Why Homeopathy Is the Trojan Horse of Anti-Science

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It’s a fact: homeopathy is not just water. It’s a carrier. And what it carries—under the surface of dilutions and sugary tablets—is a well-defined set of cognitive toxins. The study just published in the journalPublic Understanding of Science by Luisa Liekefett and colleagues is certainly not the first to find this result, but it shows it with particular clarity: through a statistical analysis of 225 participants, the researchers focused on the mental categories that accompany the use of homeopathy, especially for serious conditions such as cancer. The results show that those who rely on homeopathy are not only more likely to make risky decisions for their health, but they share a profoundly negative attitude toward science in general .

The authors identified four groups. The first, a minority but alarming, is that of supporters of the exclusive use of homeopathy even in serious conditions (9%). The second, much more numerous (43%), is composed of people "open" to exclusive use: subjects who, while not declaring a current exclusive use, consider it plausible or acceptable. Following, 35% use homeopathy in a declaredly complementary way, while only 13% maintain a more cautious position, accepting its use only in addition to conventional medicine, and only in certain contexts.

It is precisely this intermediate group – the one that takes refuge in the narrative of “complementary use” – that is often cited by defenders of homeopathy to support its harmlessness from the point of view of public health. But the study shows that this is not the case at all. The groups “open” to exclusive use or fully in favor show significantly more distrust towards scientific institutions, evidence, and the experimental method . Their attitudes indicate a deep understanding with the cognitive traits of magical thinking and intuitive rationality. The similarity is also strong with profiles known in the context of vaccine hesitancy and conspiracy beliefs. And this also applies to those who say they use homeopathy only as a support.

Now, let’s be clear: correlation does not imply causation. The study does not prove that homeopathy causes distrust in science . But that is precisely why the alarm becomes more serious, not less. If people who already distrust evidence-based medicine gather around “homeopathic medicines,” then their purchase and consumption becomes a reinforcing practice, a form of self-confirmation. Instead of guiding them out of the labyrinth of dysfunctional beliefs, the system indulges them, welcomes them, gives them products that look like the real ones, sold in pharmacies, labeled with the legal formula “homeopathic medicine.” As if the word “medicine” were enough to make it part of medicine, rather than a caricature of it.

But the other possibility, even more disturbing and not exclusive to the first, is that it is also the undisturbed access to these products – their public, institutional and commercial legitimacy – that gradually educates a distorted relationship with science. In this reading, it is not only the previous distrust that leads to homeopathy: it is homeopathy itself, as a social and cognitive practice, that generates or reinforces the disaffection towards the common rules of knowledge . And here the study sends a clear message: before the communication of data and evidence can have an impact, we must directly address anti-scientific attitudes. And it is not a matter of convincing those who “don’t know”. It is a matter of defusing an alternative narrative that is already constructed, already internalized, that replaces argumentation with intuition and personal experience with shared knowledge.

In any case, selling homeopathy as “integration” is a reassuring but dangerous fiction. In fact, it serves as a Trojan horse for an entire vision of the world: emotional, individualistic, impervious to experimental control. And by dint of granting space to this vision, of validating it with the legal term “homeopathic medicine,” of offering it on the same shelf as real drugs, we have ended up legitimizing not only the pseudotherapy, but also the distorted epistemology that supports it. The cognitive apparatus that allows those who take it to feel informed while rejecting the information, to feel aware while rejecting the very principle of falsifiability .

And there is more. In Italy, the “homeopathic medicine” not only enjoys the linguistic and commercial status of a drug, but is also tax deductible as a health expense. This means that the state allows citizens to write off from their taxes – that is, to transfer to the community – the cost of a product that neither prevents, nor cures, nor improves any documentable clinical outcome. A product that, at best, is a placebo sold at a high price; at worst, it is a cognitive reinforcement for the refusal of effective treatments . Yet it is treated, from a fiscal point of view, like real drugs. A simple but inevitable question arises: can a serious state ask the community to financially support the cost of a dangerous illusion? Can it become an accomplice in the spread of practices that, as the study by Liekefett et al. shows, not only do not help, but are systematically accompanied by a generalized distrust of science, doctors and institutions?

Whether we like it or not, homeopathy is today a cognitive warning light: it shows us where distrust in evidence-based medicine coagulates, where the rejection of health institutions takes shape, where fantasies of alternative control over the body and health germinate . Continuing to treat it as if it were an innocuous choice, an acceptable placebo, means ignoring its real role in an ecosystem that produces and consolidates scientific illiteracy. And, in doing so, makes everyone more vulnerable.

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