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

It doesn’t work, but it also does. There is this thing called the ‘placebo effect’ when the fact that you know or believe that you are being treated helps you independently of whether or not the actual treatment is directly doing anything. That is why new drugs are tested by giving half the subjects something innocuous like sugar pills and not telling anyone who is or is not getting the real drug. If you just gave half your test subjects the drug and gave the other half nothing, you would see a positive effect out of drugs which are ineffective. So you make it that both groups experience the placebo effect and only attribute whatever improvement happened on top of that to the drug.
Now this placebo effect works only if you actually believe in the ‘drug’ you are given. Homeopathy is very good about selling the idea that the sugar pills you are taking are special. They have specialized stores, they have practitioners who act like they are doctors, the pills have fancy names, they look vaguely drug-like, in some countries homeopathics are even sold in regular pharmacies alongside actual medicine (which is extremely shady and should be illegal, but it often isn’t). This provides for a strong placebo effect and because of their widespread use there will always be plenty of people to ‘back up their effectiveness’, because ‘they worked for me’, which enhances the placebo effect even further and also prevents any legislation against them from being passed. Sometimes it get’s really ridiculous. In the EU, you can’t advertise a positive health effect of a drug or supplement unless you have actually proven it, so what they do is that they just play an advert in which there is the sound of a sneeze, then they say the name of their homeopathic ‘drug’ and say ‘ask about it in your local pharmacy’. Which obviously strongly implies to anyone that their ‘drug’ treats colds and stuff, but they didn’t outright say it, so they avoid legal action.