After the airing of the homeopathy episode by CBC Marketplace on January 13 2011, the debate on the fringe of science regarding the efficacy or lack thereof of homeopathy was brought to a new level.  People actually started talking about the evidence.  Larger names in the homeopathic community and the organizations that represent them, have offered up dozens of published studies as proof of efficacy.  In what can only be assumed to be a response to CFI’s efforts, the website www.extraordinarymedicine.org/ is one of the more visible of these efforts. As part of an ongoing commitment to evaluating the science behind a claim instead of dismissing a claim out of hand, CASS at CFI Canada has started an evidence review of its own.

What should also be stressed is that the Centre for Inquiry Canada or any of the members of the Committee for the Advancement of Scientific Skepticism have no economic interest in this debate what-so-ever, and the claims that CFI is on the take from “big pharma” or funded by industries that are somehow afraid of homeopathy is as baseless as much of the scientific claims offered below.

What follows are evaluations done by science professionals who are trained to evaluate scientific studies.  This endeavour does not only have to be the purview of trained scientists, however; with a little effort and investigation, anyone can learn to spot bad science. How to Read a Paper by Trisha Greenhalgh, Bad Science by Ben Goldacre and Testing Treatments: Better Research for Better Healthcare by Imogen Evans, Hazel Thornton and Iain Chalmers are all great resources for the public interested in evaluating scientific papers. For a quick primer try here or hear.

For the full list of papers and our responses please visit this page on the Extraordinary Claims Campaign website