Madam, - C.E.F. Trench (October 14th) is not unique in attesting to homeopathy as a cure for asthma. Would it be helpful to mention that I have taken homeopathic remedies for all sorts of things in the past and not one of them has ever made a difference?
Every time we pop a pill and recover, we tend to attribute the cure to the remedy. But the belief that correlation is equivalent to causation is a classic mistake in critical thinking.
The two are not equivalent: if I drink a glass of water and my cold disappears the next day, this does not mean that water cures colds.
Homeopathy has been tested many times in many studies. Of those which suggested that it had a positive effect, most were badly designed and unreliable, and the rest were not consistently repeatable. The only studies which have proved to be thorough and comprehensive enough to withstand critical review indicate that the effects of homeopathic remedies are indistinguishable from placebos. . - Is mise,
NICK HILLIARD,
De Courcey Square,
Dublin 9.