The pharmacologist David Colquhoun, of University College London, has been quoted as castigating universities for teaching "gobbledygook" courses in homeopathy and other complementary therapies, which he says lack scientific evidence. Homeopathy, he says, is more like religion than science, and is positively anti-scientific.
And a special report in the respected science journal Nature this month investigates whether British universities should be offering science degrees in complementary therapies such as homeopathy. Reporter Jim Giles says: "Some scientists are increasingly concerned that such courses give homeopathy and homeopaths undeserved scientific credibility, and they are campaigning to get the label [of BSc] removed."
Giles says some critics of homeopathy argue there is no explanation for why homeopathy, which dilutes active ingredients to a point where they are no longer detectable, should work. Indeed, he says there is no conclusive evidence that it does work.
He has interviewed some unnamed homeopaths involved in the university courses who say they teach the scientific principles and how to evaluate evidence. Colquhoun has tried to find out what is being taught on these BSc courses and says he has had to resort to the Freedom of Information Act to request access to course material, having been refused it until now.
There is a basic dichotomy between the approaches of conventional medicine and homeopathy. Conventional medicine looks for evidence that a treatment works. The gold standard is the double-blind randomised controlled trial. In this, neither patient nor doctor knows whether the patient is getting a placebo (dummy) treatment or the active treatment. If the treatment works better than the placebo, and the benefits outweigh the harm, it is said to have good evidence to support its use.
Homeopathy has not fared well in this type of trial. But some argue that different tools are needed to analyse the positive effects of homeopathy.
Even the fiercest critics of homeopathy will agree that it does no harm - which is more than you can say about conventional pharmaceutical drugs. Nonbelievers will say this is because homeopathic remedies don't contain any active ingredients at all. But many satisfied customers would reply that if it helps, and causes no harm, it can't be a bad thing.
People often go to see a homeopath once they have lost faith in conventional medicine. This may be because they have a problem that is particularly hard to treat, such as chronic sinusitis. Or it may reflect poor communication with their GP. Or it may reflect a distrust of drugs, vaccines and doctors.
The big question here is not whether homeopathy works but whether it has enough of a scientific basis for it to be taught as a BSc degree course. I can't really see the problem. We teach BA degree courses in media studies alongside traditional English literature. So why not homeopathy alongside medicine?
