Is the Popularity of Homeopathy Collapsing?
Thursday, November 13, 2008
There is a claim by many sceptical writers that we live in a new age of endarkenment. Our public lives, whether in politics, universities, businesses and health, face an onslaught of irrational thought. However I have uncovered some remarkable evidence to suggest that interest in homeopathy is declining rather aggressively. I am not sure I believe it, and I want to encourage comments and interpretations to see if this might be real.
All this came about because Google have unveiled the latest part of their rather splendid toolset that allows researchers to look at search trends and see how this might be used to monitor and predict all sorts of behaviour. As a showcase for their techniques, they have developed flutrends that shows how people are searching about flu across the United States. They believe this correlates very closely with incidence of the disease and thus can be used as a near real time monitor of the severity of outbreaks. Standard reporting techniques mean that reporting lags two weeks behind and so this technique may be a much more timely and accurate measurement. Fascinating stuff. And very useful if you want to deploy resources effectively.
So, I decided to play around myself and naturally wanted to see if people were looking for stuff about homeopathy on the web. The graph below shows the relative incidence of the search term in the United Kingdom over the past few years. (The lower part of the graph shows results for news items.)
This is remarkable. Interest in homeopathy is only about 40% now of what it was at the beginning of 2004. if this is true it shows a devastating collapse in interest that surely must be reflected in the businesses of homeopaths.
(as a side note the letters above the graph refer to the following events:
B) The Lancet meta analysis published
C) The letter to PCTs asking them to reconsider funding NHS homeopathy
D) Degrees in homeopathy criticised as being unscientific)
Can we trust this curve? Is this just an artifact of Google? Are people getting more sophisticated in how they use Google rather than relying on blunt and simple searches? Let is compare with France. Is a similar trend seen? Lets see the curve for homeopathie searches in France.
Much flatter. In France, homeopathy has a very different cultural dynamic. There are no lay homeopaths. Medical doctors prescribe pills or people self-'medicate' in large numbers from their local pharmacie. The largest homeopathy company in the world, Boiron, is French with a turnover of half a billion euros. There is no significant sceptical community as far as I can tell.
Does this result correlate with any other evidence we have about interest in homeopathy? We know GPs are prescribing fewer homeopathic prescriptions. Is this because interest is waning or do fewer prescriptions mean fewer web searches as patients find out what the hell their doctor has given them. The Society of Homeopaths has occasionally published memberhip figures. The last graph was in 2005 and shows a peak membership in 2004 and that it was then in decline. They have not published similar figures since. Are they embarrassed? Their membership income has increased but they say this is due to their better efforts at moving members up the grade scheme with higher fees due. I have reason to believe, albeit anecdotally, that few lay homeopaths are able to make a full time living and most do it as part of a portfolio, part time or as a paid hobby. Will members be renewing through the coming recession? We also know that NHS funding for homeopathy is decreasing as PCTs refuse to fund referrals and hospitals. There are definitely threats to homeopathy, but this severe?
If the trend continues, there will be no Google searches for homeopathy sometime around 2011-2012. Does homeopathy have two to three years left? Even if the trend is true, surely it must bottom out as we are left with a rump of True Believers. I am quite sure that homeopathy's greatest threat is that people will find out what it is - magical witchcraft. Is the Internet allowing people to see through the homeopathic propaganda? All very tantalising.
So, how reliable is the Google trends programme? They say is a 'beta' and so not to write PhD theses on it. An hour of fun has produced the following trends that suggest it is at least getting something right...
Can you tell there was no Glastonbury festival during 2006?
Led Zeppelin has been very steady (bar their reunion show last year).
Barbeques show predictable trends. I will leave it as an exercise for the reader to correlate barbeque searches with daily temperatures/hours of sunshine. (You can download data into a spreadsheet.)
Searching for Majorca and the Maldives shows the results you might expect with an upsurge of interest for both over Christmas as people open their Radio Times and think about their holidays. Majorca shows a highly seasonal trend whereas the Maldives reflects its more all year appeal. (My guess is I do not need to spell out what the spike for the Maldives at the end of 2004 was all about).
Barack Obama and Sarah Palin have thoroughly predictable profiles.
Interest in sex appears to be pretty steady (with some surprising uplift at Christmas again)
And so back to topic. What about other quackery? We can compare searches for homeopathy (blue), osteopathy (red) and chiropractic. (orange)
The decline of homeopathy is much more marked than the spinal techniques. Maybe something is real here.
The Google tool has a number of other excellent facilities. We can find out where the most homeopathic searches are coming from. The result is...
India. It shows the highest infliction of homeopathy where the nationalist governments actively encourage 'Traditional' medicines as part of the Hinduisation of politics - even though homeopathy is German. I have written about the World Health Organisation's disgraceful role in this hoax on the vulnerable.
So, what do we make of this? The trend is not easy to explain away and yet appears to remarkable to be true. Will we see homeopathic companies going out of business soon? Will membership of the pretend regulatory bodies drop precipitously? Is this the end of the last few decade's resurgence in this quackery?
I welcome your thoughts.
Labels: Google, homeopathy
posted by Le Canard Noir at
11:56 PM
39 Comments:
If you look for Spanish "homeopatía", you'll see a downward trend similar to "homeopathy". Interestingly, the Lancet metaanalysis did not cause a spike. And there is a weird blank in 2004. Missing data.
Also, the French curve is somewhat sine-shaped, with the lows matching summers. Does anybody knows if French are adept users of homeopathic remedies for flu and other winter diseases?
Pereque - good point. The biggest selling homeopathic remedy in France is Oscillococcinum - made from duck's liver and is taken to prevent flu - which of course it does not. Every winter the pharmacie windows are full of the stuff.
http://www.quackometer.net/blog/2008/03/should-cochrane-call-for-more-research.html
LCN,
This is tremendous information needling and a very useful tool from Google.
I can see where any free time today is going to be spent....
hey LCN,
nice effort, googlelabs are a pretty cool bunch who keep coming up with useful tools!
as for the decline, you can't argue against the downward trend, it's the meaning thereof that's tough to tease out - still, it's quite likely that all the blogs and newspaper coverage showing h'pathy to be bunkum is actually hitting home!
btw, in the global map of hits, is population corrected for or are just looking at volum of hits? cos with 1.3bn people, India coming out on top ain't that much of a surprise!
Yes, after thinking about this, then I am convinced that the downward trend is real and reflects interest in the UK as reflected in web searches. However, this probably does not correlate too closely with a similar decline in spend on homeopathy - just yet. In my opinion, what this probably does reflect is an inability for homeopaths to attract new customers - people researching homeopathy before buying.
The reasons for this may be twofold. Firstly, the web has produced much more competition for the woo dollar in your pocket. Homeopathy is rather old fashioned, fuddy duddy and difficult to comprehend. And if you are capable of walking and chewing gum at the same time, it makes absolutely no sense.
And secondly, there is next to no advertising spend in the UK. Compare this with the vast amount of advertising spent on say nutritional supplements by Boots and Holland and Barrett. Homeopathy in the UK has two facets: medical homeopathy - where the NHS spends nothing on promoting it - and lay homeopaths, which are small businesses of usually sole traders who practice part time. If they do spend a few quid on producing a leaflet - then the ASA may well slap them down!
http://www.quackometer.net/blog/2008/10/society-of-homeopaths-failure-of-self.html
Compare this with France where the market is dominated by a huge pharamceutical company, Boiron, that spends nearly 100 million euros per year on advertising homeopathy!!!
http://gimpyblog.wordpress.com/2008/01/04/big-quacka-spend-185-times-more-on-marketing-than-research-big-pharma-only-twice-as-much/
If I was a new student looking to go into the dark woo arts, I would not choose homeopathy but try to get a pretend BSc in another form of woo, probably nutrition. Who could blame them?
In France, that advertising is on every high street in the front window of every pharmacy. UK homeopaths could only dream of that. What it would take to reverse this decline is the formation of a body of similar muscle power to Boiron - the merger of all existing homeopathic companies along with the marketing nous of a company like Neal's Yard.
http://www.quackometer.net/blog/2008/05/neals-yard-remedies-rapped-by-medicines.html
This will not happen. It is like asking the Church of England to merge with the Catholics to stop the decline of bums on pews.
But like the Church of England, homeopathy is dying - few new customers are arriving - a resignation or funeral at a time. Some of those funerals may well be self inflicted.
Some additional trends worth highlighting:
The overall level of interest in "homeopathy" measured by Google searches has declined - it's not UK-specific, interest across all countries has fallen by about 50%, with the US, India and others showing broadly similar downward trends.
There's an interesting *rise* in the number of times homeopathy shows up in the news (bottom graph). This is true for the UK, the overall trends (all countries), and the US, India etc. Because of the scale it's a little hard to quantify, but it looks as if News interest in homeopathy has at least doubled over the same time period.
Of course, this doesn't show whether these more frequent news stories are "positive" or "negative", but it's interesting to note there's been a steady rise in news interest while the number of searches ("people interest") steadily falls.
Maybe some further digging might give a flavour of the positive vs negative trends in homeopathy news stories?
Howard
I just used this to make a trends graph for quackery in PubMed:
Graph.
(bear in mind that total publications in PubMed grows year-on-year, so a stable line represents a decrease as a proportion of the total.)
Unfortunately "medicine" shows a similar downward trend. As does "physics", "chemistry" and "mathematics". "Wizards" and "witches" seem fairly constant though, as does "antibiotics".
Andy
I think there is probably a double whammy here from the woosters point of view (Assuming Google do not tweak the statistics, and I am pretty sure they do not - the logistics of tweaking billions of web hits are frightening).
Included in those hits will be all the people who are looking at HY to debunk it and using the risible nonsense on HY sites to provide the ammunition to do so. I think this trend is accelerating as more and more sensible, rational people are no longer prepared to just accept this rubbish and use sites like yours to make their point known.
If you were able to control for anti-woosters (obviously impossible) the numbers would probably be even worse. (Of course this might also just shift the whole curve down).
An indication of this are the peaks when HY is professionally criticised followed by an increasing decline. Is it even remotely possible that people actually read what “real” doctors have to say and take notice of it. I would love to thinks so.
The hits seem to show an increase in the winter months (which is probably related to colds and flu) and a slight peak in the summer months (which is probably down to hay fever and allergies) but always returning to a decline and a lower number the following year. (I can see that 2007 bucks the “hay fever” trend and I cannot explain this other than in the UK where we had a very wet and rubbish summer).
The search terms seem to match the news items quite well with the exception of E on the chart, where it could be argued there was a slight lag. Do you know what E relates to ?
It might just be an indication that people are getting worse at spelling: homieapethy... homieopethy... homotherapy... grrr howzit spelt?
"homieapethy... homieopethy... homotherapy... grrr howzit spelt?"
Which does bring up a useful point: there are two common spellings, so did the terms include "homeopathy" and "homoeopathy"?
JohnH:
E looks like it is, "Regulation plans for homeopathy - BBC News - Jan 5 2008"
Excellent piece of work. This new tool explains why my post, "Good News For Hypercholesterolemic Hamsters" has been getting lots of hits: hamsters are in the ascendency whilst gerbils and guinea pigs have flatlined. (the trends are here)
Here is my take home message for homeopaths as a result of this analysis. (I will imagine IO am a business consultant for a moment!)
Homeopaths of the UK. Your business model is doomed to wither over the coming years as it cannot compete with more accessible forms of quackery on the high street. You do not have the presence or advertising spend to get attention and custom. The French model thrives because it has adopted a retail model rather than a service (consultation) model. Homeopathy in France is 'off the shelf' and is dominated by a large company with a massive advertising spend.
In the UK, medical homeopathy is in decline in the Health Service and the high street is full of more successful branding of quackery - e.g. Holland and Barrett, Dr & Herbs, Boots. Chiropractors survive due to statutory regulation and referals.
If you are to survive as a trade, you need to adopt a retail model, an off the shelf approach and align yourself with established brands (such as Neal's yard). The critics of homeopathy are most concerned about it being taught in Universities and how homeopaths easily overstep the mark into serious illness. Were you to focus on retail, this criticism would be largely irrelevent. But can you do it? Retail demands you abandon many cherished principles - the consultation, individualisation, the relationship. Can you raise the investment to advertise as heavily as the French (about £80 million per year? I doubt it.) Can you join together to achieve any change, or will you just continue to squabble between yourselves?
My guess is that this decline is terminal. The last 30 years will be seen as the golden age of homeopathy in the UK.
I take your points Andy but:-
Put in sceptic or go to:-
http://www.google.com/trends?q=sceptic&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0
You will see a similar decline ie to 0 around 2011/12.
Is scepticism collapsing?
Please take a deep breath before putting in the Russian word for Homeopathy гомеопатия.
The Google link is a great tool anyway black duck- Hours of fun. Thanks
Yes, JoK. There are puzzling elements. And there may well be artficacts from how people use tools like google, as I suggest (greater sophistication?)
But it still leaves a very large difference between France and the Uk that I think does require explaining. The different business models appears to be the best bet so far.
Fascinating! I wonder how many searches could be due to sceptics rather than enthusiasts. "Placebo" gives a gently declining graph with spikes in early 2006 and in 2004. "Quackery" only appears in 2005 and fluctuates wildly with a peak earlier this year. "Goldacre", "Colquhoun" and "Quackometer" give very odd patterns. I could play with this all day...
I have an alternative hypothesis.
There is a decline in google searches for technical information over the last few years as direct searches of wikipedia have become more common. This has effected the number of searches for homeopathy skeptic and maths alike.
We need a simmilar tool for wikipedia searches to test my hypothesis.
Great tool though. Try genomics! very strange trace.
That is a very good point and believable. It might also effect French searches - is the French language of wikipedia so good or frequently used? Do they have an alternative (the French often do - probably on minitel).
Nonetheless, the decline in homeopathy appears to be sharper than other terms I have tried and still needs explaining.
Here is a graph of the popularity of wikipedia over a similar time, compared with facebook for reference.
Facebook v Wikipedia
Wikipedia usage does not show the significant change required to explain away the decline of google as a place to find out about homeopathy.
Heh, there's definitely a sociology PhD to be written explaining Christmas Erotica Habits
" Please take a deep breath before putting in the Russian word for Homeopathy гомеопатия."
Oh, not, sir! ;) You either don't know Russian or capitally forgot it.
Russian words such as mentioned word are being pronounced now with preliminary exhaling! :) ;)
For example, like "wodka" in 70s or "Stalin" in 30s ;)
And generally, Andy, it is not enough reliable investigation. It is merely game. Non-serious post.
Svetlana
I dont have the ability to take action against
http://www.freetranslation.com for translating homeopathy as гомеопатия-I am QuackofKent not JackofKent.
Looks like my piece of research has failed the peer review.
The graph for "Wikipedia" alone do show a significant rise. The low spikes matching school vacations are interesting.
German "Homöopathie", Italian "Omeopatia" and "homeopatia" (word used at least in six languages, and a misspelled word at least in one) also show small declines. Maybe non-French people now looks for information on homeopathy mainly at Wikipedia while people in France get that info from advertising.
Does anyone wants to explain the data for Japan (if I understood Wikipedia correctly)? It looks quite flat.
Let me submit my thesis Dr* T:
People can't get away with googling such stuff while at work, so the holiday period sees idle hand(s) looking for such entertainment.
It seems thoughts turn to other forms of exercise as soon as the holiday is over.
I've just done two trends searches, one for "graphic design" and the other, "interior design". I chose these because they're very different from homeopathy, but they're the type of unfamiliar/rarely used service someone may suddenly find they have a need for, and so look it up.
The graphs that pop up look virtually identical to the homeopathy graph. I doubt graphic and interior design only have a few years left before they're down to a core of true believers, so I suspect what we're seeing is a trend in the way people use Google.
I'm devastated: I'd love homeocrapathy to disappear off the face of the planet and thought your analysis was just too good to be true, so I did my own. Virtually everything searched on returned a graph that looked like the homeopathy graph.
Now I'm unconvinced there's much worth in Google Trends.
Gilbey
I see, sir, that you are quack! Just so I said you that Russian homeopathy is phenomenon like drinking or stalinism. It terrible like booze, but , fortunately, transient. So - don't be glad! - Russian bad tricks are not solid base for you, quacks!
It was a sense of my joke. I explain, because you didn't understand.
I need no in translator ;) Russian is my native language.
@ Gilbey. Perhaps this will restore your confidence. Dunno why the pattern for arthritis follows the homeopathy curve though.
Of course, the problem could be that homeopathy is so mainstream in high street pharmacies that they don't have to search on Google...
@ gregeric
But you're not comparing like with like (and you know like cures like!): homeopathy is supposed to be a cure (the solution), back pain, arthritis, acne are conditions (the problem).
Try "homeopathy, osteopathy, dermatology, dentistry", they all follow a similar downward slope. I suspect this is a combination of peoples' use of Google changing and that these terms are those you'd enter if you were looking up info about the subject.
But... If you now try "osteopath, dermatologist, dentist" i.e. the term folk would enter if they werelooking for one of these specialists the graph is pretty horizontal or goes up.
Now try "homeopath", the graph has a definite and cheery downward spiral. So whilst I disagree with your reasoning, in researching my rebuttal I have indeed had my confidence restored - thank you.
I've found through running various Google Adwords campaigns that these small subtleties in the words and their spellings are hugely significant.
Gilbey
Svetlana
As for linking Homeopathy to Stalinism and booze......
Thanks for that laugh.
Quoting Voltaire:-
I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
"God" gives an interesting result.
Pretty steady over the reporting period but with a decrease around Christmas time.
So his sons birthday really is just commercial exploitation.
Interestingly the news items show a steady increase - has he showed up somewhere ?
AnNother afternoon wasted doing lunatic searches !
Serious (if probably naive) question: can Gregeric or someone explain the prominence of the "city" of Thames Ditton in his search?
(In case anyone is unaware of Thames Ditton it is a former Surrey village now part of London's commuter suburbs, and makes Auckland look like Megacity One)
All of you interested in this sort of stuff can listen to Alok Jha of the Guardian Science podcast speak to Jeremy Ginsberg, one of the engineers on the Google Flu Trends project.
Wonderful synchronicity
@ jsm - I expect Google uses the ip address of the remote computer to best determine a user's location. Perhaps Thames Ditton is host to a popular ISP's 'net infrastructure?
One way to tell if homeopathy is in decline is to measure if the homeopathy forums are in decline. There are several of them around.
Also compare it with non homeopathy forums.
Another way of using Google to picture interest ?decline in homeopathy is checking the number of links to a web site. eg
Homeopathyhome.com ("the nets best hom. resource") Links 102
Homeopathy.org Links 51
In comparison we find -
quackwatch.org Links 3290
quackwatch.com Links 2970
skeptics.com.au Links 656 and our
favourite: dcscience.net Links 1120
I have nothing useful to say, so I'll say it...
"Interest in sex appears to be pretty steady (with some surprising uplift at Christmas again)"
I'd love some surprising uplift.
Thank you BSM. I hope Santa makes all your dreams come true.
I fear le canard is over-extrapolating from the graphs. There are many possible reasons to explain the downward trend, most I can think of (as others have done above) have nothing to do a drop in HY trade. A graph of 'homeopathy' compared to 'homeopath' suggests to me that people are still searching for practitioners but not the info.
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home