Competition puts homeopathy on trial

[PeriodThree]

I love the Homeopath's response "We have nothing to prove, and certainly not to people with closed minds," says Steve Scrutton of the Alliance of Registered Homeopaths.



--
https://www.newscientist.com/channel...ine-news_rss20


Want to win £10,000? Then prove that homeopathy works in proper clinical trials in which half the patients receive the treatment, half receive a placebo, and no one knows till the end who got what.


The challenge was issued on Monday by Edzard Ernst, professor of complementary medicine at the University of Exeter, UK, and science author Simon Singh, in the wake of what they call a smear campaign against them in response to their book Trick or Treatment, which explores the scientific evidence behind complementary remedies. "We're saying to homeopaths, 'put up or shut up'," says Singh.


The pair are not against complementary remedies. Of those examined in their book, 36 worked for particular conditions - such as St John's wort for mild depression - but homeopathy was not among them.


Homeopaths seem in no hurry to take up the offer. "We have nothing to prove, and certainly not to people with closed minds," says Steve Scrutton of the Alliance of Registered Homeopaths.

[Dixon]

I love the Homeopath's response "We have nothing to prove, and certainly not to people with closed minds," says Steve Scrutton of the Alliance of Registered Homeopaths.

Of course the irony here is that this homeopath is showing his own closedmindedness, first by suggesting that they have nothing to prove (as if it's appropriate to offer an unproven treatment, which has failed many tests, to the public for money), and then by defensively calling the scientists closedminded, even though in their book they validated 36 other complementary remedies!

Surely an offer of a large cash prize to anyone who can prove something in a properly designed test is absolutely reasonable, AND evidence of openmindedness, just as a snotty, insulting rejection of such a reasonable test is evidence that the homeopath fears that his cash cow can't pass the test and is too dishonest to admit it. Let the buyer beware!

Having often criticized various forms of snake-oil (which I sometimes think is Sonoma County's biggest industry) I'm very familiar with such ad hominem attacks, in which closedminded people rigidly defend their beliefs by automatically assuming closedmindedness on the part of anyone who disagrees with them. It's painful to be subjected to such "kill the messenger" attacks, but folks like me will continue to try to educate the public about what constitutes good evidence and what doesn't.

Now let the attacks begin, LOL!

Dixon

--
https://www.newscientist.com/channel...ine-news_rss20


Want to win £10,000? Then prove that homeopathy works in proper clinical trials in which half the patients receive the treatment, half receive a placebo, and no one knows till the end who got what.


The challenge was issued on Monday by Edzard Ernst, professor of complementary medicine at the University of Exeter, UK, and science author Simon Singh, in the wake of what they call a smear campaign against them in response to their book Trick or Treatment, which explores the scientific evidence behind complementary remedies. "We're saying to homeopaths, 'put up or shut up'," says Singh.


The pair are not against complementary remedies. Of those examined in their book, 36 worked for particular conditions - such as St John's wort for mild depression - but homeopathy was not among them.


Homeopaths seem in no hurry to take up the offer. "We have nothing to prove, and certainly not to people with closed minds," says Steve Scrutton of the Alliance of Registered Homeopaths.

[MsTerry]

Dixon,

Mainstream doctors routinely will say; "Why don't you try this and let me know how it works for you"
In "clinical trials" the placebo has a high and sometimes higher cure rate than the tested medicine.
None of the medicine created for allopathy has a 100% success rate.
Given all this why do you hold homeopathy to a different standard?

Sincerely
MsTerry

Surely an offer of a large cash prize to anyone who can prove something in a properly designed test is absolutely reasonable,

[Braggi]

...
In "clinical trials" the placebo has a high and sometimes higher cure rate than the tested medicine. ...
None of the medicine created for allopathy has a 100% success rate.
Given all this why do you hold homeopathy to a different standard?
...

Medicines sold in the US are supposed to be "safe and effective." In order to achieve "approval" a medicine has to be shown more effective than placebo. Although it's true that studies can be, and sometimes are, fudged, most are valid. Homeopathic "remedies" have been shown safe, but not effective, which makes sense, because their theory of operation is ludicrous. Agitated water won't work better than placebo.

Same standard.

-Jeff

[PeriodThree]

Homeopathy is being held to the same standard. Perhaps you missed the first paragraph?

"Then prove that homeopathy works in proper clinical trials in which half the patients receive the treatment, half receive a placebo, and no one knows till the end who got what."

Again, the funny thing is this quote:

"We have nothing to prove, and certainly not to people with closed minds," says Steve Scrutton of the Alliance of Registered Homeopaths."

The forces of stupid are strong in the Alliance.

Dixon,

Mainstream doctors routinely will say; "Why don't you try this and let me know how it works for you"
In "clinical trials" the placebo has a high and sometimes higher cure rate than the tested medicine.
None of the medicine created for allopathy has a 100% success rate.
Given all this why do you hold homeopathy to a different standard?

Sincerely
MsTerry

[MsTerry]

let me see if understand your standards.
if a placebo helps 18% and the new "medicine" 20%, the new" medicine is more effective even though it didn't help 80% of the people!
Now that is some reliability, isn't it?

Medicines sold in the US are supposed to be "safe and effective." In order to achieve "approval" a medicine has to be shown more effective than placebo. Although it's true that studies can be, and sometimes are, fudged, most are valid. Homeopathic "remedies" have been shown safe, but not effective, which makes sense, because their theory of operation is ludicrous. Agitated water won't work better than placebo.

Same standard.

-Jeff

[PeriodThree]

MsTerry,

I don't understand your preference here for homeopathy, where the practitioners 'have nothing to prove, and certainly not to people with closed minds."

Are you against the basic scientific process of making observations and drawing conclusions from those observations? Or, to be snarky, do you just not like math that you don't understand?

let me see if understand your standards.
if a placebo helps 18% and the new "medicine" 20%, the new" medicine is more effective even though it didn't help 80% of the people!
Now that is some reliability, isn't it?

[MsTerry]

P3
Yes, you are snarky but cute too of course.
I have nothing against "making observations and drawing conclusions from those observations".
And I can till you from personal experience and observation that homeopathy works. I can also tell you from personal experience and observation that chemo therapy kills people (doctor will admit this) since I have seen this with my own eyes.
So P3 are you going to rant and rave how chemo is snake-oil?
How chemo is dangerous and hazardous?
Or are you going to let doctors experiment on patients with chemo?

MsTerry,

I don't understand your preference here for homeopathy, where the practitioners 'have nothing to prove, and certainly not to people with closed minds."

Are you against the basic scientific process of making observations and drawing conclusions from those observations? Or, to be snarky, do you just not like math that you don't understand?

[Dynamique]

Homeopathic remedies are both safe and effective, especially in well-trained hands. Finding a good homeopath is not easy, just like finding a good allopath or any other sort of practitioner is not easy.

The theory of homeopathy is counter-intuitive, but not ludicrous. Living physiological systems are not test-tubes, and what happens in vitro is not translatable to in vivo. This is a common fallacy, in my experience, among people who have some background in the physical sciences (chemistry, engineering of some kind) but not any physiology or medical training. From what I've seen in your posts over the last few months, you fall into that category.

An article in Discover magazine a few years ago described a research project involving radiation and toxins on plants. The researchers found, to their amazement, that small amounts of the radiation or toxins actually stimulated the plants and made them grow larger and stronger. The comparisons to homeopathy were obvious and not something that the researchers were looking for.

Lots of healing strategies and substances are discovered by accident and/or observation. Homeopathy is one of them. Accupuncture is another one. Just because you have chosen to not understand it and take this dismissive attitude does not mean that it is invalid.

As I recall, you and some of your sci-nerd buddies had the same thing to say about Kangen water until someone posted the results of a detailed analysis that made perfect sense to anyone who passed college chemistry. We've not read any sneering comments about Kangen water since that posting, have we?!

Homeopathic "remedies" have been shown safe, but not effective, which makes sense, because their theory of operation is ludicrous. Agitated water won't work better than placebo.

Same standard.

-Jeff

[Braggi]

... Homeopathic remedies are both safe and effective, especially in well-trained hands. ...

Prove it. Safe, yes. Clean water is safe. Effective, no. Not.

... The theory of homeopathy is counter-intuitive, but not ludicrous. ...

Ludicrous. Sorry. When I explained to one clearly deluded person that the theory of homeopathic "remedies" was chemically impossible she explained to me that, "it's not based on chemistry." End of intellectual connection.

... An article in Discover magazine a few years ago described a research project involving radiation and toxins on plants. The researchers found, to their amazement, that small amounts of the radiation or toxins actually stimulated the plants and made them grow larger and stronger. The comparisons to homeopathy were obvious and not something that the researchers were looking for. ...

The comparison to immunization, is obvious. Not to homeopathic remedies where any trace of the original substance is gone.

... Lots of healing strategies and substances are discovered by accident and/or observation. Homeopathy is one of them. ...

Do your research. I believe homeopathy began as a fraud, but let's assume the best and just assume the originator was mistaken. All attempts to prove homeopathy effective in controlled, repeatable studies have failed. If I'm wrong please list ten repeatable studies on any illness where homeopathy was shown to be more effective than placebo. I've looked for them. I couldn't find a single one. Search Google News for homeopathy study. There isn't any news. Even the homeopaths have given up.

Dynamique, I appreciate your posts here on Wacco and on 99% of everything I'm sure we agree. However, on this issue I have to part ways with the true believers. There is no evidence homeopathy works let alone proof. "It worked for me" isn't evidence. The plural of anecdote is anecdotes, not evidence.

-Jeff

[Dixon]

Hi, Dynamique!

...Living physiological systems are not test-tubes, and what happens in vitro is not translatable to in vivo. etc. etc...

The in vitro/in vivo discussion is entirely irrelevant to the issue of testing homeopathy, as the most likely test would involve giving the treatment to people just as they receive it from their homeopaths. Some would get a placebo, neither subjects nor experimenters would know which group received which (a "double-blind" design, to control for expectation effects), etc. So you see, this in vitro/in vivo talk is irrelevant here, OK?

An article in Discover magazine a few years ago described a research project involving radiation and toxins on plants. The researchers found, to their amazement, that small amounts of the radiation or toxins actually stimulated the plants and made them grow larger and stronger. The comparisons to homeopathy were obvious and not something that the researchers were looking for.

As Jeff has pointed out, this example is insufficiently similar to homeopathy to be relevant.

Lots of healing strategies and substances are discovered by accident and/or observation.

And most of them turn out to be false, either frauds or just mistakes. What separates the men from the boys and the women from the girls is whether they're openminded enough to accept that their fave treatments don't really work.

Just because you have chosen to not understand it and take this dismissive attitude does not mean that it is invalid.

Dynamique, please note that you're engaging in the logical fallacy known as an ad hominem attack, by asserting needlessly negative assumptions about Jeff's reasons for disbelieving homeopathic claims. "(Y)ou have chosen not to understand" insultingly implies closedmindedness in the absence of any evidence that he's closedminded. People like Jeff and I don't "understand" that homeopathy works because neither you nor anyone else has given us good reason to believe that it does, and we can adduce several good reasons to believe that it doesn't.

Many perfectly intelligent people think that anecdotal evidence, including (their interpretations of) their own experience, constitutes good evidence. It does not, for reasons which I'd be happy to explain. Nor do inappropriate analogies with things like the Discover article you mentioned. Placebo-controlled, double-blind studies are the gold standard because they do a good job of screening out confounding factors such as expectation effects, experimenter bias, etc. Are you against subjecting homeopathy to such studies? If so, why?

Studies aside, here's a good reason to reject the homeopathic concept: There is no such thing as pure water. The purest water we can make contains tiny traces of various elements and compounds, in many cases the same amount as the "active" ingredient of a homeopathic remedy (maybe a molecule or two in a bottle of the stuff). And often, as the water travels through plumbing, into the ocean, into the sky, back down in the rain, etc., the impurities in the water undergo a natural process of dilution and re-dilution similar to the dilution process of homeopathy. So any homeopathic remedy, however "pure", is actually a soup containing an unknown number of unknown substances, some as dilute as the "active ingredient". Thus, if the homeopathic principle is true, taking any homeopathic remedy is similar to swallowing a handful of pills, only one of which has been identified and some of which may be lethal. It seems to me that this argument alone invalidates homeopathy. If you think it doesn't, please explain why.

Also, if homeopathic remedies really have physical, rather than just psychological, effects, it should be possible to overdose on a large enough dose--maybe not dying, but at least having unambiguously real symptoms of overdose. A skeptics' club (I forget which town they were in), recognizing this fact, announced that they were going to commit mass suicide and invited the public to attend. They consulted with homeopaths to determine which remedies were the most "powerful" and most likely to kill them if they overdosed, then they each swallowed a whole bottle of those remedies in public. Not only did none of them die; they experienced no effects whatsoever.

I'd like to make the same offer. Figure out which homeopathic remedy is powerful enough to kill me if I take a whole bottle. I'll "commit suicide" with it at some public event (perhaps raising money for charity?) If I experience any symptoms strong enough to be unambiguously physical rather than imaginary, I will publicly concede the effectiveness of homeopathy, even if it's with my last breath! If I don't, you and other believers in attendance will publicly concede that homeopathic "effects" are all in your head. How about it?

Blessings;

Dixon

P.S. Any and all challenges from me are not open to trolls (of which there's at least one identified on Wacco), as I have learned not to respond to communications from them.

[MsTerry]

. I will publicly concede the effectiveness of homeopathy,

Dixon, you have stated publicly that homeopathy is safe and one can not overdose on it, (as opposed to allopathy) you even concede that it has helped people, albeit psychological.
Where is the harm?

[Braggi]

Dixon, you have stated publicly that homeopathy is safe and one can not overdose on it, (as opposed to allopathy) you even concede that it has helped people, albeit psychological.
Where is the harm?

Yes, there are actual medicines that people can overdose on. That's because they are "active." Some's more active than others. Buyer beware.

The main harm from homeopathy is secondary to the treatment, not a result of the treatment. If a person feels ill and goes to a homeopath and receives treatment, and feels better afterward (!) but does not seek other medical help and then becomes terribly ill or dies because there was a condition the homeopath was unqualified to diagnose, then a great harm was done.

If one of the well heeled "worried well" goes to a homeopath, receives treatment and then feels emotionally better, there is little harm except to the pocketbook.

If a poor person goes to a homeopath because they fear real medical doctors, that is just a shame, and it could lead to death. It's especially shameful if the poor person's last health care dollars are squandered in this way.

I do realize that homeopaths receive training on how to diagnose and many are quite ethical about referring patients to real doctors if they find themselves out of their league. However, homeopaths also have egos (witness the comment above) and love to get their hands on those health care dollars as much as any other practitioner. I see a real conflict here.

-Jeff

[MsTerry]

Jeff, do you apply those standards to regular doctors too?
Do you know what the percentage is for wrongly diagnosed patients?
Do you know that you have a high chance of getting a disease while INSIDE an hospital?
Do you know what the percentage is of death as the result of a wrong prescription?
How does that compare to Homeopathy?

Yes, there are actual medicines that people can overdose on. That's because they are "active." Some's more active than others. Buyer beware.

The main harm from homeopathy is secondary to the treatment, not a result of the treatment. If a person feels ill and goes to a homeopath and receives treatment, and feels better afterward (!) but does not seek other medical help and then becomes terribly ill or dies because there was a condition the homeopath was unqualified to diagnose, then a great harm was done.

If one of the well heeled "worried well" goes to a homeopath, receives treatment and then feels emotionally better, there is little harm except to the pocketbook.

If a poor person goes to a homeopath because they fear real medical doctors, that is just a shame, and it could lead to death. It's especially shameful if the poor person's last health care dollars are squandered in this way.

I do realize that homeopaths receive training on how to diagnose and many are quite ethical about referring patients to real doctors if they find themselves out of their league. However, homeopaths also have egos (witness the comment above) and love to get their hands on those health care dollars as much as any other practitioner. I see a real conflict here.

-Jeff

[Braggi]

Jeff, do you apply those standards to regular doctors too? ...

Short answer: yes.

MsTerry, I'll be the first to criticize all the problems associated with modern medicine. I agree with you that there are many. However, there is one significant difference between a real doctor and a placebo doctor (homeopath, acupuncturist, naturopath, you fill in the blank): the difference is that the real doctor (that is, M.D. or D.O.) went to a real medical school and passed. Most also took on additional training that involved four to ten years of additional advanced study.

Here's the bonus question: where does a homeopath go if they break a leg, develop a serious infection, or develop a serious uninary tract or reproductive system issue?

You bet. They go to a real doctor or to a hospital where real doctors work. If they don't, they should visit a psychiatrist. (That's a real medical doctor who is also a trained psychotherapist)

-Jeff

[Sylph]

Real medicine certainly does have it's risks: medication errors, wrong diagnosis and more. I work in a hospital and I admit it can be a dangerous place! On the other hand, medical professionals are working constantly to reduce those risks. I'll concede as well that many medical procedures do not have sufficient evidence behind them. Researchers are always trying to determine if there is enough evidence to justify the procedure. When the evidence tells us a procedure is worthless, it is thrown out. This is happening as we speak, just scan the New England Journal of Medicine. Real doctors are open-minded enough to change their modes of treatment according to the evidence.

Jeff has excellent points about needed treatment possibly being delayed and the patient suffering by resorting to 'alternative' treatments. No, homeopathy won't kill or poison you outright, but it's worthless, as the well-designed clinical trials have shown. There is no 'alternative medicine', only medicine that works and medicine that doesn't!

[MsTerry]

That is real cute, Jeff.
Homeopathy is one of the options available to keep your body healthy, just like you can use an acupuncturist or a chiropractor for maintenance.
I still drive a car, but I don't go to a body shop to get my engine fixed, and I don't go to a tire place to get my car painted.
Right, Jeff?

Here's the bonus question: where does a homeopath go if they break a leg, develop a serious infection, or develop a serious uninary tract or reproductive system issue?


-Jeff

[MsTerry]

Many perfectly intelligent people think that anecdotal evidence, including (their interpretations of) their own experience, constitutes good evidence. It does not, for reasons which I'd be happy to explain
?

Blessings;

Dixon

Dixon, the most common illogical fallacy with people that dismiss alternative medicines is to also dismiss their own personal experience as anecdotal evidence. Maybe you have always been in such good health, that you never had to taste any medicine.

I hate to tell you this, but any doctor you visit will always ASK you for your personal experience.
If you have a headache and the doctor tells you to take ibuprofen would you continue taken it if it doesn't help?
Despite all kinds of tests, medicine only works for some people under certain conditions.
Let me giveyou an example, a few years ago, I went to the dentist and she gave me 2 shots for 1 tooth, I told her I could still feel it. She gave me another shot, still in pain. Then she pulled out the big one for another shot, still in pain.
She told me at that point I had to come back some other time, caus she couldn't help me that day. she gave me more than the legal limit.

.

Figure out which homeopathic remedy is powerful enough to kill me if I take a whole bottle. I'll "commit suicide" with it at some public event (perhaps raising money for charity?) If I experience any symptoms strong enough to be unambiguously physical rather than imaginary, I will publicly concede the effectiveness of homeopathy, even if it's with my last breath! If I don't, you and other believers in attendance will publicly concede that homeopathic "effects" are all in your head. How about it

I am not quite sure why you want to commit public suicide, but here is something to consider;
"Homeopathic medicine is commonly believed to be relatively harmless. However, treatment with improperly used homeopathic preparations may be dangerous. Case Reports.  Case 1 presented with melanosis and keratosis following short-term use of Arsenic Bromide 1-X followed by long-term use of other arsenic-containing homeopathic preparations. Case 2 developed melanotic arsenical skin lesions after taking Arsenicum Sulfuratum Flavum-1-X (Arsenic S.F. 1-X) in an effort to treat his white skin patches. Case 3 consumed Arsenic Bromide 1-X for 6 days in an effort to treat his diabetes and developed an acute gastrointestinal illness followed by leukopenia, thrombocytopenia, and diffuse dermal melanosis with patchy desquamation. Within ∼2 weeks, he developed a toxic polyneuropathy resulting in quadriparesis. Arsenic concentrations in all three patients were significantly elevated in integument tissue samples. In all three cases, arsenic concentrations in drinking water were normal but arsenic concentrations in samples of the homeopathic medications were elevated. Conclusion. Arsenic used therapeutically in homeopathic medicines can cause clinical toxicity if the medications are improperly used."

[Braggi]

...
"Homeopathic medicine is commonly believed to be relatively harmless. However, treatment with improperly used homeopathic preparations may be dangerous. Case Reports.  Case 1 presented with melanosis and keratosis following short-term use of Arsenic Bromide 1-X followed by long-term use of other arsenic-containing homeopathic preparations. ...

No, sorry. Homeopathic "remedies" by definition have none of the original molecules of the original substance left in them, so you can't be poisoned by them.

I still say, but the definition of homeopathy, a drop of sea water, dropped into a swimming pool and shaken, should be a homeopathic remedy for everything.

Wouldn't that be nice?

-Jeff

PS. Get in on the ground floor of this new MLM business: Jeff's amazing Sea Water cure!

[MsTerry]

No, sorry.
Homeopathic "remedies" by definition have none of the original molecules of the original substance left in them, so you can't be poisoned by them.
-Jeff

Sorry is right Jeff.
I didn't make this up, this is not hypothetical. These are real cases unless Wiki made it up
Here is some more, and just note that vaccines are based on the laws of similars.

General philosophy

Homeopathy is a vitalist philosophy in that it regards diseases and sickness to be caused by disturbances in a hypothetical vital force or life force in humans and that these disturbances manifest themselves as unique symptoms. Homeopathy contends that the vital force has the ability to react and adapt to internal and external causes, which homeopaths refer to as the "law of susceptibility". The law of susceptibility states that a negative state of mind can attract hypothetical disease entities called "miasms" to invade the body and produce symptoms of diseases.^[1] However, Hahnemann rejected the notion of a disease as a separate thing or invading entity^[62] and insisted that it was always part of the "living whole".^[63]

Law of similars

Hahnemann observed from his experiments with cinchona bark, used as a treatment for malaria, that the effects he experienced from ingesting the bark were similar to the symptoms of malaria. He therefore reasoned that cure proceeds through similarity, and that treatments must be able to produce symptoms in healthy individuals similar to those of the disease being treated. Through further experiments with other substances, Hahnemann conceived of the "law of similars", otherwise known as "like cures like" (Latin: similia similibus curentur) as a fundamental healing principle. He believed that by inducing a disease through use of drugs, the artificial symptoms empowered the vital force to neutralise and expel the original disease and that this artificial disturbance would naturally subside when the dosing ceased.^[1]

[Braggi]

Sorry is right Jeff.
I didn't make this up, this is not hypothetical. These are real cases unless Wiki made it up
Here is some more, and just note that vaccines are based on the laws of similars.

Vaccines are not based on the "laws of similars," which isn't a law at all.

A person suffering from lead poisoning should get a dose of lead, right? That's not how vaccines work but it is how the "law of similars" doesn't work.

You missed my point, MsTerry. Homeopathic "remedies" can't poison a person so the "remedies" in your case histories weren't homeopathic, by definition. They were something else.

-Jeff

[MsTerry]

Have I been fooled all this time, Jeff?


From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

(Redirected from Vaccines)
Jump to: navigation, search
For other uses, see Vaccine (disambiguation).
A vaccine is a preparation which is used to improve immunity to a particular disease. The term derives from Edward Jenner's use of cowpox ("vacca" means cow in Latin), which, when administered to humans, provided them protection against smallpox, the work which Louis Pasteur and others carried on. Vaccines are based on the concept of variolation originating in China, in which a person is deliberately infected with a weak form of smallpox. Jenner realized that milkmaids who had contact with cowpox did not get smallpox. The process of distributing and administrating vaccines is referred to as vaccination. Since vaccination was much safer, smallpox inoculation fell into disuse and was eventually banned in England in 1849.
Vaccines can be prophylactic (e.g. to prevent or ameliorate the effects of a future infection by any natural or "wild" pathogen), or therapeutic (e.g. vaccines against cancer are also being investigated; see cancer vaccine).

Vaccines are not based on the "laws of similars," which isn't a law at all.

A person suffering from lead poisoning should get a dose of lead, right? That's not how vaccines work but it is how the "law of similars" doesn't work.


-Jeff

[Hummingbear]

No, sorry. Homeopathic "remedies" by definition have none of the original molecules of the original substance left in them, so you can't be poisoned by them.

Huh? When did that become part of the definition of homeopathic remedy?

Jeff, I think the problem is that you are assuming that there has to be a mechanism to effect a change in one's well-being. That's the basis of allopathic medicine, of acupuncture, and of chiropractic. However, healing can also occur by way of placebos (as Ms. Terry pointed out earlier), by Reiki, and by psychotherapy. These don't work on mechanistic models; they have more to do, perhaps, with the relationship between the client and the practitioner. They would not be good subjects for clinical testing, at least the way allopathic medicine is tested, but that doesn't mean that they are ineffective.

I'm agnostic on the usefulness of homeopathy; it doesn't seem to fit either the mechanistic or the relationship model of healing. Perhaps it's something else. There's a helluva lot we don't know about our cosmos, and about our bodies. I have no patience for people who assume that because they can't visualize how something works, that it can't work. We are surrounded by miracles, with every breath we take.

As for the spokesman who said that they didn't have to prove anything... send him back to public-relations school. Not a great messenger. But that doesn't prove anything, either.

Anyway, getting back to the quote I was commenting on.... I grew up with a stepfather. I carry none of his genes. He's been dead for several years, and I have nothing in my possession that he created. There's a vanishing substance for you. But if you were to conclude from those facts that he has no influence on my sense of wholeness, you'd be mistaken. In fact, I'm sure each of us has had relationships with people who have re-shaped us in ways that outlast any physical presence or compulsion. If people, why not plants? If by memory, why not by dilution?

I love you, Jeff, but I love you most when you break out of that old box.

--Hummingbear

[Sylph]

From Wikipedia:
According to homeopaths, serial dilution, with shaking between each dilution, removes the toxic effects of the remedy while the qualities of the substance are retained by the diluent (water, sugar, or alcohol). The end product is often so diluted that it is indistinguishable from pure water, sugar or alcohol.^[2][3][4] Practitioners select treatments according to a patient consultation that explores the physical and psychological state^[5] of the patient, both of which are considered important to selecting the remedy.<sup>[6]

A couple of points. The end point is indistinguishable from pure water. The idea of shaking removing the toxic effects or that the water will 'remember' the substance....is ludicrous!

A vaccine definitely has a protein from a certain pathogen that our immune system learns to recognize. The volume is tiny, which might make one think of homeopathy in it's effects. However, if the homeopathic remedy has no molecules remaining, just 'qualities of the substance', the analogy to vaccines is lost.

The patient consultation, 'exploring the physical and psychological state', certainly makes the patient feel listened to and must be very satisfying. The patient then receives a bottle of something that looks very impressive, which is, in effect, a placebo. Placebos can be very effective, as they can unleash the healing power of our own bodies.

Other human beings in our life have profound influences on us, like Hummingbear's stepfather. Many people....(not to mention books, movies and nature) have left their mark on me. The myriad influences on our selves from the environment is not a good analogy to the influence of a homeopathy remedy on the body. We are able to figure out if homeopathy has an effect by conducting studies. I am not sure why people are so loyal to homeopathy, but perhaps they should do more research with an open mind.</sup>

[phooph]

Water seems to have all sorts of trickes up it's sleeve:
https://www.holisticnetworker.com/messages/

From Wikipedia:
According to homeopaths, serial dilution, with shaking between each dilution, removes the toxic effects of the remedy while the qualities of the substance are retained by the diluent (water, sugar, or alcohol). The end product is often so diluted that it is indistinguishable from pure water, sugar or alcohol.^[2][3][4] Practitioners select treatments according to a patient consultation that explores the physical and psychological state^[5] of the patient, both of which are considered important to selecting the remedy.<sup>[6]

A couple of points. The end point is indistinguishable from pure water. The idea of shaking removing the toxic effects or that the water will 'remember' the substance....is ludicrous!

A vaccine definitely has a protein from a certain pathogen that our immune system learns to recognize. The volume is tiny, which might make one think of homeopathy in it's effects. However, if the homeopathic remedy has no molecules remaining, just 'qualities of the substance', the analogy to vaccines is lost.

The patient consultation, 'exploring the physical and psychological state', certainly makes the patient feel listened to and must be very satisfying. The patient then receives a bottle of something that looks very impressive, which is, in effect, a placebo. Placebos can be very effective, as they can unleash the healing power of our own bodies.

Other human beings in our life have profound influences on us, like Hummingbear's stepfather. Many people....(not to mention books, movies and nature) have left their mark on me. The myriad influences on our selves from the environment is not a good analogy to the influence of a homeopathy remedy on the body. We are able to figure out if homeopathy has an effect by conducting studies. I am not sure why people are so loyal to homeopathy, but perhaps they should do more research with an open mind.</sup>

[Dixon]

Hi, Hummingbear!

Jeff, I think the problem is that you are assuming that there has to be a mechanism to effect a change in one's well-being. That's the basis of allopathic medicine, of acupuncture, and of chiropractic. However, healing can also occur by way of placebos (as Ms. Terry pointed out earlier), by Reiki, and by psychotherapy. These don't work on mechanistic models...

Hummingbear, don't let the mechanical metaphor implied by the term "mechanism" scare you off. A mechanism is just the means whereby something works. If you'd prefer some other, less mechanical metaphor, fine, but the important point here is that, if something does indeed work, there WILL be some "way" that it works, i.e., some "mechanism". That's true of anything that works, including the placebo effect, psychotherapy, or anything else you can name.

They (placebos, Reiki and psychotherapy) would not be good subjects for clinical testing, at least the way allopathic medicine is tested...

You're mistaken about this, Hummingbear. All of these, and just about anything else you can mention, are perfectly good candidates for controlled testing. Any treatment that purports to create a noticeable effect can in principle be tested (though some are more difficult to test than others), REGARDLESS of how they work (their "mechanism" of action).

Furthermore, in the absence of well-designed and properly interpreted testing, it is inappropriate to assert very strongly that a treatment works, because you have not ruled out experimenter bias, non-specific treatment effects (placebo, effort justification effect, please-the-therapist effect, etc.), wishful thinking, etc. Apropos of this current discussion, it's inappropriate to assert the efficacy of homeopathy without controlled testing (regardless of peoples' unsystematic judgment based on their personal experiences, etc.). As far as I can see, there is NO good reason someone would oppose properly controlled testing of homeopathy or any other claim. When you encounter people opposing such testing, guard your wallet carefully!

...but that doesn't mean that they are ineffective.

In the absence of verification by controlled testing, the greatest likelihood by far is that the treatment in question is, indeed, ineffective. (Note that the existence of nonspecific treatment effects such as the placebo effect is irrelevant to the question of whether the specific treatment itself works).

I'm agnostic on the usefulness of homeopathy; it doesn't seem to fit either the mechanistic or the relationship model of healing. Perhaps it's something else.

It sounds like you're speculating about HOW something works without any real evidence that it DOES work. That strikes me as putting the cart before the horse.

There's a helluva lot we don't know about our cosmos, and about our bodies.

True enough, but this fact seems irrelevant to the current discussion. It certainly tells us nothing about whether homeopathy works.

I have no patience for people who assume that because they can't visualize how something works, that it can't work.

OK, but again, this seems irrelevant here, because I don't think anyone's made that argument in this discussion. Are you setting up a straw figure to attack, Hummingbear? We skeptics in this discussion are saying that homeopathy probably doesn't work for several reasons, chief of which is that it lacks good evidence, from well-controlled studies.

The burden of proof is on the claimant. Unless and until homeopaths can rack up some good studies supporting their claims, they can't expect reasonable people to accept them as true. It's a "Put up or shut up" situation, Hummingbear, and no amount of obfuscatory discussion can hide the fact that homeopaths haven't proven their case and, worse, seem hostile to the very idea of proof (as witness the quote from homeopath Scrutton in post #1 of this thread).

We are surrounded by miracles, with every breath we take.

Again, true (depending on how we define "miracles"), but this constitutes no evidence whatsoever for homeopathy, and thus seems irrelevant.

As for the spokesman who said that they didn't have to prove anything... send him back to public-relations school. Not a great messenger. But that doesn't prove anything, either.

Oh yeah? I'd say that it proves that he's closedminded and arrogant, especially since he went on to accuse the skeptics of closedmindedness in spite of considerable evidence to the contrary!

...I grew up with a stepfather. I carry none of his genes. He's been dead for several years, and I have nothing in my possession that he created. There's a vanishing substance for you. But if you were to conclude from those facts that he has no influence on my sense of wholeness, you'd be mistaken. In fact, I'm sure each of us has had relationships with people who have re-shaped us in ways that outlast any physical presence or compulsion. If people, why not plants? If by memory, why not by dilution?

Hummingbear, I hope you realize that this analogy is such a loooooonnnnnng stretch that it has no bearing whatsoever on the issue of whether homeopathy works. Can't you just drop the sophistry and agree that homeopaths need to support proper testing of their claims or else shut their mouths?

I love you, Jeff, but I love you most when you break out of that old box.

Isn't it funny how we tend to assume that those who disagree with us are in a box, while we aren't? LOL!

Love;

Dixon

[Dixon]

Water seems to have all sorts of trickes up it's sleeve:
https://www.holisticnetworker.com/messages/

Oh gawd, phooph, let's not complicate the discussion by bringing up that nutcase Emoto.

When I first heard of him several years ago, I went to his website to see if maybe he'd made some real discoveries. What I found was troubling because there were several signs of crackpotism: vague and inaccurate use of scientific terms mixed with unsupported assumptions and "spiritual" claims; near-total lack of info regarding his experimental design, making it impossible to assess whether his results were likely to be valid; and attempts to make money by selling products associated with his unproven claims. My bullshit detector was buzzing LOUDLY!

More recently, I attended a talk by a REAL water expert, Brock Dolman of the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center. I highly recommend you catch him sometime; he's enlightening and inspiring. Someone asked him what he thought of Emoto's work. He said he'd seen Emoto speak twice. On the second occasion he asked Emoto a question about his use of control groups in his "experiments", and Emoto said something like "Control groups? What control groups? I just take the pictures and pick the ones I like." Translation: there's nothing scientific going on in Dr. Emoto's "lab", and no reason to accept his bizarre claims.

For a good summary on the subject of Emoto's work, see the Wikipedia article at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masaru_Emoto

For an interesting look at numerous strange claims about water, see
https://www.chem1.com/CQ/clusqk.html

Stay wet!

Dixon

[PeriodThree]

I know nothing at all about Emoto, except if his attitude towards control groups is as you report than fie on him :-)

But...

Water really really is freaking cool! And there are some seemingly basic things we don't really understand about how water works, and how the 'simple' reactions which occur in combustion really work.

It is really really cool stuff!

I would really like it if it were possible to intentionally adopt the sense of wonder and religious awe we feel in the prescence of whatever we hold to be divine and hold that sense of awe as we do real experiments and use the tools of science to explore these unanswered questions.

I see no reason why we can't have the mystics sense of mystery and of the divine as we do hard nosed scientific experiments.

Sure, the mystical mysteries will (usually :-) become explained by science, but it just seems more run to engage the universe from a mystical perspective (which then shifts once you have real data!) than from the assumption that there are no mysteries.

hell...maybe there are deep and freaky mysteries. maybe god does live in the pattern of the fibonacci series. who knows! It is not unscientific to belief in whacked out mysteries. It is only unscientific to believe in whacked out mystical stuff _after_ you have evidence to the contrary (it is also unscientific to not ask the questions which could disprove your mysticism).

Dawkins did that movie 'The God Delusion' but personally, I feel like Dawkins is a nasty bit of work.

He is almost certainly right on most of his substanative points, except that
our capacity to have an experience of the diviine is pretty damned cool! It is not 'a delusion' but a cool ability which we have!

Oh gawd, phooph, let's not complicate the discussion by bringing up that nutcase Emoto.

When I first heard of him several years ago, I went to his website to see if maybe he'd made some real discoveries. What I found was troubling because there were several signs of crackpotism: vague and inaccurate use of scientific terms mixed with unsupported assumptions and "spiritual" claims; near-total lack of info regarding his experimental design, making it impossible to assess whether his results were likely to be valid; and attempts to make money by selling products associated with his unproven claims. My bullshit detector was buzzing LOUDLY!

More recently, I attended a talk by a REAL water expert, Brock Dolman of the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center. I highly recommend you catch him sometime; he's enlightening and inspiring. Someone asked him what he thought of Emoto's work. He said he'd seen Emoto speak twice. On the second occasion he asked Emoto a question about his use of control groups in his "experiments", and Emoto said something like "Control groups? What control groups? I just take the pictures and pick the ones I like." Translation: there's nothing scientific going on in Dr. Emoto's "lab", and no reason to accept his bizarre claims.

For a good summary on the subject of Emoto's work, see the Wikipedia article at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masaru_Emoto

For an interesting look at numerous strange claims about water, see
https://www.chem1.com/CQ/clusqk.html

Stay wet!

Dixon

[PeriodThree]

Sorry to reply to myself :-) But I forget to make a couple of really important points:

1) We know from four hundred years of experience that the scientific method is a very very effective method for determining what is true and what is false. I don't think it is the only way to determine what is true, but it has a pretty damned good track record.

2) The difference between 'science' and 'non science' is that in science you make falsifiable statements.

3) Discipline's where practictioners make scientific like claims to understand the world (as they do in homeopathy), while rejecting the basic tools of science, as for example Hummingbear does in explicitly rejecting the idea that there must be a 'mechanism' to effect change, could be valid. Who the hell knows what mysteries are in the universe. Except, the odds are stacked against those practictioners being right.

Hummingbear, wrote "As for the spokesman who said that they didn't have to prove anything... send him back to public-relations school. Not a great messenger. But that doesn't prove anything, either."

I agree. Nothing was proven. That is the problem here. People doing Science know that you can't really prove much at all. Mostly you can only prove things are not true.... But people doing non-science add this sort of odd spin to that.

It is more than 'send them back to PR school.' If you are practicing a healing profession but you refuse to measure and test the efficacy of your actions than you are no diferent than a witch doctor.

You may very well have good results. It goes beyond a simple placebo effect. Your clients come to you, and engage in a treatment environment, and if you are emphathetic there is a pretty good chance that you can identify things which are affecting the client. The simple act of entering into a theraupeutic context has an enormous effect on patients - by analogy, I don't know about you, but before I go into the dentist I start flossing and brushing like mad, and that flossing and brushing continue for a while after. the dentist could claim he was healing me with strange chants and mystery water, and I _would_ be getting better, but not because of the treatment!

[Sylph]

"I would really like it if it were possible to intentionally adopt the sense of wonder and religious awe we feel in the prescence of whatever we hold to be divine and hold that sense of awe as we do real experiments and use the tools of science to explore these unanswered questions. I see no reason why we can't have the mystics sense of mystery and of the divine as we do hard nosed scientific experiments." I agree, Period Three. Who's to say that scientists aren't totally in awe of the wonders of nature? Speaking as a 'dyed in the wool skeptic', I am constantly amazed by the incredible variety and beauty of...a coral reef, the plants and bugs in my garden or the mind-blowing number and variety of stars and galaxies. All the questions will never be answered, but it is exciting to try to make sense of our world. The closer we look the more fantastic and beautiful it is.