The knowledge and beliefs about homeopathy

This recent survey caught my attention; here is the abstract:

Homeopathy is one of the most widespread alternative methods of treatment in Bulgaria in the last 25-30 years. The aim of the research is to study and analyze the knowledge and attitudes of Bulgarians over the age of 18 regarding the application of homeopathy as a curative method in general medical practice. A cross-sectional survey among a sample of the general Bulgarian population was conducted during a 4-week period in April-May 2022. The data were collected using the Google Forms platform via an online questionnaire. A total of 508 completed responses were collected (women-450, men-58). The overwhelming number are familiar with homeopathy and have used it before for their own health problems (97% of women and 86% of men). A large number of those who have used homeopathy report an improvement in their health (88% of women and 74% of men). The majority of respondents believe that homeopathy is useful for health care (93% of women and 79% of men). Further representative studies are needed to determine the role of homeopathy as a complementary method in general medical practice.

So, the researchers collected 508 responses on Google Forms. This method does not allow calculating a response rate, i.e. a percentage of those who saw the questionnaire and decided to reply. It might well have been 1% or lower. Who can reasonably be assumed to have resopnded? My guess is that those with an interest in homeopathy did and those without it did not respond. Thus, we should not be surprised to see that 97% of women (~90% of the respondents were women) had used homeopathy, 88% reported improvements, 93% belilieve it to be useful for Health care. I have previously compared such SCAM surveys to someone studying our views about hamburgers by placing themselves outside McDonalds and interviewing customers about the subject.

What these figures do not tell us is that presumably ~90% of Bulgarians could not care less about homeopathy! Despite this rather obvious suspicion, the authors ignore the fatal flaw in their survey and state that “the prevailing opinion that homeopathy is beneficial to health care in general is noteworthy. In other studies it is found that patients expected their family physician to refer them to CAM, including homeopathy, to have updated knowledge about CAM, and to offer CAM treatment in the clinic based on appropriate training. It can be assumed that homeopathy could be part of an integrative approach in health care, given the increased number of people wishing to use it, as well as the large number of doctors who have completed a training course in homeopathy in Bulgaria.”

Of course, this would be trivial, if it were not rather typical for a large chunk of “research” getting published in the realm of so-called alternative medicine (SCAM). I did put research in ” “, because it is, in fact, not research as we know it. Too many SCAM “researchers” have settled for conducting pseudo-research, i.e. investigations, like the one above, which can only produce findings that favour SCAM in one way or another. As this sort of thing is happening a thousand times over every month, it gradually erodes science and creates a general (erroneous) feeling (not least on the political level) that SCAM must be good for our health, after all.

And why do SCAM researchers prefer pseudo-research to proper science?

In my view, the answer is clear: they have realised or feel instinctively that proper hypothesis-testing research would not generate the results they so ardently need in order to promote their creed/ideology/business.