Of all the delusions out there, homeopathy is one of the worst. On the surface it seems fairly harmless, but dig deeper and you find that it messes with people’s heads.

Homeopathy is dangerous to your health. Homeopathy is not herbal medicine. It’s not really alternative medicine either, because you can’t really call it medicine at all. Ignoring the last 100 years of medical advances entirely, it’s a mystical, quasi-religious approach to human health that states that substances become potent the more dilute they are. Homeopathic substances are normally so dilute, that not one molecule of the original substance remains in the finished product. Every single homeopathic remedy on their shelves is therefore exactly the same treatment. For every single ailment, you are receiving water dropped onto a sugar tablet.

There is no scientific evidence whatsoever to back up the claims of homeopathy. And yet, millions of people swear by it. So, what is happening? Essentially it’s a trick, exploiting the placebo effect and the fact that most illnesses get better after a time. It goes like this: you go to a homeopath, they spend time talking to you about your problem, they prescribe you a remedy, and after a time you get better. Because you are primed to connect the improvement to the prescribed remedy, the likelihood is that you will think the potion made you better. Other factors – better sleep, more rest, less stress – are discounted in favour of the stated remedy.

To me, the placebo effect is a bit like telling a small child to suck their thumb when they get upset. Thumb sucking can calm a child down very quickly. In the child’s mind it is an immediate solution to their problem. They will report less pain and less distress, depending on the severity. If you are reasonable, you would not prescribe thumb-sucking for a more serious ailment: tooth pain, the measles, or a bad burn, for example. When you are prescribing homeopathy, you are doing exactly that: telling someone to do the adult equivalent of thumb-sucking, despite the severity of the ailment. Homeopaths get away with it because, fortunately, most ailments are not severe. When they are, you hope better advice is listened to.

In a recent discussion on homeopathy, I was asked if I had ever taken gone to a homeopath for treatment, the implication being that if I had never gone to one, I could not possibly comment. This is the equivalent of saying that people who never smoked cannot comment on whether tobacco use is harmful, or that sceptics cannot criticise the Nigerian 419 scam if they have never themselves been defrauded by one. When a philosophy or treatment sounds like bunk, when almost every scientist and most medical professionals say it’s bunk, when there is a long list of people who have been damaged by bad advice from homeopaths, it’s up to the homeopaths to prove it otherwise. Telling us that it’s not up to them – it’s up to us – is ridiculous. Personal anecdote, no matter how honestly felt, is not very useful because we are all subject to bias and manipulation. Objective scientific studies are much better because you can follow a larger number of subjects, you can see how they were constructed and you can control for bias.

When it comes to scientific studies, homeopathy scores very poorly. At least 12 major reviews, examining hundreds of studies, have all concluded that it is not effective and that it does not provide any benefits beyond placebo. Homeopaths like to cite the Swiss Study, but as you will see from this link, this link and this link, the Swiss report is not without significant objections. David Shaw, of the University of Glasgow, has called it a case study of research misconduct, concluding that it was “scientifically, logically and ethically flawed”.

Homeopaths have been known to advertise treatments for measles, AIDS, autism and cancer. Many homeopaths are avowedly anti-vaccine. There are homeopaths in West Africa right now who believe that their magic pills are curing Ebola.

You know what? This madness needs to stop.