Homeopathy is a placebo therapy: its assumptions run counter to science, its remedies lack active ingredients, and the evidence from clinical trials is uniformly negative. After the United Kingdom and France, it is now Germany, the country where homeopathy originated, that is joining this position. The 128th German Medical Assembly recently declared that “the use of homeopathy… is not an option compatible with rational medicine, the demand for the best possible treatment and a proper understanding of responsibility and medical ethics.”
Yet homeopaths around the world claim that this is simply not true and that there are many clinical trials on homeopathy that have reached positive conclusions. Actually, they’re not entirely wrong. Some studies suggest that homeopathy works beyond placebo. How is it possible ? Why do some studies on homeopathy show positive results? The obvious answer is that these studies are not rigorous; they are not randomized, or are not double-blind, or are not placebo controlled, for example. But this assumption may not be entirely true.
In 2020, Prof. Michael Frass published a highly publicized trial that seemed to prove the opposite. This randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study (a study where participants are randomly assigned to two or three groups, one receiving the treatment being evaluated, one receiving a placebo, and the last taking nothing, and where neither the participants nor the evaluators know who is taking the treatment, editor’s note) showed that the quality of life of cancer patients improved significantly with homeopathy compared to placebo. In addition, survival was significantly longer in the homeopathy group than in the placebo and control groups.
Inconsistencies that gave rise to complaints
This study seemed rigorous, it had been published in a highly regarded journal, and it had been conducted by recognized experts. Its lead author, Michael Frass, was a respected professor at the Vienna Medical School (an institution I also attended). But when I first read his paper, I was suspiciousespecially because I had previously discovered that Frass had published no less than 12 studies on homeopathy, all of which led to positive conclusions.
I was therefore not surprised that shortly after Frass’s new work was published, a thorough analysis by two other scientists, Norbert Aust and Viktor Weisshäupl, revealed several important inconsistencies. These inconsistencies led to complaints to the journal “Oncologist” and to the Vienna Medical School for suspected scientific misconduct. The medical school then referred the matter to Austrian Agency for Scientific IntegrityThe agency took its time, but recently, more than three years after Frass’s study was published, it made the final summary of its assessment available online.
Here are its conclusions: “Having established sufficient suspicions of various violations of good scientific practice, the Commission declared itself responsible and initiated proceedings. As part of these proceedings, the principal investigator was given the opportunity to submit a written statement and to provide documents clarifying the facts of the case, which the accused submitted in large numbers. In the course of a very complex and comprehensive investigation, which included on-site inspection of original documents, the Commission was able to substantiate the suspicions of falsification, fabrication and manipulation of data. In a final statement, the study director, who no longer works for the university in question, and the numerous co-authors were informed in detail about the progress and results of the Commission’s investigation, as well as the recommendations addressed to the university and the journal. The Commission recommended that the university concerned consider investigating its own responsibilities and act accordingly, and that the publication be withdrawn as a matter of urgency. The journal responsible for the publication has been asked to withdraw the publication based on the findings of the investigation.”
Vulnerable patients misled
Unfortunately, the scandal does not end there. Despite the Agency’s urgent appeal to the journal to withdraw the fraudulent study, this has still not been done. Only an “expression of concern” was added to the article on Medline. Therefore, vulnerable cancer patients could still be misled by Frass and colleagues’ false results.
The distressing story of Frass and his research illustrates some of the fundamental problems with research into homeopathy in particular and alternative medicine in general. Unfortunately, scientific fraud is not uncommon in medicine. Financial interests are often the driving force. The situation is very different in the field of alternative medicine, where ideological conflicts dominate. Researchers in this field tend to initiate studies primarily because they want to prove that their preferred therapy is effective. They therefore abuse research by not honestly testing their hypotheses, and instead dishonestly trying to prove them. This allows people like Frass to publish one positive result for homeopathy after another.
On my blog I summarize this group of people in the “ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE HALL OF FAME“(Alternative Medicine Hall of Fame), with a satirical name. It currently includes 24 (pseudo) scientists, 6 of whom specialize in homeopathy research. Scientific fraud causes considerable damage. In the case of the Frass study, one can even wonder how many lives were cut short. That is why we should look for ways to minimize this phenomenon. This is certainly not an easy task and there is no miracle cure for it. In the field of alternative medicine, I have long advocated that researchers like Michael Frass, who only produce implausible results that mislead us all, should no longer receive public funding for research. This would stop at least some of the pseudoscientists in alternative medicine who chronically delude themselves.
* Edzard Ernst is Emeritus Professor at the University of Exeter, UK, where he specialises in the evaluation of alternative medicines. He is the author of numerous books, including Don’t Believe What You Think: Arguments for and against SCAM (Societas, 2020), SCAM: So-Called Alternative Medicine (Societas, 2018), and Bizarre Medical Ideas: …and the Strange Men Who Invented Them (Springer, 2024).
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