You are so busy laughing at nothing much that you don’t know if you are coming or going.

“anecdotal evidence” is just a loose term for unverified stories.

“laughingsocks” has not twigged it that all observational scientific data is what he calls “anecdotal”. The “scientist” observes something and writes it down. But that human observation is just an “anecdote” according to “laughing boy”. Wot a plonker.

The moment you verify the evidence, it cain’t be anecdote you bozo.

It would be reasonable to object that an individual’s ideas may influence the way he observes the world, but the significance of this claim must be substantiated at each instance and not applied as a blanket ‘thought stopper’, when it takes on all the charm and erudition of the teenage refrain “You can’t tell me what to think”.

Humber I’m not trying to use this argument as a blanket thought-stopper, but rather to show a potential way out of the present impasse regarding the ‘proof’ or otherwise of homeopathy. As I see it, we’re only going to resolve the nuts and bolts of this 200 year-old argument by getting down to the basics of how we construct proof and knowledge. It’s a case of horses for courses. We’re not talking about something as simple as whether or not most human beings have two hands. We’re talking about a complex interaction between two human beings for which effects are claimed that lie outwith present consensus understanding of what impacts the progress of disease.

But let’s take a far more pragmatic approach instead.

One thing that’s become fairly apparent from talking to the people who’ve come to this blog is that many sceptics seem to have a highly idealised vision of scientific proof that just doesn’t translate to a clinical setting. For starters, a consultation with a patient begins and ends with anecdote. The whole basis of initiating any kind of investigation and treatment is anecdote. The ultimate assessment of success (or otherwise) is anecdote. It doesn’t matter a damn if all the patient’s objective physiological measures fall within ‘normal’ ranges. If they’re still experiencing symptoms, they’re still experiencing symptoms.

Further, a physician’s job, regardless of whether they’re a homeopath or a conventional doctor, is to make a diagnosis and treatment recommendation based on the individual in front of them. Clinical trial data might have some relevance in the final decision, but it’s a long long way from being the only piece in the jigsaw puzzle. And in the light of GSK’s Allen Roses stating a few years back that 90% of drugs only work in 30-50% of people who take them, then you could well argue that trial data should be substantially demoted in the evidence hierarchy in favour of case history and anecdote, since it’s case history and anecdote that’s providing that ultimate measure of efficacy.

Bear in mind too that the handful of clinical studies of homeopathy show a consistent 70% of individuals registering benefit from treatment. Let’s say regression to mean accounts for a whopping 50% of the homeopathic results and just 20% of the conventional results. That still makes the two therapies comparable in terms of efficacy. At a fraction of the cost of pharmaceutical drugs and with none of the side-effects, which option would you choose? Or would you still insist that homeopathy’s lack of explanatory rationale means it’s ‘impossible’?

Laughing old chum, what’s a bit sad here is not that you’ll believe in absolutely anything but that you’ll believe in absolutely anything except reality.

M old chap, what’s so sad here is that you can’t see the extent to which your reality is self-referential, contingent on the circular logic you employ to maintain its precepts and boundaries, or the extent to which apparent ‘consensus reality’ relies on selective perception. When you look around you for confirmation of where the boundaries of reality lie, you see only the reflection of your own boundaries. I do the same. We could carry on this argument for ever and never succeed in ‘proving’ anything to each other because we could always expose each other’s argument as self-referential and circular, and we could always do that because they are.

The fact that homeopathy and various other phenomena exist outside your boundaries and those of a lot of other people (though by no means the majority) means to you it can’t possibly exist. Yet thousands of other human beings are perfectly comfortable with it, gain a lot of benefit from using it, and demonstrate its replicability time and again. So in order to adhere to your version of reality, you have to rely on a combination of denying the evidence for different realities and judging all people who subscribe to them as either delusional idiots, liars or frauds. That’s not science. That’s prejudice.

Which is more real? Your ‘reality’ or mine? The answer is neither. Both are as real as each other. Both are predicated on self-referential thought systems which construct their own proof systems and both have their own narratives. Both are inhabited as if they are true and experienced as truth by those who inhabit them. The only difference between us appears to be that you mistake your personal reality for some objectively existing thing-in-itself which operates completely independently of your participation in it — which lends itself to the illusion that it can somehow trump my ‘reality’ — and I don’t.

Don’t mistake your personal vision of reality for anything more than the subjective, contingent and self-referential construct that it is. And don’t take my word for it either. Go study some philosophy. I’d recommend Kant.

OK it’s your blog, Lmso, but purely point-of-view soapboxes are a dime a dozen.
What if tomorrow, a six-pack of unsupported assumptions were to be found in science’s basement. It is then realized that all of the other schools of thought, from The Church to Quantum.alt, have already told science everything they know, yet not refuted any scientific ideas!
Skeptics are already aware of the panoply of alternative ideas (most of them are bastardized versions of existing or former scientific ideas), what is missing is support.
(Other than waiting on the platform for a paradigm-train that goes ‘woo-woo’?)

Whatever the case, Lmso, I think the multiple-worlds idea is irrelevant to this topic. I could agree that neither side can claim objectivity, but then argue that your thoughts and ideas concerning Homeopathy are certainly objective facts about you, as mine are of me.

It would be reasonable to object that an individual’s ideas may influence the way he observes the world, but the significance of this claim must be substantiated at each instance and not applied as a blanket ‘thought stopper’, when it takes on all the charm and erudition of the teenage refrain “You can’t tell me what to think”.
This is a down to earth matter. There is no need to argue if humans ‘really’ have two ‘hands’. I don’t need to consider monks and walls at the moment.

I don’t expect this will convince you at all, Laughing, because you fervently believe in unicorns and fairies, but for any interested bystanders…

This is called a coincidence and the only way this could be spooky is if it never happened. You know lots of people, you have a telephone. You think about people all the time, people ring you up all the time. But you never remember (why should you?) the many, many times when you think of somebody and they don’t ring you or the many, many times when someone rings whom you haven’t just thought of.

Laughing old chum, what’s a bit sad here is not that you’ll believe in absolutely anything but that you’ll believe in absolutely anything except reality.

Sorry, Am I really understanding you correctly? You are saying that a homeopathic improvement in health can happen before the pill is taken?

So, not only is homeopathy in denial of physcis, chemistry and biologu, but also in basic cause and effect? That events (such as taking a pill) can influence past events (getting better)?

I think we now clearly more than ever see that homeopaths are magical thinkers.

Have you actually read any of the discussions here Andy? There’s nothing remotely ‘magical’ about someone responding to a correlation established through consciousness. How many times have you been thinking of someone you haven’t heard from for a while and 5 minutes later the phone rings and it’s them? These correlations exist, whether you choose to dismiss them or not.

There’s nothing in homeopathy that’s a denial of physics, chemistry and biology either. It only appears that way because your model of each of these excludes the role of consciousness. Which is ludicrous anyhow, because without consciousness there would be no observer, no theory, no proof, no event. Failing to adequately account for our own role in what we observe, theorise about and act on is, IMO, science’s single greatest omission and it’s this that’s presently up for re-examination, homeopathy being just one of many systems that’s challenging the status quo.

It’s not homeopathy that’s in denial, it’s the very literally lifeless scientific world view.

So, not only is homeopathy in denial of physcis, chemistry and biologu, but also in basic cause and effect? That events (such as taking a pill) can influence past events (getting better)?

I think we now clearly more than ever see that homeopaths are magical thinkers.

LMSO, you haven’t answered my question. How likely do you think it is that a Tibetan Buddhist master (or anyone for that matter) could put their hands through solid objects?

If they can create reality by the manipulation of their consciousness then they can demonstrate putting their hands through a solid object. Probability does apply and I’d be quite happy to wager everything that I own against everything that you own that a demonstration would fail. Would you take this hypothetical bet?

Yes, provided that the person doing the demonstration knew what they were doing. There are very few people who can get past the illusion of solidity to do this (despite the fact that science has demonstrated that solid objects are mostly empty space).

I don’t. I don’t tend to think in such narrow minded terms, why ‘western science’ and ‘eastern thought’? This is pretty insulting to eastern scientists and western thinkers.

I think that the development of the scientific method is the greatest advancement in human history.

“Western science’ and ‘Eastern thought’ are broad generalisations referring more to traditions that the present distribution of each in the world. ‘Western science’ has crossed over to the east and ‘Eastern thought’ has crossed over to the west. No insult is implied to anyone involved in either.

How has eastern thought explored the nature and capabilities of our consciousness? What are the findings of these explorations? What are the ramifications for science?

I think those questions are a bit beyond the scope of this blog. I suggest you read the works of any of a number of physicists and other scientists and engineers who’ve explored the both and are presently attempting a synthesis of the two. The ramifications for science are immense. You could try Fritjoff Capra, Arthur M Young, Amit Goswami, or Fred Alan Wolf for starters.