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What Doctors Don’t Tell You said:... The first truly comprehensive review of homeopathy was done about 16 years ago by a team of experts at Limburg University in Holland. It was a two-year study, funded by the Dutch government, which wanted an independent assessment of homeopathy's effectiveness.
The researchers unearthed a total of 105 clinical trials satisfying the basic criteria of being "controlled", i.e., in which homeopathy was compared to a placebo (a dummy pill). Of these, 81 trials showed a positive result in homeopathy's favour.
Although the researchers criticized the "low quality" of most of the trials, there were "many exceptions". This enabled them to conclude that "homeopathy can be efficacious", and so is probably justified "as a regular treatment for certain conditions" (BMJ, 1991; 302: 316-23).
Eight years later, seven medical researchers from the University of Munich carried out a very similar exercise, concluding that 89 trials of homeopathy (out of 185) were suitable for analysis. They computed that homeopathy gave a "pooled-odds ratio" of 2.45, meaning that the clinical benefits were more than twice as good as a placebo.
They concluded with a modestly expressed double negative: "the results are not compatible with the hypothesis that the clinical effects of homeopathy are completely due to placebo". In other words, homeopathy works (Lancet, 1997; 350: 834-43). ...
In Defense Of 'Disproved' Homeopathy