AT 10.23 am on 30 January, more than 300 activists in the UK, Canada, Australia and the US will take part in a mass homeopathic "overdose". Sceptics will publicly swallow an entire bottle of homeopathic pills to demonstrate to the public that homeopathic remedies, the product of a scientifically unfounded 18th-century ritual, are simply sugar pills.
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This is completely pointless. According to the homeopaths' logic, homeopathic remedies have more effect the more dilute they are, so someone who believes in homeopathy would expect swallowing a whole bottle at once to have very little effect at all, so it will prove nothing to anyone.
It will certainly prove nothing to those who believe in homeopaths logic (apparently there are people who do,and they may well believe in Smurfs as well) but it may bring "homeopaths logic" and the farce that it is to a wider public.
So in that sense it is well worth doing.
The campaign isn't about arguing with homeopaths or trying to convince people who believe in homeopathy; it's about raising public awareness of the fact that homeopathic remedies have literally no active ingredient in them. To complain that we're unlikely to convince homeopaths is to spectacularly miss the point...
Martin is the editor of layscience.net.
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Given this logic, surely taking NO homeopathic pills must be a far a more potent cure than taking two pills?
Fascinating branch of bilge, isn't it? Bit of a sad commentary on those who practise it or buy its nonsense though.
And it's worth noting that the packaging recommends 4 pills per dose for adults and 2 for children. It's a topsy turvy world.
One factor that seems not to have been included in the research on the efficacy of homeopathy is that the theory and practice of homeopathy, including the medicines used, may be particularly appropriate for the mind/body of those who decide to use it and that use of other systems of medicine by that person at that time would not be so effective.
Possibly the reductionist methodology of objective science may not prove very useful in elucidating the subtle issues of health/wholeness which is ultimately a state of synergy.