New study suggests homeopathy has active ingredients

There is now increasing awareness that the homeopathic consultation is in itself a therapeutic intervention working independently or synergistically with the prescribed remedy.
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Er, haven't people been telling them that all along?

This study has has identified, using primary consultation and other data, a range of factors that might account for the effectiveness of homeopathic care. Some of these, such as empathy, are non-specific. Others, such as the remedy matching process, are specific to homepathy. These findings counsel against the use of placebo-controlled RCT designs in which both arms would potentially be receiving specific active ingredients.
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These "active ingredients", apparently, being the consultation process itself, and the placebo effect it produces.

This does not "counsel against the use of placebo-controlled RCT designs". These can still be used to see if the remedies themselves have any effect, whether working independently of or synergistically with the consultation.

On the other hand (working on homoeopathy's own terms), we can't isolate the effects of the homoeopathic consultation by giving both groups an actual remedy but only one the full consultation, because, it would be argued, you cannot prescribe the correct individualised remedy without the consultation.

However, perhaps we could run trials involving real medicines of known effect in which one group has a nice long homoeopathic-style consultation and the other doesn't, and see what effect the consultation has additional to that of the drug alone. Or a trial run along the same lines in which both groups are given a placebo.

What they are doing is trying to come up with another excuse for not testing homoeopathic remedies properly.
 
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... confirm or refute the therapeutic role of constructs such as patient openness, disclosure and homeopathicity
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Me don't like these words. Especially the last one. A tad to eso for my taste.

Hi Mojo! Ever heard from that crazy "Doctor" again, the one who promoted homeopathy and liked pictures of himself with military guys? :D
 
They are still trying to scuttle into deeper, darker corners, trying to avoid the light...
 
I disagree with the conclusion of the trial (the part that says RCT is not suited for homeopathy). Numerous alternative treatments exist and have existed that have some effect, just not for the reasons claimed. This seems to indicate thatthe same is the case for homeopathy: Homeopathy has some effect, but not due to any property of the remedies (which is what I have been saying for years).

So does it matter, as long as it works? Of course it matters, because if the remedies themselves are without effect, they should be dispensed with. There is no reason to continue the empty ritual of preparing and selecting homeopathic remedies if they are immaterial to the treatment. Instead, the "active ingredients" should be optimized and combined with a medical treatment that does have an actual effect.

Hans
 
This study has has identified, using primary consultation and other data, a range of factors that might account for the effectiveness of homeopathic care.
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Shouldn't they find some evidence that it's actually effective first?
 
MRC_Hans said:
So does it matter, as long as it works? Of course it matters, because if the remedies themselves are without effect, they should be dispensed with. There is no reason to continue the empty ritual of preparing and selecting homeopathic remedies if they are immaterial to the treatment. Instead, the "active ingredients" should be optimized and combined with a medical treatment that does have an actual effect.
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A view shared by Professor Edzard Ernst here:
The placebo-effect is a bonus that comes ‘free' (so to speak) with any treatment regardless whether it also has specific effects or not. It is therefore neither logical nor appropriate to use pure placebos that only rely on placebo effects – one might as well use treatments that have both specific effects and placebo-effects. In this way one makes optimal use of the “free bonus”.

Mind over matter?
http://www.arc.org.uk/newsviews/arctdy/131/Mindovermatter.htm
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And here:
…one does not need a placebo to generate a placebo response: treatments with specific therapeutic actions will also produce clinically meaningful placebo effects [16]. Is it not then better to profit from both specific and non-specific therapeutic effects by prescribing treatments that have been shown to be superior to placebo?

Is homeopathy a clinically valuable approach?
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/Pharmacology/dc-bits/ernst-tips-sept-2005.pdf
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And let’s not forget that back in 2001 Peter Fisher (who recently dismissed the furore over the MHRA’s new homeopathy regulations as “a bit of a storm in a teacup”) more or less conceded that homeopathy depended on a placebo response:
It seems more important to define if homeopathists can genuinely control patients' symptoms and less relevant to have concerns about whether this is due to a ‘genuine’ effect or to influencing the placebo response.

http://rheumatology.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/40/9/1052
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Not that the above is likely to see to see homeopaths admitting defeat any time soon.
 
A qualitative study, based on semi-structured interviews, will report people's perceptions and beliefs about what has worked, not what has worked.

It's also fairly ropey, imo, that the themes were "derived from prior theoretical study in which theory and data analysis are produced
dialectically rather than inductively as in Grounded Theory"; but in terms of whether homeopathy 'works', this is by-the-by.

If homeopathy was intended as a form of psychotherapy, this study might have some worth, if it was done reasonably well, and pointed future quantitative studies in the right direction. But homeopathy is not intended as a form of psychotherapy, it is claimed to be a medical intervention.

'What's it like to have homeopathy' or 'what do you think is happening to you during homeopathy' are perfectly legit questions, though this is not an amazingly good study to answer those questions (largely due I think to the analysis). But this study design can emphatically not answer questions such as 'do the little pills do anything' or 'are RCTs an appropriate method of testing homeopathy'.
 
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