d00d. So here's the thing: Saying "one leg but not the other" was an oversimplification. the fact of the matter is, she put arnica gel on the parts that hurt. The parts that didn't, didn't get any. Two days later, the parts that hurt weren't bruised. The parts that didn't hurt were. And here's where your attitude is unhelpful, and here's why I tore you a new one over vaccines: I have zero faith in the operating principles behind homeopathic remedies. I grew up in a house with a rippin' Zeiss microscope, the son of a Ph. D. microbiologist with a degree from Cornell. My father in law has a dozen patents in organic chemistry specifically related to blood. BUT I saw, with my own two eyes, some sort of effect from that gel. I have felt an effect from homeopathic remedies before. So what I'm stating, in fairly explicit terms, is that the theories behind homeopathy are bunk but their effects, based on my own personal experience, are non-negligible. I would usually follow this up with some discussion on the woeful lack of study of the placebo effect, the fact that certain ethnicities respond better to some placebos rather than others, the pragmatic discussion that if magic vaseline cures my bruises I'll bloody well use magic vaseline, particularly as it's a fraction of the cost of neomycin and antibiotics aren't any good on bruises anyway, etc. I can't have that discussion now though because, like most skeptics, your reaction has been - scorn - sarcasm - castigation for ignoring the scientific method - incredulity at the stupidity of the human race at large. In effect, I'm saying "yeah, here's this thing I don't really understand and I'm a reasonably clever person" and your answer is "no, you're a fucking idiot just like everyone else." Do you see how that's a problem? Do you see how it might cause undue friction with a mother that is just trying to make your ear stop hurting? Come-to-jesus moment: I got /r/alternativehealth shut down because they were espousing medically dangerous notions (and operating as a spam haven, but that was just the tax evasion to Al Capone's arrest) and you're pissing me off. Do you think maybe your rhetoric is unnecessarily vitriolic?If that doesn't smack of pseudoscientific bullshit, I don't know what does. A similar idea went into vaccines, but it's really apples to oranges.
It sucks that you don't have an identical twin that got into an identical accident with an identical wife who applied arnica to neither leg, or the leg opposite your arnica'd leg. That would be much more conclusive, but even then, not statistically conclusive.