Updates from Derren Brown and the Enigma Crew

“British homeopaths are celebrating Homeopathy Awareness Week, yet it seems to me there is very little for them to celebrate.

Earlier this year, a report from the Commons Science and Technology Committee concluded that the principles of homeopathy are implausible and that the evidence fails to show that it works better than placebo. The MPs also criticised homeopaths for trying to mislead the public by providing inaccurate information. Their recommendation to government was to stop funding homeopathy on the NHS.

Then the Prince of Wales’s Foundation for Integrated Health, a staunch supporter of homeopathy in the NHS, folded in the midst of a police investigation for fraud and money laundering.

Last month, the British Medical Association described homeopathy as “witchcraft” and called for an end to all funding on the NHS.

A streak of bad luck? Not really. Homeopathy’s fortunes have been crumbling for quite some time. The evidence to suggest that it has effects beyond those of a placebo has become less and less convincing. In 2005, The Lancet even pronounced “the end of homeopathy”.

As a result, one of the five NHS-funded homeopathic hospitals had to close. After assessing the science, its NHS trust found that the evidence did not justify any further funding.

Faced with increasing criticism, UK homeopaths become more and more desperate. My team has found that the Society of Homeopaths even appears to have been in breach of its own code of ethics in attempting to promote homeopathy. On the society’s website, numerous statements about efficacy were made that were not backed by science and so were not allowed under its own regulations.”

Read more at The Guardian