Besides ignoring or not understanding the latest research, New Fundamentalists can sometimes employ insinuation and innuendo in order to discredit homeopathy. For example, Ernst reported recently that trials of homeopathy performed by the Nazis (which had been considered “lost”) were so “wholly and devastatingly negative,” German homeopaths have covered it up ever since.
Apart from the ethical problems involved in quoting uncritically the results of Nazi research (especially because conventional medicine is well known to have benefited from the Nazis’ medical “experiments”), Ernst’s source material has proved to be highly suspect. At best, Ernst might be considered to be acting unethically and unscientifically by endorsing essentially 60-year-old hearsay as a condemnation of homeopathy.
Although exposing every case like this is no doubt necessary (if only to bolster morale!), ultimately this is a reactive strategy and does not advance the cause of homeopathy/CAMs very far. Just like the sound-bite or the attention-grabbing headline, it is the initial impression that sticks, not the more complex retraction buried in the back pages that appears months later.
Perhaps the most famous case of this in point is the by now (in) famous 2005 Lancet “meta-analysis” by Shang et al. This managed to conclude that homeopathy is no better than placebo, even though it patently failed to meet any of the generally accepted standards and criteria (e.g., transparency) for such meta-analyses, some of which the Lancet itself had laid down.
This Lancet meta-analysis appeared during that peculiar late-summer news “quiet time” in the UK media cycle known as the “silly season.” As a result, the media descended en masse on this putative “end of homeopathy” story. It is perhaps not surprising that the fact that The Lancet meta-analysis was totally debunked in the literature a few months later by many reputable researchers and scientists went totally unnoticed by the media.
By Lionel Milogram, Ph.D., F.R.S.C., M.A.R.H.
