Reddit reviews Snake Oil Science: The Truth about Complementary and Alternative Medicine

I wrote an essay myself on homeopathy last year for a class. Two helpful books were Trick or Treatment and Snake Oil Science. If you are interested in reading my essay I'll gladly send you a copy (my works cited may give you further research avenues.)

I suggest you read Snake Oil Science for a serious, even-handed discussion of how the placebo effect works and spoils legitimate research. The guy is not some random scientist; he's the biostatistician that ran the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine for years. Suffice it to say that:

1. There is no evidence for the effectiveness of any alternative treatment,
   
   
2. The placebo effect still works in "Western" (science-based) medicine, on top of their "real" effects, and
   
   
3. The "healing power" of hope is trivial compared to the biases introduced when believers self-report their results.
   
   Your use of the term "Allopathic" for real medicine is a dead giveaway that you're not interested in facts, though. Enjoy the long run health benefits of your unregulated Ayurvedic medicines, which frequently contain heavy metals.

Snake Oil Science Try this book. The author is a biostatistician and explains the problems with meta analysis.