[chris (OP)]

- After you've voted, watch this:

[Bored chemist]

An old joke, but I think it bears repeating; did you hear about the homeopath who forgot to take their pills? They died of an overdose.

[RD]

There is as much truth in homeopathy as there is “mother liquor” in the “tincture“…
 

A treatment for allergy is to induce tolerance to the allergen by administering highly diluted doses of the antigen:
 like homeopathy the treatment is a diluted dose of the same thing that causes the disease ...

[immune] tolerance may be induced by repeated administration of very large doses of antigen,
 or of small doses that are below the threshold required for stimulation of an immune response.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immune_tolerance#Acquired_tolerance


So a homeopathic remedy could be an effective treatment for allergy, provided there was some antigen in the dose,
(not pure water which allegedly remembered its exposure to the "mother liquor"). 

[Bored chemist]

If there was enough stuff (for example an antigen) there to detect then the homeopaths would "increase its potency" by diluting it until there (very probably) wasn't any there.
They commonly employ dilutions where there's just nothing there. The reason they had to start wittering on about the "memory of water" was that real science pointed out that there are only so many molecules in the original mother liquor and, if you dilute that down enough, there are no longer any molecules left.


Has anyone seen their bumper sticker?
"Homeopaths think you have to bang it on a rubber block to get it to work"

http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Succussion

[Geezer]

If it looks like a duck, and it walks like a duck, it's quackery.


(Sorry, Your Majesty.)

[wolfekeeper]

"How does homeopathy work?"

Badly! []

[syhprum]

May I quote Barnum "there's one born every minute", hence there is an almost unlimited supply of suckers.

[Bored chemist]

Best joke I have seen in a  while.
http://xkcd.com/765/

[tangoblue]

My mum trested her cats pnewmonia (sorry, think i spelt that wrong)with homeopathy tabs... it died!

[Sprool]

I maintain a very high level of skepticism re homeopathy, but I'd like to hear from their side how it is supposed to work, something to do with increasing dilutions becoming more potent, due to molecular memory of water - is that right? How much good, proper research has actually been carried out to support it?
I am a firm advocate of the power of placebo, this should never be ruled out as it continues to surprise people just how powerful this can be at times, (even blind test cases with pets can return a statistically significant positive according to the references from Ben Goldacre) but if there really isn't much proper grounding in homeopathy, why is it allowed to go so unregulated?