TY - JOUR T1 - Homeopathy — a benign deception? JF - British Journal of General Practice JO - Br J Gen Pract SP - 490 LP - 490 VL - 55 IS - 515 AU - Dougal Jeffries Y1 - 2005/06/01 UR - http://bjgp.org/content/55/515/490.abstract N2 - There's a lot to be said for homeopathy. It often makes people feel better. It's harmless. It's cheap. Its practitioners tend to be caring, conscientious and earnest. And yet it is the one topic that sends me into internal paroxysms of exasperation (well, perhaps not the one topic — creationism has a similar effect, together with a few other -isms and creeds). When any of my friends and relations cheerfully announce their latest dramatic cure at the hands of their local homeopath, why do I express my pleasure through gritted teeth and inwardly rage?I think it's a reflection of a lifelong tension between, on the one hand, a wish to accommodate other opinions, appear open-minded and avoid dogmatism; and, on the other, an unshakeable belief in the tenets of the western scientific method. For a while in my youth I was swayed by the seductive 60s' antiscience movement, and its assertion that all explanations of reality were of equal validity, but I never really … ER -