Homeopathy is a load of crap and it doesn't work.

Rest assured that since there's another three rounds of debating to go, I won't be concluding my case any time soon. DilutionFirst of all, let me clear this up - anybody who seriously believes Samuel Hahnemann "created" homeopathy couldn't be further from the truth. Hahnemann helped formalise it. He performed lots of scientific experiments around it. He did lots of brilliant research. Unfortunately he also advocated the mystical idea that potentisation was eternal. He even fudged his data to cover for the fact that the least potent of his remedies worked the least. When this was found out, he invented the concept of miasms to cover for his mistake. This doesn't mean the experiments didn't work - it's just that they didn't show what Hahnemann wanted. Homeopathy can work, but you need to get the dilution right. In fact, Hahnemann's first homeopathy-related experiment tested quinine, a substance known to cure malaria. Hahnemann took it himself and proved that quinine also causes malaria. Today quinine remains one of the most effective and cheap medicines for malaria, used by both homeopaths and non-homeopaths, but it remains a fundamentally homeopathic medicine. The difference is that homeopaths dilute it enough to ease the unpleasent side-effects it causes - other doctors just watch as the patient suffers. So much for "do no harm"! Both formulations work in curing malaria (non-homeopathic works slightly faster but not necessarily better), and this has been proven in multiple peer-reviewed journal articles. There is vague evidence that homeopathy goes back to prehistoric times, but the first to formalise most of the aspects of homeopathy was Hippocrates, most famous for his oath (which essentially holds doctors to being honest, contrary to the beliefs of some modern homeopaths), for the four humors, and for his rule about how to cure people - "Omoia Omoiois Eisin Iamata". Like cures like. Today that's called the Law of Similars, and it's the foundation on which Hahnemann built. Paracelsus, the great medieval doctor, wrote long lists of remedies that were mostly homeopathic. Homeopathy is not some modern craze, it's an ancient tradition. What's the point? The point is that I've already agreed some formulations are way too dilute. That doesn't mean that homeopathy is wrong, it just means that a few doctors are doing it wrong. So yeah, Oscillococcinum is not a remedy. That's why the company making it are currently in court for medical fraud, brought about in part by homeopaths themselves - that kind of dilution is a disgrace to the profession. Many modern homeopaths, and almost all of the early pioneers before Hahnemann introduced mysticism to the profession, never went beyond 6C, and usually stuck to 3 or 4X dilutions (. http://www.diagnose-me.com...), which is about 1-0.1mg/g. Either way the defining notion of homeopathy, that like cures like, is scientifically validated. In my view "high-potency" homeopathy is nothing more than quackery, but low-dilution clearly works. That's all I need to prove. ScienceMy opponent has claimed that the four research studies I cited are biased. That's quite a claim to make. Pity my opponent didn't tell you how these studies are biased, or else I would be able to rebut the claim more precisely. The reason why he won't tell you how they are biased is because they're not biased. It's far more likely that the youtube video he goes on to cite is biased (even the title is suggestive of confirmation bias) than anything ever published in an academic journal. First, I provided significant evidence that skeptics and scientists from all around the world have all looked over these studies carefully, and throughly embraced their findings. Second, if you read the studies, you'll find that they all controlled for bias. Third, all of these studies are peer-reviewed and from professors at major universities, all of them experts in their field. They wouldn't want to stake their reputation on allegations of bias. Fourth, I told you these experiments have been replicatable over and over again, even in experiments that have controlled more and more carefully for any bias. Next my opponent cites a documentry to "prove homeopathy wrong". Actually, the documentry just attacks some of the spiritual beliefs held by a minority of homeopaths. I won't go through all of the assertions made by the so-called "documentry" because my opponent doesn't make them, but it's very selective in the experiments it looks at in favor of homeopathy. None of the experiments used by my studies were looked into - only fallacious experiments with a minimum of scientific controls. Just because some experiments fail to prove something doesn't mean it's not true - you only need one experiment to prove something is true, unless another proves the hypothesis false. The documentary proves that for certain symptoms, high-dilution homeopathic remedies are not significantly different from a null hypothesis, but that's ignorant of low-dilution remedies, not to mention the homeopathic objection that a remedy must not be administered in isolation, plus the fact that the level of significance in their experiment was not particulary low, which makes it much more likely that the experiments shown were just chance. He also has a second youtube clip, which encourages you to test selected homeopathic remedies in isolation under uncontrolled conditions like Randi. At best, that's an observational study, not an experiment. Even so there are countless things wrong with doing that sort of science in your kitchen, such as the inevitably small sample size and the fact that observational studies can never establish causation (but experiments, like the ones I cited, can). Most importantly though, every single assertion they made in both videos was against high-dilution homeopathy. In case you haven't noticed yet, that's not what I'm advocating in this debate. No scientific studies were cited at all and no Finally he states that the predictions of top scientists and statisticians as to the probable outcome of a longitudial study is irrelevant. Science is all about prediction based on known data. The point of the prediction is to indicate some of this known data, such as the increased health-conciousness of people who use homeopathy, and to indicate the effects thereof. Again, my aim in this debate is to show that homeopathy is likely to be true, not to prove it absolutely. Experts AgreeMy opponent doesn't think countries like India take their healthcare seriously. He denies that Indian health policy makers are experts. He also vaguely claims that they don't agree with the studies I have cited (which is a silly assertion, since they did exactly the things that the studies I cited would call for). India spends a lot of money on healthcare annually. So do all of the other countries I cited. And their health administrators are extremely well-qualified. That alone would indicate that people in other countries value their healthcare too. Demonstrating WhyIt's not my burden of proof to demonstrate why homeopathy works. Scientists don't know all the details about how a human brain works, but that doesn't mean a human brain doesn't work. People don't know why the Big Bang happened but that doesn't mean it didn't happen. Often, explainations that seem the silliest are the most correct. String theory, from physics, would provide a great example of this. What scientists do know is that homeopathy works - what they now need to investigate is what mechanism it works by. Absence of evidence concerning why it works is not evidence of absence of evidence considering why it works. ConclusionHomeopathy does work, and Pro hasn't rebutted my science. Pro only argues against the manner in which some people practice homeopathy, not against the science of homeopathy itself. I look forward to reading his rebuttal.