My God, this is STUNNING. Everything begins to make some sense. Particularly in Sawyer’s books where she explicitly mentions some ot the reasoning that led her to chose a certain remedy. And Blackie’s. But frightening. Does it means all our minds are somehow linked or that some sort of “entanglement” occurs at a macro level in the doctor – patient relationship establishment? It’s enough to make a room full of the toughest Jesuits jump right out the window.

I have extensively surveyed pre 1920 literature. There is no doubt in my mind from the first hand accounts of the MD of that era that they were reporting factually and that the curative effects they reported did happen.
Laughingmysocks off you have offered at least the beginnings of the glimmer of an answer.

And the ones which are objectively (i.e. for everybody, controlling out their subjectivity) more congruent for certain circumstances are more “right”.

Are they? Or are they simply congruent with what’s common, rather than what’s individual? Just because we have characteristics in common and characteristics which are idiosyncratic, doesn’t make our shared characteristics ‘right’ and our idiosyncratic ones ‘wrong’. This is a wholly unsupportable judgement and one which, IMO at least, has led biomedicine right up its own backside. Taking that logic outside its usual parameters, you’re immediately judging any highly individualised expression — exceptional artistic ability, for instance — as ‘wrong’. The fact that we don’t do this shows the double standards operating. The double standards can only continue to operate provided we maintain an artificially rigid and fragmented approach to human knowledge, art vs science, etc. Many would argue this is precisely why we’re in the trouble we’re in today.

As David Bohm wrote (in Wholeness and the Implicate Order, 1980) in respect of our tendency to objectify the world into separately existing fragments:

The notion that all these fragments is separately existent is evidently an illusion, and this illusion cannot do other than lead to endless conflict and confusion. Indeed, the attempt to live according to the notion that the fragments are really separate is, in essence, what has led to the growing series of extremely urgent crises that is confronting us today. Thus, as is now well known, this way of life has brought about pollution, destruction of the balance of nature, over-population, world-wide economic and political disorder and the creation of an overall environment that is neither physically nor mentally healthy for most of the people who live in it. Individually there has developed a widespread feeling of helplessness and despair, in the face of what seems to be an overwhelming mass of disparate social forces, going beyond the control and even the comprehension of the human beings who are caught up in it.

What is congruent for any circumstance depends entirely on the nature of the circumstance. The experience of illness is every bit as individual and subjective as it is common and objective. To base your metaphor, diagnosis and treatment entirely on what is common to the majority of sufferers (controlling out their subjectivity) is to leave a large percentage of the relevant data out of consideration. Not only does this compromise the congruence of your operating metaphor, but in circumstances where the individual subjective nature of the illness has far more bearing on its nature and severity than any underlying common factors, then you’re leaving out the data on which the entire case hinges.

If I do a measurement such that everyone can see the same number on the display of the meter, then that’s an objective result.

That depends on the sense in which you’re using the word ‘objective’. If you mean not influenced by personal feelings and opinions (as opposed to consensus feelings and opinions), then yes, it’s objective. If you mean not dependent on the mind for existence, then no, it’s not objective, because human minds decided on the measure, the principles behind how and why the measurement is being made, and the design and manufacture of the instrument doing the measuring. And human minds are reading the results off the meter and feeding that into their interpretation of what the measurement is measuring. We cannot separate ourselves and our fundamental assumptions about the nature of existence from anything we participate in.

A metaphor can be applied to a situation in which it is no longer valid, such that at best there is no insight into the situation and at worst the metaphor is actually misleading. Those who understand what was behind the metaphor in the original situation, and therefore understand the limits of its applicability, need to point this out.

By its nature, a metaphor is an “as if” analogy. The circumstances in which it’s valid aren’t necessarily restricted to contexts in which it can be used quantitatively with precision. In contexts where there are far too many variables to attempt any kind of quantitative use, then its qualitative dimension comes into play. Those who understand what was behind the metaphor in the original situation and who are accustomed to using it quantitatively, precisely, and within a restricted and specific context may not always be best placed to appreciate its wider qualitative applicability. Although many do — it’s clear from the number of physicists writing on the subject that not all feel the same way about the limitations of the metaphor as you and Andy do.

But if you’re going to use it, either do it properly or admit you are just exploiting the spookiness and the general lack of understanding amongst your readership to write impressive-looking science fiction. Milgrom doesn’t seems to know or care about the difference between a state and an operator, or between the existence of a state and the occupation of it.

As far as I’m concerned, and from what I know of Lionel Milgrom, there is no intent to exploit, only to attempt to derive a theoretical framework which might explain the empirical observations. This is no more than scientific method. (I can’t speak for Milgrom’s maths — my fluency in that area amounts to little more than being able to ask for a cup of coffee and the way to the toilets.) It is not good science to attempt to dismiss observational data on the basis that it’s implausible according to the present state of theory, or that it doesn’t occur 100% of the time. Equivocal results and inconsistent replicability merely indicate inadequate understanding and/or control of the relevant variables.

‘Chance’ is just shorthand for ‘too many unquantified variables to predict’. Every toss of a coin has precise factors influencing what way up that coin eventually lands. If you measured them all and calculated their impact on the coin, accounting for the precise nature of the coin, there would be no ‘chance’.

Similarly, statistical analytical techniques are just a shortcut for examining in minute detail every single individual case within a given study cohort to determine what exactly in each of those cases were the primary determinant(s) of the results. Again there is a bias towards the common at the expense of the individual, and a tendency to regard the former as more ‘valid’. Statistical analyses have to make a lot of assumptions to do this with any success and only work if there is sufficient homogeneity between study subjects and sufficiently limited variables operating in the effect being measured.

Yet the situation we have now is one where people are attempting to argue that statistical approximations, ie. the shortcuts for doing the detailed individual assessments, are superior evidence to the individual assessments themselves!

I checked out the references you posted in response to my quantum mind speculations. Thanks for those. We could have a very interesting discussion about the underlying presumptions feeding into the conclusions in these papers, many of which are open to question, but perhaps not here. There is an enormous amount of debate on the subject, so it’s plain that not everyone (even within the boundaries of ‘conventional’ science) agrees with these conclusions. It seems to me it boils down to whether you believe consciousness to be an epiphenomenon of matter or matter to be an epiphenomenon of consciousness. Clearly (from these references) you lean more towards the former, while I’d have to say I favour the latter. Likely the truth is somewhere in between.

Because the results were just the same before quantum mechanics was invented, which was why quantum mechanics had to be invented to explain them.

Which came first? The chicken or the egg? The results were still being obtained by observers interacting with particles prior to the development of the explanatory metaphor. If the consciousness of the observer and the act of observation is necessary for wave function collapse to occur, then that’s going to be operating regardless of whether or not that individual is also performing calculations on what he’s observing. You could argue that the calculations are merely a self-referential ritual for increasing precision within the feedback loop.

So omega-completeness is irrelevant to anything which isn’t a formal and consistent mathematical system.

Or you could say that omega-completeness is not mathematically demonstrable outwith a formal and consistent mathematical system. However, this doesn’t imply that the metaphor is irrelevant in qualitative terms.

“Does homeopathy work?” is an objective question.

Is it? Once again, I think that depends on how you’re using the word ‘objective’. Ultimately, any real-world therapeutic intervention is a unique interaction between two individuals. In any of these interactions, there are a vast number of different variables operating and impinging on the progress of treatment. No two interventions are the same and all of them are highly subjective. First hand reports from participants in homeopathic interventions, both practitioners and patients, provide good evidence that homeopathy works. The statistical abstractions, based on approximations and blanket assumptions about all participants in any given study, say the evidence isn’t so clear. What does that say about ’scientific’ notions about congruence and coherence?

A clear case complete with proper clinical/chemical diagnosis and proper clinical/biochemical outcome is required for this one case which if successful would give homeopathy a boost if nothing else. But none are forthcoming.

Then you’ll need to make this request of medically qualified homeopaths. Non-medically qualified homeopaths in this country are not going to have the supporting evidence you require in their possession. This will be held by the patient’s GP or specialist.

Many homeopaths have performed double blind studies but the better ones show homeopathy no different from placebo.

I’ve said this many times, but continuing to repeat that mantra isn’t going to make it true. The trial data is equivocal. And what are frequently regarded as “better” trials are judged “better” because they conform more closely to biomedical criteria for quality — ie. they have high internal validity. Most of these don’t come anywhere close to representing homeopathy as it’s practiced, so are not an appropriate trial of the therapy.

As Peter Fisher writes:

The debate about plausibility is not new: the first comprehensive systematic review of homeopathy, published over 15 years ago, said that ‘Based on this evidence, we would be ready to accept that homoeopathy can be efficacious, if mechanism of action were more plausible’.2
A more recent review started from the premise that ‘specific effects of homoeopathic remedies seem implausible’.3 Of course this does not excuse the remarkable opacity of this review, which gave no hint of which studies it was based on and did not include a sensitivity analysis, among other failings. Still less does it excuse a recent commentary in The Lancet4 which opened with the statement that: ‘Five large meta-analyses of homoeopathy trials have been done. All have had the same result: after excluding methodologically inadequate trials and accounting for publication bias, homoeopathy produced no statistically significant benefit over placebo.’ In fact only one of the large meta-analyses of clinical trials of homeopathy included correction for both publication bias and trial quality, and it showed precisely the reverse: effects of homeopathy remained significantly greater than placebo when these, and other, corrections were applied singly or in combination.5 Remarkably, the commentator omitted even to cite this article, although it was published in the same journal.

Your conclusion that such studies are inappropriate only comes after the results. When shown that such studies can test your precise hypothesis you have retreated further and are now saying that the sugar pills are not the main part of the treatment.

The conclusion that trials are inappropriate comes after the results for the simple reason that nobody yet knows how homeopathy works! Trialling the remedies as distinct from the therapy as a whole shows that the full effect does not reside in the remedy alone, ergo we conduct different types of trials to try and elucidate the mechanisms at work. That’s hardly a ‘retreat’. That’s just the process of scientific investigation.

Your conclusions, on the other hand, appear to be based solely on the premise that homeopathy is impossible. That’s putting the theory above the empirical data. Not good science.

When homeopathy started it had one great advantage over the accepted theories of the day. It didn’t do anything!

That’s pure supposition on your part. Where’s your evidence for that?

Through proper application of scientific methods and research a wide variety of treatments are available for diesease states that were incurable only 50 years ago. Modern science has achieved these aims by attempting to find out exactly what is happening. It does this by experimentation and measuring the results against the current theory. It didn’t get there by woolly minded thinking, appeals to authority and antiquity or postmodernistic claptrap about metaphors.

Modern biomedical science ignores pretty much anything outside the physical realm and employs a narrow linear logic in developing its interventions with the result that the side effects of treatment can become more debilitating than the original condition. Thousands of people die annually, many unnecessarily, as a result of this logic and countless more have their quality of life severely reduced. Some of the worst of these interventions — cytotoxic chemotherapy for instance — have been shown to have only minor impact on outcomes.

People are voting with their feet in huge numbers. It seems they’d far rather take their chances with ‘unproven’ CAM therapies based on a friend or relative’s recommendation (ie. anecdotal evidence) than they would with the ‘authoritative’ results of clinical trials. Could that be anything to do with the fact that 20% of drugs have to be recalled after passing clinical trials? Or maybe it’s just the experience people have with drugs that have passed these trials failing to do what they’re supposed to? Or perhaps it’s the fact that their feelings about their illness are dismissed as irrelevant, or worse, they’re told to go home and stop wasting NHS resources because no organic cause has been found for their symptoms?

Don’t let your love affair with the theory blind you to what’s going on in the real world. Biomedicine has its limitations. Objectification has its limitations. And attempting to dismiss the fundamentally subjective and self-referential nature of all human theories as ‘postmodernist claptrap’ doesn’t change the fact that all our theories are ultimately subjective and self-referential.

After 200 years homeopathy has not provided a convincing clinical trial, any theory about homeopathic preparations which does not break at least one of the theories around which science is based or any provable internal logic on the basis of homeopathy.

What laws are being broken here? I don’t see any existing theories being invalidated by homeopathy. Only the need for our knowledge to be extended to take into account more subtle non-specific mechanisms we’ve largely ignored up to this point. Newtonian physics wasn’t invalidated by quantum mechanics. It was just shown to be a reasonable approximation within certain parameters. Why should it be any different for biomedicine? You don’t even need homeopathy to see that there’s an awful lot in the sickness and health arena that biomedicine fails to take into account. It’s blazingly obvious.

Because of that intrinsic subjectivity (subjectivity being unreliable), no metaphor is necessarily any more “right” than any other: there’s just varying degrees of congruence in various circumstances.

And the ones which are objectively (i.e. for everybody, controlling out their subjectivity) more congruent for certain circumstances are more “right”. If I do a measurement such that everyone can see the same number on the display of the meter, then that’s an objective result.

… how can a metaphor be ‘abused’?!

A metaphor can be applied to a situation in which it is no longer valid, such that at best there is no insight into the situation and at worst the metaphor is actually misleading. Those who understand what was behind the metaphor in the original situation, and therefore understand the limits of its applicability, need to point this out.

.. it still doesn’t prevent you using [quantum mechanics] qualitatively when a logical framework with similar properties appears to be the best metaphor for what you’re observing.

But if you’re going to use it, either do it properly or admit you are just exploiting the spookiness and the general lack of understanding amongst your readership to write impressive-looking science fiction. Milgrom doesn’t seems to know or care about the difference between a state and an operator, or between the existence of a state and the occupation of it.

As for my quantum mind speculations, of course they’re speculations!

http://link.aps.org/abstract/PRE/v61/p4194
http://arxiv.org/abs/0705.1232

But then the quantum mechanical wave functions required for your calculations exist only in your mind and imagination (I psi with my little eye …). No time loop, no story. No existence. And where does it all start? In your mind. So how can you prove that you defining those time evolving quantum mechanical wave functions to do your calculations hasn’t established a conscious correlation with the entities you’re studying which then … bingo! … do exactly as you’ve predicted they will?

Because the results were just the same before quantum mechanics was invented, which was why quantum mechanics had to be invented to explain them. There’s nothing special about conciousness in quantum mechanics. The Copenhagen interpretation has been superseded.

… Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorems… states that with respect to any given formal and consistent mathematical system…

So omega-completeness is irrelevant to anything which isn’t a formal and consistent mathematical system.

You’re the people who deny all validity to subjective experience.

“Does homeopathy work?” is an objective question.

A clear case complete with proper clinical/chemical diagnosis and proper clinical/biochemical outcome is required for this one case which if successful would give homeopathy a boost if nothing else. But none are forthcoming.

Many homeopaths have performed double blind studies but the better ones show homeopathy no different from placebo. Your conclusion that such studies are inappropriate only comes after the results. When shown that such studies can test your precise hypothesis you have retreated further and are now saying that the sugar pills are not the main part of the treatment. I presume you have written to Holland and Barratt and also Boots to tell them of this.

Milgrom’s appalling science as he tries to link particle physics to homeopathy is about the same standard as his papers on showing a physical difference between homeopathic preparations and the diluent. There is a difference between these two attempts, in the latter one he was supposed (and didn’t) know what he was doing. His misuse of mathematics in the former is just laughable.

When homeopathy started it had one great advantage over the accepted theories of the day. It didn’t do anything! This was preferable to blood letting and use of emetics and laxatives on ill patients. But since that time, homeopathy still does nothing. Through proper application of scientific methods and research a wide variety of treatments are available for diesease states that were incurable only 50 years ago. Modern science has achieved these aims by attempting to find out exactly what is happening. It does this by experimentation and measuring the results against the current theory. It didn’t get there by woolly minded thinking, appeals to authority and antiquity or postmodernistic claptrap about metaphors.

After 200 years homeopathy has not provided a convincing clinical trial, any theory about homeopathic preparations which does not break at least one of the theories around which science is based or any provable internal logic on the basis of homeopathy.

Which brings us round to that old chestnut (all together now):

Please provide an example of one, you only need one, incontrovertible example, with references, of homeopathy curing a non-self-limiting condition?

I think there’s been more than a few people posting on these blogs who’ve attested to that in their own individual cases. You (in the plural) still manage to suggest their conditions were somehow ’self-limiting’ or that ’spontaneous remission’ is not beyond the bounds of possibility.

No ‘cure’ is incontrovertible for the simple reason that every individual has a lot more going on in their lives than the medication they take for their problems, so it’s always conceivable that their improvement owes nothing to the treatment they received. That’s every bit as true for biomedical treatment as it is for homeopathic. But it’s interesting how the assumption is that improvements under biomedical treatment ‘must be’ a result of the treatment, while improvements under homeopathic treatment are ’spontaneous remission’, ‘natural cessation of non-self-limiting conditions’, etc, etc. There’s plenty of clinical observational data showing improvements under homeopathy for patients who’d experienced no relief at all through pharmaceutical interventions, yet that’s still dismissed as ‘no evidence’.

You see what you want to see M. The evidence is all there. There’s 200 years’ worth of published case history. It’s all there for the checking. Just go look up any of it. You can speculate to your heart’s content about possible alternative mechanisms for every one of these hundreds of cases, but when you take the cumulative case history of cured cases for any one remedy and look at the common threads running through them (which is the basis for homeopathy’s replicability and predicatability), then most rational people would conclude that there’s a good chance the treatment has something to do with it.

Which brings us round to that old chestnut (all together now):

Please provide an example of one, you only need one, incontrovertible example, with references, of homeopathy curing a non-self-limiting condition?