To be fair - "holistic" medicine has only recently been attempting to fulfill all the requirements of legitimacy. The school my wife went to is shunned by much of the community for being "too science-based." Even now, "naturopath" and "naturopathic doctor" are only protected words in 15 out of 50 states - everywhere else, it means as much (legally) as "soothsayer" or "phrenologist." And with that, of course, comes a patchwork of scopes of practice; in Washington, my wife can perform minor surgeries and prescribe most anything up to narcotics while in California she actually has less scope than she does as a midwife (she can perform minor surgeries as a midwife, so long as it's to the vaginal region... but she has to "take off her naturopathic hat" and "put on her midwife hat" or risk both her licenses!).

And most naturopathic doctors - including licensed members of the AANP - prescribe homeopathic remedies. I've been prescribed them four times, and find arnica gel to actually be irritatingly effective on bruises, despite the fact that there is exactly zero scientific reason for it to be so. Most doctors start this with "how do you feel about homeopathy?" and go from there. Many naturopathic doctors don't believe in them (my wife doesn't, for example) but still prescribe them (my wife does, for example). Scientifically, an exorcism is about as likely to produce results. Empirically, however, there's something about those magic little sugar pills.

It's not even something that merits "further study." Any study you care to run will demonstrate that homeopathy does fuckall compared to placebo. Which is usually where people like me start saying "yeah, but 'placebo' doesn't mean 'nothing' so maybe what we should be doing is studying this here 'placebo effect' because if 'sham medicine' gives you even half the efficacy with none of the side effects, maybe we should start prescribing more 'sham medicine' as a first line of defense."

It's about here that I get burned at the stake most of the time.