Does Homeopathy works? If not then why people use it ?

Question

My dad has done MSc in Analytical Chemistry he is well educated and a wise man, Me/My Family and Even some doctors cannot debunk his trust on Homeopathy
I want some clever and factual explanations which I will forward to him

Thanks in advance

In: Biology

Answer 1

Reasons homeopathy doesn’t work:

It’s literally just water. A 30C dilution for example means that whatever was originally in the water has been volumetrically diluted 30 times in sequence, leading to a reduction in concentration of 10^30 times what it originally was. This means that there won’t even be a single molecule of anything but water in the final product. There are only about 10^20^24 water molecules in a cup of water for reference. How can something possibly have an effect on your body, if you aren’t even ingesting any molecules of it.

Reasons people think it works:

1. Return to the mean: People generally use homeopathy for mild ailments that will get better of their own accord. People will often take a homeopathic remedy, and find themselves getting better. They would have got better anyway, but they attribute it to the homeopathy rather than the body’s natural immune system.
2. Placebo effect: Pretty self explanatory, it’s been demonstrated in countless studies that if somebody thinks they are taking something which will have an effect, they will get an effect from it purely due to psychological reasons. Combine the placebo effect with marketing, and the fact that they spent money on it, so ‘want’ it to work, and the placebo effect can actually be very powerful.
3. Upbringing and culture: People who have been brought up to believe that something like homeopathy works are much more likely to unquestioningly believe it as it has been imprinted on their mind as a fact from a young age when they were forming their worldview. Belief in homeopathy is very common in places like India, China, and Eastern Europe.
4. Homeopathy is often grouped with other forms of traditional medicine, that although may not be proven to work to the standard that we require for modern medicine, it does often have an effect. A good example of this is herbal medicine. If someone has taken herbal medicine and have felt it have an effect previously, they may group homeopathic medicine together with this in their mind, and expect it to have an effect.