Though we're in the age of modern medicine, homeopathy continues to have a foothold. You can find the remedies in any drug or health food store. But an Australian governmental council wants consumers to take heed. Its study found no reliable evidence that homeopathy is effective.

Just what is homeopathy? It was started by an eighteenth century German physician who was struggling until his essay proclaiming a new healing art made him famous. Samuel Hahnemann used tiny doses of the illness that causes disease as treatment and highly diluted them. But these doses were diluted to a point that the active ingredients were really no longer in the solution. He insisted the remedies retained or increased their effectiveness if you shook them violently with each dilution.

To examine whether homeopathy really works, the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council analyzed 57 published systematic reviews involving 176 studies. Only case controlled studies were considered, meaning they compared a group of patients receiving homeopathic treatments with a control group. To oversee this review, the council assigned a group of experts in conventional as well as alternative medicine.

For a treatment to be considered effective, it must result in health improvements that aren't due to chance, can't be explained by the placebo effect, and must be consistent over several studies. Before issuing the report, they shared a draft publicly to invite comments and in the end, concluded homeopathic treatments are ineffective. This should be a wakeup call for people who reject conventional medicine to treat serious conditions.