is, and that he please fixes my silly errors[8]
4. Escarlati fixes my silly errors with the said source[9]
5. Glendininng swoops in to make minor fixes[10]
6. I keep expanding the article[11]
7. Glendinning swoops in again to fix a part made confusing by my edits and expand it with a good source[12]
8. after several iterations of the above, the article is significantly sourced, corrected, expanded and improved[13]. Lengthy OR discussions on sources and reference formatting are held at user talk pages in a civilized manner and using mostly reliable secondary sources[14][15][16]

An editor (me) adds relevant content that the article lacked, the editor struggles to get it right, editors more knowledgeable of the subject check in at regular intervals to fix his lousy writing, they fix the mistakes providing reliable sources that back the changes, and they use their better knowledge to help the editor. Please let's make our best to make editing here look like this.

It's a pleasure to edit in this way, it prevents edit wars, it improves articles, and you don't get the damned page full-protected just when you finally have reliable sources to make the changes. Again, please let's make our best here. --Enric Naval (talk) 23:59, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Quin source

The Quin source is published by a standard publisher; what makes it questionable? hgilbert (talk) 22:29, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Not as much "questionable" as "unreliable and biased". It's a popular guide with only a generic outline of homeopathy's history, it doesn't cite its sources, and it's probably biased towards highligthing positive aspects of homeopathy and omiting the negative ones.

It's much less reliable than, for example, the detailed foot-noted account at, History & Status of Homoeopathy Around the World, and much more suspect of bias than Homeopathy in Perspective (which explains how cholera is treated in the actuality and doesn't imply by omission that it could be homeopathy, and not lack of contemporany conventional treatment, what caused the lower death rate on Quin's hospital) --Enric Naval (talk) 18:55, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Notes & references

This should be the last section. If you notice a new section below, please "fix it" by moving this section back to the bottom of the page. Thank you.