Yesterday’s Guardian also published an article about whether homeopathic medicines do any good. But the story goes around in circles. It first reports the story that something called armica doesn’t work, and mentions the Horizon from last year which dismissed homeopathic claims.
And yet after all that, the author’s still too scared to really go the whole hog. There are a couple of points that I don’t really understand. Professor Ernst dismisses the Horizon experiment calling it “trial by media”. How exactly? It was a scientifically rigourous experiment covered by the media. No different to any other experiment surely?
He then went on to say, “It was excellent journalism. Whether it is science, I don’t know.” This doesn’t make any sense to me. If it is excellent journalism then surely that’s enough?
The author of the piece really let’s herself down with her last line though: “So don’t throw away the arnica just yet, perhaps.” So a perfectly good piece of research is dismissed like this!