Australia’s leading research institute, the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC), recently bowed to public pressure and released its first report on homeopathy, produced in 2012 but never released to the public.

As expected, the findings of the draft 2012 report are far more positive than those of a second report – the official NHMRC Homeopathy Review published in 2015 – that has caused widespread damage to the reputation of the homeopathy sector.

The First Report – an evidence review conducted for NHMRC by expert reviewer Prof Karen Grimmer of the University of South Australia (UniSA) – found that “There is encouraging evidence for the effectiveness of homeopathy” for five medical conditions, including otitis media (ear infections), upper respiratory tract infection in adults, and some side effects of cancer treatment.

After receiving this draft report in 2012, NHMRC terminated the contract with UniSA, hired a new contractor to review the evidence on homeopathy again and published the findings in their 2015 report. This second report applied arbitrary and unprecedented rules which reduced the number of trials from 176 to 5, resulting in the conclusion that ‘no good-quality studies with sufficient participants for a meaningful result’ showed homeopathy to be effective for any health condition.

As Rachel Roberts, Homeopathy Research Institute Chief Executive, explains, “The first report found some good evidence that homeopathy works for certain medical conditions. More studies are needed to confirm and build on these findings, but some evidence is very different from no evidence.”

The statement can be found here