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Science must be explained as simple as possible,
but not simpler.
Albert Einstein
You have the legal right to be stupid.
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You can choose to take aspirin for all your ailments and attribute failure to not taking enough, taking too much, taking the wrong brand, taking it at the wrong time, taking it with the wrong food, etc. Most arts, respectable or not, are fraught with failures of that sort and full of successes that rely on pure chance. Failing in logic doesn't mean that you are dealing in quackery, just poor thinking.
Part of the reason that people involve themselves in poor thinking is in the emotional stake we have in believing the status quo. Change can destroy careers. Change makes people think. Change makes people insecure. Being without prejudice and tolerant of uncertainty makes for good science but is something not easily taught. So, one of the first steps we can do is to become aware of the process of thinking.
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There is something to be said for sharpening your general logic skills. Talk to other people about the facts of cases, whether they are yours or ones you have read, suggesting alternative remedies. Argue with Hahnemann in your mind when you read him. Find assumptions in your discussions that need to be brought out in the open. If you strongly believe in one side of an issue, find out how to argue for the other side of the issue and debate it with a like-minded associate.
In using logic, it is important to realize the distinction between inductive and deductive logic. The reason for this is that homeopathy is built on induction and conventional medicine relies on deduction. Without knowing where a person is standing on an issue logically you will never be able to address their arguments clearly and fail in establishing any doubt about the efficacy of the system that they currently follow. This is the crux of most failures for the proof of a complementary medicine.
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Deductive logic follows the path of forming a hypothesis, deriving an experiment to test it, and evaluating the results of that experiment. If the experiment is consistently successful in following the results expected by the hypothesis then we believe that it is true. This is called starting with a general thought and moving to the particulars.
Inductive logic does not start with a hypothesis or an experiment. It starts with information that is consistently resulting in similar actions. The accumulation of those actions are then weighed and distilled into a law which covers all of them. This is called starting with the particulars and moving to the general thought. Homeopathy uses the data derived from reports of poisonings to determine how a remedy affects the human body in large doses. It uses the data of thousands of tests of much smaller doses on the body to determine the fundamental action of each remedy.
Both systems are useful and proper in a scientific inquiry. But it is essential that when you talk with someone that they believe that both systems provide a way to get at truth. Experiments must be set up the correct way which in the case of homeopathy may not be the classical way. Most people are not well acquainted with inductive reasoning and therefore tend to discount it as second-rate science preferring to wait until deductive proof is available. The current push of research in the mechanics of homeopathy is due to this bias.
