Vol. 24 No. 1 February 2004

Following the screening here of the BBC television programme which claimed to be about homœopathy, but which was really centred on a badly designed and executed physics experiment, two silly letters appeared in The Listener. The first was purporting to support homœopathy – but the claims it made did more harm than good. The second was from an arch skeptic and contained the words “. . . it has been demonstrated time and again that homœopathy is quackery.” We hear this sort of thing time and again but homœopathy has never been demonstrated to be quackery. Of course some claims for it, or one particular trial (like the use of Arnica for the effects of carpal-tunnel surgery) have not supported some idea that is said to represent homœopathy, but using these examples to claim that homœopathy in total is quackery is as invalid as saying that if a trial to see if vitamin C cured colour-blindness showed no benefit then it proves the prescribing of vitamin supplements is quackery.

Bruce Barwell