Ben Goldacre’s March 1st Bad Science piece for the Guardian, Don’t laugh, sugar pills are the future, in which he comments on the latest research to show that SSRIs are not much more effective than placebo in treating depression is, as usual, a bit thin on the ground with the actual science itself, even if his title might turn out to be remarkably prescient. And, wonder of wonders, I even agree wholeheartedly with a substantial amount of his earlier piece on February 27th, based on the same study, A quick fix would stop drug firms bending the truth. But far more interesting is the piece by Clive Cookson in the FT, Is there an ethical way to fine-tune the placebo effect?
In commenting on the recently-published meta-analysis of both published and unpublished trials of SSRIs led by Irving Kirsch at the University of Hull, which follows his more limited analysis of published studies in 2002, Cookson writes
Anti-depressants do not work, chorused newspaper headlines this week. The truth is quite different. The research in question showed that new-generation drugs, such as Prozac and Seroxat, relieve depression very well – but so do dummy pills.
This is the crucial point. Not, as Goldacre opines
It was fun to hear universal jubilation over the new meta-analysis showing once again that some antidepressants aren’t much cop in mild or moderate depression.
Cookson goes on to say
The study, led by Irving Kirsch at the University of Hull, is the latest testament to the power of the placebo. Analysing the drug companies’ own clinical trial data, the researchers found that four widely prescribed drugs improved patients’ score on the standard clinical test for depression by 9.6 points, while placebo pills gave a remarkable 7.8-point improvement.
As the researchers said in the journal PLoS Medicine: “The response to placebo in these trials was exceptionally large.” This set the bar for demonstrating efficacy so high that – except for severely depressed patients – the difference between treated and placebo groups did not reach a “statistically significant” level.
And continues
But researchers are only just beginning serious investigation of placebo power. “We do not really know what the mechanism is,” says Dr Derbyshire. “In fact, there may be lots of different mechanisms. For example, placebo painkillers somehow activate the brain’s endorphins [natural painkillers] while placebo aspirin activates a natural anti-inflammatory effect.“
Exactly. Now we’re getting a bit closer to the mark.
I’ve talked elsewhere about the non-local aspects of homeopathic treatment and the quantum mind-like effects observable and said
I’m saying the qualitative principles of quantum mechanics have the potential to model some of the observations which have been made in respect of homeopathy and many other of the more subtle, holistic therapies. Let’s get one thing straight right away. These effects are not specific to the therapy. They just become more apparent in the context of the therapy because of its level of subtlety and its holistic nature. They’ll be occurring just as much with conventional medicine too, but will be far less obvious to observers who are looking at things in a much more focused and linear way.
Here it would seem that evidence is starting to become clearer. And we need some new terms. ‘Placebo’ can’t be used to describe the specific effect of the patient’s expectation that the pill they’re taking will help them, at the same time as being a dustbin term for all non-specific effects of treatment. Personally I think it’s time the word placebo was restricted to its original sense and use: a dummy pill administered by a physician when he wants the patient to believe he’s taking the real McCoy. Using it in respect of intangible but verifiable effects of treatment is confusing the picture and leading to a derogatory attitude to these effects when we should be studying them free from such prejudice.
I’m going to suggest that there are 3 principle components in this effect: i) the effect due to the patient’s conscious expectations, ii) the effect due to the physician’s expectations transmitted to the patient through conscious entanglement, and iii) the effect due to conscious entanglement with the nature of the substance being prescribed.
The effect of patient expectation is clear and logical enough. Physician expectation also plays its part. In a February 2000 article in the Guardian on the rise of complementary medicine, Healing in Harmony, Jerome Burne wrote
Medicine is both an art and a science, but science has been firmly in the driving seat for 40 years. The arrival of CM practitioners may allow some of the more intangible aspects of the healing profession to re-emerge into the light, such as the power of the doctor’s own belief. “When I was starting out as a doctor, my professor told me about a new migraine drug,” recalls Marshall Marinker, professor of general practice at the University of London. “I prescribed it to a number of my patients, and it worked brilliantly. Many were completely cured. But then I began thinking about its mechanisms and how to design a trial, and it somehow stopped working so well. I never again got such good results as when I totally believed in it. I don’t think you can measure that sort of thing in clinical trials, but it is absolutely vital to the way medicine should work.”
The final effect, conscious entanglement with the nature of the substance being prescribed, is possibly going to be a harder stretch for some. Yet it seems the most plausible mechanism to explain how, as Derbyshire says above, “placebo painkillers somehow activate the brain’s endorphins while placebo aspirin activates a natural anti-inflammatory effect”.
And as it happens, this hypothesis also posits a rationale for homeopathy, explaining why effects should be observed when patient expectations aren’t relevant, and also why the wrong remedy has no effect.
So when Goldacre writes “Sugar pills are the future, if only there was a way to give them with integrity, and a straight face” he may very well find that the last laugh is, resoundingly, on him. There’s plenty of integrity and straight faces among homeopaths …
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March 4, 2008 at 2:53 pm
rainbow9
I would add that belief coupled with desire may be the ultimate clue to any healing.
We live in a world of contrast- when we see what we don’t want, out of that is born the desire of what we do want. Match that with the belief that what you take or do
(medication, homeopathic remedy, placebo, meditation, etc) causes the emotions of the person to improve from say…despair or frustration, to say…hopefulness.
The improved vibrational state of the person leads them towards their desire to be well, and over time, sometimes quite quickly, their health improves.
Homeopathy is “vibrational” or “energy” medicine, and I suspect that it has the ability to help improve a person’s vibration…and that once the emotions have shifted to a better feeling place, healing on a deep level can begin.
“There is only a stream of wellbeing which you are allowing or not”- Abraham-Hicks
March 5, 2008 at 6:17 pm
bewaiwai
I’m not so sure homeopathy is part of belief or “placebo” effect or that it is simply part of “allowing” emotional improvement. But I like the thinking that sees a process going on that is not simply a direct chemical change in the body or not a direct chemical change in the body.
It seems to me to be much more energetically intrinsic to the make up of the the body, the deeper make up. The elements of long lasting effect is not something that can be measured though with current science based techniques which measure primarily cause and effect. Time. Interesting, that someone with some significant clinical experience can appreciate that.
If you are attempting to get a handle on homeopathy via science and direct response it won’t work and perhaps the placebo concept will help. But homeopathy is far more than placebo.
March 5, 2008 at 8:52 pm
givescienceachance
— It it seems the most plausible mechanism to explain how, as Derbyshire says above, “placebo painkillers somehow activate the brain’s endorphins while placebo aspirin activates a natural anti-inflammatory effect”. —
The problem is that there is no explanation of the mechanism of how this actually happens. Perhaps the placebo effect can be explained by homeopathy rather than the other way around?
March 5, 2008 at 10:19 pm
le canard noir
“But homeopathy is far more than placebo.”
We await the evidence for this statement with much anticipation.
March 6, 2008 at 12:17 am
bewaiwai
Andy, canard master: the fact that you appear to spend MOST of your waking hours attempting (unsuccessfully) to debunk it proves that its is far more than placebo. Why would you spend so much time on this except that it has some awesome power for you. You are even afraid to take a homeopathic remedy.
March 6, 2008 at 9:53 am
Andy Lewis
Scary sugar pills!!!
March 6, 2008 at 11:46 am
auquai
A new quackbusting blog, associated with Telegraph journalist Damian Thomson, counterknowledge.com
Thompson et al have already defamed Frontline Homeopathy as ‘dangerous and lethal’ for treating a pneumonia in Senegal – ignoring the followup of the patient’s recovery.
March 6, 2008 at 1:54 pm
bewaiwai
Yes, Andy I can see that fear motivates you- gotta hand it to dem sugar pills.
Damian Tomson et al- Well, now four per cent of all hospitals beds in the UK devoted to the misadventures of conventional medicine and lets find one homeopath in Senegal to denigrate….
March 6, 2008 at 3:57 pm
rainbow9
I went and read the article by Damian Thompson:
The elderly gentleman in question arrived with the symptoms of acute pneumonia, diagnosed by journalist Damian as viral pneumonia (which will NOT respond to anti-biotics I may add ), and after receiving two homeopathic remedies, this nearly dead gentleman left to go meet up with his buddies!! The relieved homeopath told him to return in a few hours to be checked up on by her.
So what is the problem! None! Another wonderful story of homeopathy’s amazing ability to cure.
March 7, 2008 at 12:08 am
cauliflower
homeopathy works in ways that you scientists don’t yet understand. I have seen many of my patients recover from a diverse array of ailments. Not one has not recovered. Let me be clear, over my 12 year career as an integrated health care professional, many states that conventional treatment cannot cure – like depression – I have treated, successfully. Why don’t you try it
good blog laughing, just googled it tonight!
christen.
March 7, 2008 at 8:13 pm
laughingmysocksoff
Andy, dear duck, open your little black eyes and look around you! It’s all hiding in plain sight. The only thing that stops you seeing it is your preconceptions about the nature of life, disease, what constitutes an ‘effective’ healing intervention and the rationalisations you use to pull the whole thing together.
First you have to define what you mean by ‘placebo’.
Are you restricting your definition to the much derided effect arising solely from the patient’s expectation that the pill they’re taking will make them better? This is what most people seem to mean by ‘placebo’ and if so, homeopathy is definitely far more than placebo. Most of the reasons why have been given exhaustively (and exhaustingly) in other posts here and elsewhere.
If, on the other hand, you’re including all the other various barely-recognised-let- alone-understood non-specific aspects of treatment in that catch-all term, then you may have a point — Hahnemann proclaimed right from the start that homeopathy’s mechanism of action was through ‘immaterial substance’ — but you’re using the term wrongly to describe these effects and reacting to them in a totally inappropriate way. These are not some kind of ‘non-effect’! They’re extraordinarily powerful and when harnessed efficiently (which they’re generally not in DBRCTs) have potential that, as early studies appear to be indicating, might well be superior to conventional pharmaceutical interventions.
When you also take into account the absence of toxic chemical side-effects, the minimal environmental impact and extremely low cost of production of homeopathic remedies, then there’s very good reason to be exploring the potential of this therapy much more extensively.
Don’t laugh, sugar pills are the future.
March 7, 2008 at 8:39 pm
laughingmysocksoff
Why should that be a problem? You don’t need to know how or why something works to make use of the fact that it does. Nobody knows how or why gravity happens, but it doesn’t stop us observing it and using it to an extraordinary degree of precision.
These are mechanisms that have been used in healing since time aboriginal. The explanations of how they work are all out there, formulated in any number of different ways depending on the culture they’re found in, none of which, unfortunately, are acceptable to a determinedly materialist ’scientific’ perspective. Though of course that doesn’t mean they’re ‘wrong’ or that they don’t exist.
Personally I think a scientifically acceptable formulation will be found in the research being done on quantum entanglement effects in consciousness — ‘quantum mind’ type theories. It’s not there yet, but it looks like the most promising area of exploration.
Perhaps. Though ‘placebo effect’ is going to need a thorough redefinition first. The pointy white hats have got to go too.
March 7, 2008 at 9:36 pm
givescienceachance
— Though ‘placebo effect’ is going to need a thorough redefinition first. The pointy white hats have got to go too. —
It already has a thorough redefinition … within homeopathy, where there is a much more precise recognition of the range of actions in response to treatment than in orthodox medicine.
I think that one day the people in pointy white hats will find that they have also been given wrap-around jackets and padded walls, since they insist on refusing homeopathic medical treatment for their condition. Some people really would rather die than have homeopathy.
March 7, 2008 at 9:47 pm
givescienceachance
— Why should that be a problem? —
Because those who believe that homeopathy is inexplicable and claim that it is an example of the unexplained placebo effect are simply demonstrating a prejudice for one inexplicability over another, rather than a scientific approach to the facts.
I find it extra-ordinary that some people can claim to be scientific and yet confuse “evidence” with “science”. That they then constrain the definition of evidence to such an extent that it becomes scientifically valueless makes the whole thing even more absurd. But then a “canard” is a false rumour after all, and whether it lays claim to representing the world in ‘noir et blanc’ or ‘rose’, it should be exposed as unreal.
March 7, 2008 at 10:08 pm
le canard noir
Well, laughing, if you are genuinely interested in the placebo effect, then I can recommend the book Placebo by Dylan Evans. Easy read. And pulls together the latest research and thinking on the subject.
For most people, when they talk about the placebo effect, it means the broad range of reported effects due to treatment with an inert intervention. This ’soft’ placebo can be broken down into:
- normal improvement in health
– disease gets better anyway (short term illnesses)
– regression to the mean (chronic illnesses)
- psychological reinterpretation of severity of illness – ’someone is looking after me’.
- wrong attribution – people credit the intervention they would like to have been the cause.
- desire to please therapist – under reporting symptoms to them.
- selective reporting/cognitive biases.
and so on.
There may well be ‘hard’ placebo effects to where a belief can genuinely alter physiological states such as temperature, swelling, pain response etc. The evidence for this is not as strong as we might think, although most would agree that it exists to one extent or another.
Homeopathy can be best explained by the placebo. This is supported by the nature of complaints most treated and advertised by homeopaths – chronic, low grade illnesses where the above effects play most strongest. Few homeopaths claim to be able to treat conditions where the effects could have no role – cancer, serious viral illness etc.
One of the biggest criticisms of homeopaths is they act as if the above phenomena do not exist. Do you not doubt that illness can get better on its own? That chronic illness can be cyclical? That people may feel better, rather than be better? If so, why the hostility to proper blinded, randomised trials?
Also, although placebo might well be dramatic at times, the above analysis would obviously suggest it is not a panacea. You cannot invoke placebo to sure all manner of illnesses. Surely, it then behoves homeopaths to act within the constraints of this knowledge?
March 7, 2008 at 10:10 pm
givescienceachance
Actually, le canard noir is more than a false rumour. Petit Robert defines un canard as:
A false piece of news released to the press in order to mislead the public.
At least the quackometer is truthful about one thing.
March 7, 2008 at 10:20 pm
le canard noir
givescienceachance – I make serious and sincere points and you respond with a cheap attack. Homeopaths’ refusal to engage with sincere criticism will be their undoing. Every time you do this, you loose just one more little bit of credibility.
March 8, 2008 at 9:16 pm
Barney
I would be interested to know how you define, or ensure, an ‘inert intervention’?
March 9, 2008 at 1:28 pm
laughingmysocksoff
Evans’ view is a very restricted idea of the sum total of non-specific effects active in treatment. And if you think
I suggest you check out a dictionary.
Errr … no. If you want to pontificate on what homeopaths treat and how it can best be explained, you actually need to study the therapy in use, not draw inaccurate conclusions based on what you imagine is going on. Homeopathy is not adequately explained by the placebo effect according to your definition of it. Few homeopaths in the UK claim to treat serious conditions because the law in this country forbids us to do so. I suggest you study the use of homeopathy in India. You’ll find plenty of cases in the homeopathic hospitals and clinics there of successful treatment of serious conditions, including cancer and serious viral illness.
Where’s your evidence in support of the statement that homeopaths act as if these phenomena don’t exist? Looks like a case of ‘let’s make it up as we go along’ to me. Of course illnesses get better on their own! Of course chronic conditions are cyclical! Leaving aside non-medically qualified homeopaths for a minute, do you honestly think that large numbers of qualified medical doctors, having studied conventional medicine, then homeopathy, and left conventional treatment behind because they find homeopathy a superior modality, don’t know when they’re seeing an effective clinical intervention?!! As Sir John Weir said back in 1940 “I suppose not one of us has approached homeopathy otherwise than with doubt and mistrust; but facts have been too much for us.”
As for more recent trends, Reilly states “Hospital doctor referrals to the GHH [Glasgow Homeopathic Hospital] Integrative care unit have grown from 5% in 1990 to 20% in 2005. The rise in referral rate from GPs, and in the numbers trained in the UK reflects the positive attitude which many doctors now have towards this treatment. Practitioners are rating the treatment as useable and useful in NHS practice with around 80% reporting continued integration of homeopathy in their NHS general practice 2 years after attending basic training.”
When you give a treatment and you see an immediate and sustained improvement which doesn’t fit the pattern of the normal progression of the illness or its cycle of remission, and you can repeat this consistently based on clear theoretical guidelines, then you are working with an effective intervention. If this were a conventional pharmaceutical intervention, you would have no problem whatsoever accepting this as evidence of its efficacy. However, since it’s homeopathy you assume it can’t possibly be an effective intervention because you think homeopathy is impossible, so therefore it’s a ’spontaneous remission’ or somesuch. How unscientific is that!
What an utterly extraordinary statement!! Let me get this right. You think that the current ’scientific’ consensus in its woeful inadequacy at explaining vast numbers of phenomena associated with life processes should somehow constrain what people do to explore the possibilities of healing with other modalities? When those other modalities have demonstrated their efficacy time and time again? When people of their own free will chose to explore these possibilities for their own healthcare? And when this same ’scientific’ consensus is responsible for the premature and unnecessary deaths of thousands of people every year as a direct result of its normal use in practice? In such circumstances I think it behoves any concerned clinician to “first, do no harm” and second, to use therapies that have repeatedly shown themselves to be effective in situations where it matters — in clinical practice.
How do you know you can’t invoke non-specific effects to cure all manner of illnesses? Studies and explorations in this area have only just begun and it’s freely admitted that knowledge is sketchy at best. How would you even begin to invoke those effects successfully if you don’t even know what they are? Of course you could always go study homeopathy …
Honestly Andy, you don’t do yourself any favours coming out with such statements. Who do you think you are? The Thought Police? It’s abundantly plain you’re not a clinician. If you were, you’d know full well that all your nice ’scientific’ theories have a tendency to spring leaks all over the place when you’re attempting to help real people suffering from real illnesses. It’s those very leaks that lead a lot of GPs and other frontline healthcare professionals to study, then practise, homeopathy.
March 9, 2008 at 2:00 pm
laughingmysocksoff
This comes across as a bit disingenuous, Andy, given some of your writings on the subject. You’re hardly going to attract the sort of attention that leads to your ISP pulling the plug on your site if your points are merely serious and sincere, and if you choose a double entendre for a handle then surely pointing that out hardly constitutes an ‘attack’?
That aside, I do know there’s seriousness and sincerity in your points. Personally I think that the sceptical camp have made some very good points in amongst all the invective that our fledgling profession needs to pay serious heed to. Expressing them the way you do though pretty much guarantees that nobody’s going to engage with you, and those who express themselves similarly, when you make them, so you are just as much responsible for creating the lack of engagement as any homeopath. Nobody’s going to talk seriously with anyone screaming at them that they’re nothing but liars, cheats and morons.
I know you haven’t done that here, but hey! we’re homeopaths. We take the totality of expression into account …
The other point worth making about serious and sincere engagement is that it involves a bit of give and take. One of the things that characterises the sceptical dialogue is the complete refusal to acknowledge the validity of any perspective other than the fundamentalist interpretation of what might loosely be termed the ’scientific’ world view. I’ve gone into great length elsewhere to show that most thought systems construct their own proof through the circularity of their logic and the scientific world view is no exception.
Something that’s not amenable to proof within your own circular logic is simply not amenable to proof within that system. However, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist or that it’s not provable within a system of higher order.
March 9, 2008 at 6:31 pm
le canard noir
Big Response. let’s try to deal with some stuff…
Barney – an inert intervention, without getting too quibbley, is something like a sugar pill where you would expect no medical effect from the pill itself.
socks – Have you read Evans book? What specific elements do you think he leaves out? And as for me checking out a dictionary, what would be your definition and understanding of a placebo and how would it differ from mine. Please be as specific as you can.
You ask me “Where’s your evidence in support of the statement that homeopaths act as if these phenomena [placebo etc] don’t exist?”
Quite simply that homeopaths appear to take their own personal experience and the anecdotes of others as sufficient proof of the efficacy of their actions. If you were sincere in recognising your own capacity to be fooled by the placebo effect, natural remission etc, then you would be much more cautious in your claims. But homeopaths act as if they cannot be fooled. That the strength of their own conviction is sufficient. Your Indian example is just the same. How do you know that Indian homeopaths are successful at treating cancer? Where is the data as apposed to the bragging?
You ask me to accept that when you see an improvement that does not fit your preconceptions of what should happen then that is proof enough. Well, we will have to disagree. This whole discussion is about the placebo effect. By its very nature, quick and sudden improvements might well be reported. How can you tell the difference? Do you have special insight as to when the placebo effect should not work and how strong a response you should get?
You then launch into a bout of wishful thinking asking again to believing in the “possibilities of healing with other modalities”. This is begging the question because it presumes their are other modalities. I doubt that homeopathy is another modality so you cannot use this as a presumption in trying to convince a sceptic. Give some data as to the effectiveness of what you say and all will be well.
How do I know you can’t invoke non-specific effects to cure all manner of illnesses? Well, I don’t. But such a thing would be extraordinary and so one would be wise to ask for some evidence before trusting your life in such matters.
You then sort of accuse me of calling homeopaths “liars, cheats and morons” but admit that, actually. I have not done so. Have I ever? I believe homeopaths are simply deluded that’s all. Well meaning, but deluded. It can happen to us all, that is why you need to think critically. I have accused some homeopaths of specifically misrepresenting the truth and have always given clear evidence fo this – such as the Society of Homeopaths assertions about their role in dealing with rogue homeopaths.
And as for my problems with my ISP, do you really want to defend Joseph Obi? This guy was mostly ripping off alternative health practitioners. You ought to be giving me a medal for services to CAM rather than attacking my sincere questions.
You then say ” take. One of the things that characterises the sceptical dialogue is the complete refusal to acknowledge the validity of any perspective other that the fundamentalist interpretation of what might loosely be termed the ’scientific’ world view”.
This is all well and dandy philosophising, but I am not using anything too complication or too ’scientific’. All I am doing is simply asking for some unequivocal data to suggest what you do is not the placebo effect. What is wrong with that? What ‘higher order’ are you appealing too? Please be specific about this as I think this is just a red herring.
March 10, 2008 at 12:45 am
laughingmysocksoff
I’ve not read the book, but I’ve read the reviews, Evans’ own distillation of its main hypothesis, and other articles he’s written based on the ideas in the book. As I said, his view is a very restricted idea of the sum total of non-specific effects active in treatment. I find his thinking too linear and his reasoning at times painfully circular.
But if you’re using Evans’ work to support your assertion that homeopathy is no more than placebo, think again. His predictions about what conditions are and aren’t amenable to placebo response by pegging ‘placebo’ to Acute Phase Response don’t come anywhere close to matching response data from homeopathic cases. His central tenet that all placebo response is due to the patient’s belief in the efficacy of the treatment they’re being given is blown out of the window where babies and animals are concerned (and where deeply sceptical individuals have also produced positive responses). This argument has been gone over again and again Andy. The observations don’t fit the theory. The observations don’t fit the theory. The observations don’t fit the theory. The observations don’t fit the … how many more times?
Evans tells us that depression is something that’s going to respond well to placebo, so let’s look at the Bristol study and see what happened. 201 patients, outcome scores -3 0%, -2 0%, -1 1%, 0 23%, +1 18%, +2 34%, +3 19%, unscorable 4%, affected by other factors (including other treatments) 1%. 71% of patients reporting some improvement. Possibly what you might expect if you think homeopathy is placebo as per Evans’ definition. So far, a good fit.
Asthma is not included in Evans’ list of conditions likely to respond to placebo (even if APR symptoms may be evident), so you would expect results here to be weighted more to the no effect or negative if your hypothesis holds true. Bristol study results for asthma in under 16 year olds: 195 patients, outcome scores -3 0%, -2 0%, -1 2%, 0 6%, +1 14%, +2 26%, +3 49%, unscorable 3%, affected by other factors (including other treatments) 0%. 89% of patients reporting improvement, with a massive 49% in the much better category. Not such a good fit, but natural remission may be a factor (though noting that 30-80% of natural remissions relapse).
Evans tells us cancer will absolutely not respond to placebo, so if homeopathy is just placebo then there clearly should be no positive response of note. The Bristol study monitored 301 cancer patients, so a larger sample than the 2 conditions already mentioned. Outcome scores -3 1%, -2 1%, -1 8%, 0 15%, +1 20%, +2 27%, +3 26%, unscorable 2%, affected by other factors (including other treatments) 0%. 73% of patients reporting some improvement. This doesn’t fit at all.
Paradoxically, the condition which you would expect to score highest if homeopathy is placebo actually scored the lowest.
Andy we can hardly be ‘fooled’ by the placebo effect when the placebo effect is part and parcel of the treatment. It’s one of a range of non-specific effects we’re invoking, but by no means the only one. Your conclusion is overstated. Homeopaths (leastways, not the ones I know and work with) don’t act as if they can’t be fooled. You seem to forget that most of us have come to homeopathy sceptical of its claims, many of us from a conventional medical background, and have put them rigorously to the test before satisfying ourselves that they were robust enough. To then take the step of investing considerable time, effort and personal expense in studying such an implausible therapy, with little in prospect apart from job satisfaction, you have to be pretty damn sure it’s really doing something!
The emphasis on case history is as much a product of sceptical misinformation that there’s no evidence in support of the therapy as it is of anything, but it’s also the case that with a highly individualised therapy such as this, case history has to be the primary clinical evidence base. The therapy relies on far too many detailed data points for these to be assembled by any other means. Provings elicit a range of symptoms which can be used as prescribing guidelines, but until those exact symptoms have been clinically cured by that remedy, then they remain unconfirmed. Homeopaths use a grading system which produces confidence ratings according to the number of clinical verifications recorded for every symptom in every remedy.
So yes, the data is in individual case histories, supported in many cases by objective parameters. Most homeopaths in India are too busy helping people to devote time and scarce resources to conducting studies to satisfy a handful of sceptics on another continent, but they do document their cases. No therapy persists and gains in popularity unless it’s effective. Cured cases, particularly cured cases when conventional medicine has failed, are the therapy’s best advocates and are why it continues to grow. If you want to question the existence of such individuals and dismiss documentation of their cures as ‘bragging’, well of course you’re perfectly free to do so, but this doesn’t elevate your opinion to fact. As I’ve said before, an argument that relies on dismissing others as liars, cheats, frauds and morons in order to support its conclusions is on very shaky ground.
If the placebo effect relies on the belief of the patient that what they’re receiving will help them recover, then there are far too many instances of immediate and powerful response where that belief simply isn’t there. You can keep trying to shoehorn homeopathy into your placebo theory as long as you like Andy, but like I keep saying, the observations don’t fit the theory. The observations don’t fit the theory. The observations don’t fit the … and that’s essential for this to be good science.
LOL!! No less a bout of wishful thinking than your own in imagining that the scientific world view is the be all and end all of everything. The hubris of this perspective is quite extraordinary. Of course there are other modalities. What on earth do you think the human race used for medicine in the 10,000+ years before the advent of ’scientific’ medicine?! And if you think that Traditional Chinese Medicine works on the same principles as Western medicine, think again. Any form of medicine is nothing but a historical variable in any human community. Biomedicine is no different.
Would it really be extraordinary? From an anthropological and historical perspective you could argue that this method of treatment is the norm rather than the exception. But by all means ask for evidence. And it’s entirely up to you to be the judge of what sort of evidence you find convincing. As it is for any other individual going through their own process.
I can see how you come to that conclusion, but since your view of homeopaths is so often of your own construction and bears little relation to the genuine article, it begs the question are you really just looking in the mirror when you say that?
Oh come on now Andy! You’d be hard pressed to extract any notion of defending Obi from my comments about your ISP problems. I said “You’re hardly going to attract the sort of attention that leads to your ISP pulling the plug on your site if your points are merely serious and sincere.” We all need to take responsibility for how we communicate and what sort of responses we attract as a result. The fact that there’s seriousness and sincerity in your comments doesn’t mean that’s all there is. And it’s the other stuff that tends to make the dialogue a little … shall we say … tricky.
This is a frustrating medium at times though. It seems to amplify issues out of all proportion to how they’d come across in person and I’m betting that if we sat down in the same room to talk about this the dialogue would be completely different and probably a lot more enjoyable. Yet it has its uses. Particularly when it comes to catching sight of our own projections.
Well the thing is that the philosophy is utterly crucial here because it’s the foundation on which the entire edifice is built. Everything above that level is purely circular logic. However, if you’re defining ‘placebo effect’ as the effect due to the patient’s belief in the therapy, then go check out Christopher Day’s work. Animals, particularly farm animals, are not going to be going in for the belief thing.
This is the whole area that needs to be teased out and explored. In a sense, you and other sceptics are in the right ballpark in saying that homeopathy is placebo in that its effects are predominantly non-material in origin — which, after all, the therapy has said right from the start. But you’re totally incorrect in imagining that all this effect amounts to is the patient’s belief. Think about it. Impasses like this usually end up resolving when it’s recognised that both sides are correct in some ways, but not in others.
The ‘higher order’ I’m appealing to is a theoretical system capable of encompassing both the biomedical model and the homeopathic without conflict or contradiction. It’s what’s needed to resolve this, in my not so humble opinion.
March 10, 2008 at 2:43 am
Humber
Lmso,
The very existence of the placebo effect shows how tenuous is the link between perceived health (or illness) and reality, yet you seem to think that you can determine its presence and level. Nice claim.
Beware the self-assessment trap.
http://www.apa.org/journals/features/psp7761121.pdf
The placebo effect is complex and fickle. It is not restricted to medical trails alone, though for health, it may have some specific attributes.
Unlike the other senses, taste and smell are connected to the hypothalamus, a primitive area of the brain. Taste and smell can invoke powerful memories and feelings, uniquely in fact. They just happen, whether you like it or not.
You go to a party, and have a good time. Why should that happen? Why shouldn’t a placebo have an effect ? On what rational basis should one accept one but not the other?
I posit that visceral (and most conscious) experience is one placebo effect or another. Can you refute that?
There is an explanation for the effect upon children. Naive vitalism.
“One of the key issues in conceptual development research concerns what kinds of causal devices young children use to understand the biological world. We review evidence that children predict and interpret biological phenomena, especially human bodily processes, on the basis of ‘vitalistic causality’. That is, they assume that vital power or life force taken from food and water makes humans active, prevents them from being taken ill, and enables them to grow.These relationships are also extended readily to other animals and even to plants. Recent experimental results show that a majority of preschoolers tend to choose vitalistic explanations as most plausible. Vitalism, together with other forms of intermediate causality, constitute unique causal devices for naive biology as a core domain of thought.”
Another;
Vitalism is the belief that internal bodily organs have agency and that they transmit or exchange a vital force or energy. Three experiments investigated the use of vitalistic explanations for biological phenomena by 5- and 10-year-old English-speaking children and adults, focusing on 2 components: the notion that bodily organs have intentions and the notion that some life force or energy is transmitted. The original Japanese finding of vitalistic thinking was replicated in Experiment 1 with English-speaking 5-year-olds. Experiment 2 indicated that the more active component of vitalism for these children is a belief in the transfer of energy during biological processes, and Experiment 3 suggested an additional, albeit lesser, role for organ intentionality. A belief in vital energy may serve a causal placeholder function within a naive theory of biology until a more precisely formulated mechanism is known.
As for instant response, do you not think that a GP’s patients do not perk up at the mere prospectof good health, or when he or she reaches for the prescription pad?
Animals can’t speak, but vets do. Too contentious to matter.
The Bristol report has been done before, Lmso. Anecdotal, no follow up, no biopsies, no control…..
As far as LCN’s site goes, I was not aware of how much quackery there was until I stumbled upon the Quackometer. I don’t see that Andy’s language is disproportionate with the crimes that he uncovers.
I also agree that the level of philosophy, logic or proof required of homeopathy is no more than you use when you check your bank statements against income and expenditure.
March 10, 2008 at 11:40 am
lecanardnoir
socks – so you have not read Evans book and yet you dismiss it as ‘circular reasoning’ and ‘restricted’. I asked you to be specific and you have given a broad brush answer. Can you back up your views specifically?
As for animals and babies – the answer is easy. I think you are failing to separate out the issues clearly. A hard placebo response due to the patients beliefs is only one way we can be fooled by a medicine’s effectiveness. I have detailed the other ways above and I said that homeopaths ignore them. You have demonstrated again that you ignore them. Babies and animals are still susceptible to regression to the mean, false attribution, wishful thinking on behalf of the owner/parent and so on. And their may well be a placebo effect with animals and babies. Which distressed babies and animals do you know that are not comforted by a the kindness and attention of their owners/parents?
I am well aware of the homeopathic vet Christopher Day and his work. I have one of his books in front of me and, yes, I have read it. In it, he recommends that cats suffering from burns or scalds should be given Cantharis 30c and Urtica 6c. If your cat is has been shot, then he recommends Arnica 30c. My feeling is that the RSPCA should prosecute him.
Next you bring up the Bristol Homeopathic Study. This study is famous for failing to take into account all the effects I have been mentioning. If failed to find any sort of baseline to which it could compare its results. We do not know what would have happened to these patients if they did not take homeopathy and so any comparison is meaningless. For cancer, it failed to take into account the fact that almost all were undergoing conventional treatment, it failed to take into account those that had died or were too ill to respond. It failed to take into account those that did not respond because they were disillusioned or in some other way unhappy enough with the Bristol clinic not to respond. That 30% of the people who responded, despite all of this, were still unhappy with their experiences should cause massive alarm bells. The paper has been described as no more than a customer satisfaction survey and homeopaths who continue to use it as evidence of the effectiveness of homeopathic treatment look like being intellectually dishonest. Its an advertising press release, not science.
Although, could this be an example of the ‘alternative modalities’ and ‘higher order systems of belief’? Well to me, it just looks like sloppy thinking. I hope we can all aspire to better. 8What is this ‘higher order’ you speak of? Can you give one specific example of a way of looking at evidence or the world that would add to the scientific method constructively , give new insights, and allow the integration of homeopathy with reality-based medicine?
March 16, 2008 at 3:30 pm
givescienceachance
Misleading the public said: Its an advertising press release, not science.
Well, in the absence of any science on which he can base his opinions, that comes a bit rich.
For example, he can offer no scientific explanation of how the placebo effect works – sorry, his so-called “hard” placebo effect, to be distinguished from all the other effects that people like him have lumped in with it.
Nor can he can offer a scientific analysis to demonstrate after the event that a case has resolved as a result of “regression to the mean” or “natural history of the disease” or “wishful thinking” or “false attribution” as opposed to being a result of treatment, which is the absolute minimum for a test of a scientific explanation. As for being able to predict such a result, the true test of a scientific theory, forget it! That is not even remotely on the agenda.
What could be an explanation in the absence of a theory does not invalidate an explanation based on a theory. Quite the reverse, a consistent theoretical analysis of evidence represents a significant advance on explanations of the “it might be” sort. As such, homeopathy is a real advance on anything he has to offer.
Finally, to call the statistical interpretation of evidence based on an unacknowledged, undefined and unproven theoretical approach “reality-based” is bizarre.
March 18, 2008 at 2:29 pm
laughingmysocksoff
Humber, Andy … apologies for the delay in getting back to you. Been out of town for a week.
Yes indeed. It’s very clear how each of you are reasoning and superficially your arguments seem pretty sensible. Yes regressions to the mean can be a factor, false attribution is possible, wishful thinking is possible, etc, etc, but these postulated explanations simply don’t fit a huge number of cases treated by homeopathy, particularly those with several years of follow up and progression in severe chronic conditions. As I keep on saying … and on … and on … the observations don’t fit the theory.
This is really the point at which theoretical speculation has to give way to proper observation. If you’re not involving yourselves in clinical situations where you can test out your theories in actuality, then you remain within the realms of your imaginations. It may all look very plausible from this perspective but it just doesn’t hold water in the clinic.
I’ve quoted Sir John Weir before, but he summed it up pretty well in 1940 when he said “I suppose not one of us has approached homeopathy otherwise than with doubt and mistrust; but facts have been too much for us.”
And Humber, babies a couple of months old are unlikely to have any concept of biology, vitalist or otherwise. Regression to the mean, false attribution or wishful thinking doesn’t adequately explain instant cessation of serious acute illness with poor prognosis immediately following administration of the correct, and only the correct remedy (as previously established in case history and consistently replicable). You’ve just got to see this happen. Only when you can link your theories to individual and detailed observations in the clinic can you argue from a standpoint of scientific validity. Until that point it’s no more than idle speculation.
March 19, 2008 at 12:29 pm
Andy Lewis
laughingmysocksoff – there is nothing speculative about saying that homeopathy cannot work given what we know about how matter is constructed. It is rock solid science. You say you want to do proper observation but constantly fall into various thinking traps. The human mind is excellent at remembering successes; not so good at remembering our failures. Coupled with problems like regression to the mean and so on, gives a perfectly reasonable explanation as to why people believe homeopathy works: regression to the mean shows patient improvement; this is falsely attributed to the action of the homeopatjic pill; failures are not given so much weight as successes; the desire to believe is strong with much phsychological investment placed in believing – and there you have it. All you need to know about homeopathy.
This is not idle speculation, but the only plausible explanation for the effects you describe. To show thatthis explanation was wrong, you woul dhave to remove all the biases that we all live with – trials. Despite the string claims made for homeopathy, whatever trials there are always appear to be scraping around in the statistical noise.
March 19, 2008 at 11:11 pm
givescienceachance
So perhaps Andy Lewis could explain why Dr J.T. Kent was able to specifically identify 12 (yes twelve) different reactions to a homeopathic remedy, relating those reactions to the state of health of the patient (including degrees of pathological change) and providing prognoses based on these reactions.
It is still possible to use his analysis to identify pathology in a patient by observation of the patient’s reaction to a homeopathic remedy, and to have this confirmed by physical investigations. That is evidence of a scientific approach to medicine which cuts through all the nonsense of “if”s and “maybe”s thrown around by those desperate to deny homeopathy.
Patients do not simply exhibit a reduction in symptoms after homeopathic treatment, and to continue to pretend that that is the only reaction is to refuse to consider facts in favour of holding onto a belief. The actual reactions are much more complicated, even more so nowadays than in Kent’s day, since modern drug treatments generate much more complex distortions of the body’s natural processes than before.
Your “plausible explanation” is relevant only to your imaginary problem; it is utterly irrelevant and implausible as an explanation of real events. Furthermore it has no scientific theory to support it, and no means of being properly tested – and that includes DBRCTs. A good scientific analysis accepts the biases in the real world and explains the reasons for them and their implications. It can also predict consequences. When you do not have the theoretical tools to clearly distinguish between the effect of a treatment and any other process of change in a patient, you have no basis for standing in judgement over those who can – you have no science.
What you do have is idle and noisy speculation.
March 20, 2008 at 5:54 pm
Andy Lewis
We stand in two different worlds. How would you objectively determine who was right? How could you convince me that homeopathy is not a delusion? What would it take for a homeopath to reconsider their position?
These are scientific questions. I can answer them the first. I know what would change my mind. Can you answer the second?
March 21, 2008 at 12:25 am
givescienceachance
We certainly do stand in two different worlds if you consider these to be scientific questions. Even more so if you think you have asked two questions when you have actually asked three.
No-one can be right until they have a perfect understanding of the world about us. Science involves shifts to better paradigms, but we are a long way from perfection of our knowledge. One of us may have a better explanation, but to know who does, we have to be able to compare scientific theories and their ability to explain and predict in the field of health and illness.
I have no idea how to convince you that homeopathy is not a delusion as this opinion of yours is founded on a belief, not a scientific explanation capable of being tested.
Homeopaths would reconsider their position, I am sure, if they were presented with a better scientific theory of medicine. Indeed if they were presented with ANY other scientific theory of medicine there would at least be a basis for reasonable debate.
What it comes back to all the time is the fact that you will not provide the scientific foundations for your opinions, and yet you continually maintain that your opinions are based on such a foundation. Until you provide the scientific theory which forms this foundation, there is no evidence that you stand in the real world which we inhabit, but only the suspicion that your views are simply idle speculation.
March 21, 2008 at 2:49 pm
Andy Lewis
I am sorry givescienceachance, but I can only say that you are being absurd. I have a feeling that you really do not understand science. The thrust of my argument here is that homeopaths ignore basic scientific precautions in evaluating their effectiveness. They do no take into account regression to the mean, selection bias and placebo effects. These ideas are base in logic and well understood psychology. The fact that ‘real’ placebo effects may well be poorly understood does not invalidate this position. It is the homeopaths who refuse to base their beliefs on any sort of science. ‘Like cures like’? What is the physiological basis for this general principle? There is none. The ‘Law of Minimum Dose’? Again, what material and biological basis is this ‘Law’ based on? What experimental evidence is there for this? Absolutely none. It flies in the face of not just science but common sense.
A scientific view would say homeopathy is nonsense – you cannot dilute to the levels homeopaths say they do an expect a material effect. In order to posit an effect, you have to reach out to non-scientific and pseudoscientific concepts – miasms, ‘energy’, ‘water memory’.
You could easily convince me I am wrong by being able to do any blinded experiment that could tell 30C dilutions apart. I have made this clear on the ‘challenge to homeopaths’ on my web site. I do not believe you are giving science a chance because you cannot adopt the scientific standpoint of saying what would change your mind.
March 21, 2008 at 11:29 pm
givescienceachance
— The thrust of my argument here is that homeopaths ignore basic scientific precautions in evaluating their effectiveness. They do no take into account regression to the mean, selection bias and placebo effects.
But they do. You need more than a cursory knowledge of homeopathy to understand this, though.
— The fact that ‘real’ placebo effects may well be poorly understood does not invalidate this position.
The fact that the mechanism of homeopathy is poorly understood does not invalidate it either.
— ‘Like cures like’? What is the physiological basis for this general principle? There is none.
This principle was derived from clinical evidence, and is supported by the physiological fact of homeostasis.
— The ‘Law of Minimum Dose’? Again, what material and biological basis is this ‘Law’ based on? What experimental evidence is there for this? Absolutely none.
All medication, orthodox or homeopathic, is based on using the minimum necessary, because it is obvious to any medical practitioner that anything more than that is at best a waste, and at worst harmful.
— A scientific view would say homeopathy is nonsense – you cannot dilute to the levels homeopaths say they do an expect a material effect.
But that is an assumption and is unproven. In fact there is evidence that it is incorrect, abundant evidence as a result of the work not only of homeopaths but of non-homeoapaths too.
— In order to posit an effect, you have to reach out to non-scientific and pseudoscientific concepts – miasms, ‘energy’, ‘water memory’.
No, you only have to accept that science is more than chemistry.
— You could easily convince me I am wrong by being able to do any blinded experiment that could tell 30C dilutions apart.
This has been done repeatedly. At the same time blinded experiments were developed not because of a growth in the scientific understanding of orthodox medicine, but because of the absence of such an understanding. They are not capable of producing conclusions other than in the context of a theoretical framework.
Which brings us back to the central problem: in all the comments you have made, you have still failed to supply the scientific theory underpinning orthodox medicine and your opinions. You cannot seriously justify attacking a theory when you can not offer any other to replace it. I have said what would probably change a homeopath’s mind, so why don’t you provide it?
March 22, 2008 at 11:05 am
Andy Lewis
-The fact that the mechanism of homeopathy is poorly understood does not invalidate it either.
The difference is that there is evidence of a placebo effect. There is so little for homeopathy.
- you cannot dilute to the levels homeopaths say they do an expect a material effect. – But that is an assumption and is unproven.
No it is not an assumption. It is a solid conclusion based on rock solid material science. There is no unequivocal evidence to dispute this.
-No, you only have to accept that science is more than chemistry.
What will you add? Miasms and Life Forces?
— You could easily convince me I am wrong by being able to do any blinded experiment that could tell 30C dilutions apart. – This has been done repeatedly.
References please. Rao et al is not one of them. So stupid an experiment that it hurts.
Why should I supply a theory explaining medicine. Medicine is mutli faceted and draws on much physics, chemisty and biology that is all very well understood. It is not complete, but that is the nature of science. Progression in understanding.
Meanwhile homeopathy, remains stuck in discredited 19th Century superstition.
And I am still not clear what would change you mind. Could you spell it out in two or three sentences? Describe the experiment or data that would cast doubt on your beliefs?
March 23, 2008 at 11:41 am
givescienceachance
— Why should I supply a theory explaining medicine
Because without a theory there is no science.
No theory of medicine = no science of medicine.
No science of medicine = no basis for criticising theories of medicine.
No science of medicine means that your opinions are beliefs only.
No science of medicine means no framework for interpreting evidence.
There is no such thing as evidence in the abstract, it can only be understood in a theoretical framework.
When you talk about evidence and fail to define the theoretical framework you are using, it is impossible to evaluate your opinions scientifically.
Let me make it easy for you.
For a start, just define the placebo effect scientifically, that is, in such a way as the results, causative factors and processes can be identified and understood.
March 24, 2008 at 7:15 pm
Andy Lewis
givescienceachance – your failure to compregend medical science is probably due to you trying to shoehorn the way homeopathic ‘theory’ works and then insist that medicine follows suit. Homeopathy tries to create a unifying theory of all things medical with its “similia similibus curentur” waffle. Medical science has no overarching simple medical principle like this beacuse it recognises that life does not work according to simplistic maxims.
Medical science draws on very many areas of science that are well understood. e.g. a small snapshot – radiotherapy uses the theories of fundamental particle interaction with matter, antibiotic resistance – evolutionary theory, drug and protein modelling – quantum mechanics. At its root though, all medical science depends on a biochemical understanding of life and not a world view based on mysticism, magic or mumbo jumbo.
Placebo, and the understanding of their effects, draws mainly on the science of psychology – expectancy effects, conditioning and motivational effects. There may even be effects best understood through direct biochemical brain interactions. But you appear to miss the main point about placebos and why drugs are tested against placebo. Maybe the role pacebo is minimal or non-existent. Drugs are tested against a possible placebo effect – it does not mean one is present.
So, what is the scientific framework that supports the interpretation of homepathy? Come on. Can you answer that?
March 25, 2008 at 3:46 pm
givescienceachance
So we come to the terribly post-modern position of there being no grand narratives for medicine, and hence no science:
— Medical science has no overarching simple medical principle like this beacuse it recognises that life does not work according to simplistic maxims.
But then it is followed by a weaselly statement that:
— At its root though, all medical science depends on a biochemical understanding of life.
So there is a grand narrative, but it has not been worked out yet, which explains:
— Placebo, and the understanding of their effects, draws mainly on the science of psychology – expectancy effects, conditioning and motivational effects. There may even be effects best understood through direct biochemical brain interactions.
Basically this means that there is no theoretical explanation of placebo effect, or even that:
— Maybe the role pacebo [plays?] is minimal or non-existent.
SO:
There is no scientific theory for medicine, because life is too complex
There is a scientific theoretical approach based on a biochemical model
Placebo may be psychological (psychology being a science!), which may be biochemical.
Placebo may not even exist.
And you say that I do not understand medical science? If it is like this nobody could possibly understand it. I think you scepticism is misplaced and should be applied to anyone who suggests that this view of medicine is scientific.
March 28, 2008 at 10:02 pm
laughingmysocksoff
GSAC thanks for your contributions! You’ve made points very similar to the ones I’ve tried to get across in digging down to the philosophical foundations of all thought systems. There comes a point when you have to examine your foundational assumptions. For as long as you take those to be a given, all you’re doing is indulging yourself in circular logic. That proves nothing other than that circular logic is circular logic.
Apologies for being absent again — too much work on at the moment to spend much time on blogs, but I’ll dip in as I can.
Andy wrote:
ROFLMAO!! Ah … no. What’s “rock solid science” is that homeopathy can’t work by any material means. But … d’oh … homeopathy has never claimed to work by any material means. Hahnemann’s writings are abundantly clear on the subject and eschew all material interventions in favour of working with what he terms the ‘wesen‘ of both the patient, the disease and the remedy.
And since we’re dabbling in German here, there’s a nice differentiation in the language between different kinds of knowledge that we simply don’t have in English. ‘Wissen‘ is the kind of intellectual knowledge you gain from study. ‘Kennen‘ is knowledge gained through participative experience. Andy you’re pitting your ‘wissen‘ up against both the ‘wissen‘ and ‘kennen‘ of homeopaths. As I said before, unless you get yourself into a clinic to test out your theories in practice, this discussion really has nowhere further to go. Science has to be grounded in empiricism. That’s its foundation.
March 28, 2008 at 10:40 pm
givescienceachance
— As I said before, unless you get yourself into a clinic to test out your theories in practice, this discussion really has nowhere further to go. Science has to be grounded in empiricism. That’s its foundation.
LMSO, I beg to disagree. Science is the fusion of rationalism and empiricism, the attempt to harness different approaches to achieve a single end. The problem is that drug research fails to unite them: RCTs are an attempt to acquire scientifically valid results without acknowledging a theory; whilst the biochemic model includes a number of theoretical premises untested in practice.
It is the separation of the gathering of evidence from the framework of a theory which leads to the total confusion seen in Andy’s last post. The so-called ’sceptics’ claim that science supports their position, but they are unable to produce that science. Basically it has been replaced by a belief system which is incapable of adapting to take account of the facts. As with any such orthodoxy of belief, challenges are met not with reasoned arguments but with hysterical outbursts.
By contrast homeopathy has always united rationalism and empiricism in the first true science of medicine, created (hardly surprisingly) at the birth of the industrial revolution.
March 29, 2008 at 10:50 am
Andy Lewis
It looks like we might be getting to the bottom of this. laughingmysocksoff appears to suggest that homeopathy depends on non material causes. This might be disputed by many homeopaths, but I am happy to accept that laughingmysocksoff believes in a non-material basis for homeopathy. But what it does depend on is not made clear – is it supernatural miasms and life-forces? If so, you have lost the argument that homeopathy has any claim to science.
givescienceachance is obviously irritated by this as it denies what has been argued. Is homeopathy science? Despite questioning, givescienceachance has not been able to state what science homeopathy is based on. And yet appears to deny that medicine has any scientific underpinning. A bizarre reversal of reality. Should we stop teaching biology and chemistry in schools and start teaching life-forces instead. Forward into the Middle Ages for our classrooms?
givescienceachance also misrepresents RCTs. Of course they do not make assumptions about mechanisms. That is not their purpose. They are there solely to establish a degree of confidence as to whether there is a real effect worth investigating and understanding. I have made it quite clear on my blog that RCTs are not a good tool for homeopathy as they can never supply the confidence required to overcome the complete implausibility of homeopathy. The fact that the sum totallity of evidence from RCTs is pathetic is just the final nail for homeopathy – we do not need RCTs to know it is nonsense. When homeopaths start coming up with plausible and rational mechanisms for why we should consider homeopathy a better discussion can be had. But it looks like homeopaths cannot even agree as to whether it is should have a supernatural or natural philosophy.
March 29, 2008 at 7:10 pm
homeopathy4health
what would be wrong with teaching life-forces? Einstein equated energy with matter.
March 29, 2008 at 8:54 pm
givescienceachance
Andy says:
— givescienceachance also misrepresents RCTs. Of course they do not make assumptions about mechanisms. That is not their purpose.
I fail to see how Andy’s statement is itself anything other than a total misrepresentation, since what I actually said was:
— RCTs are an attempt to acquire scientifically valid results without acknowledging a theory.
He goes on to say:
—They [RCTs] are there solely to establish a degree of confidence as to whether there is a real effect worth investigating and understanding.
This implies that it is possible for evidence to have an absolute validity in its own right, whereas it is in fact always seen through a theoretical perspective. Lack of clarity about the nature of this perspective invalidates the interpretation of the evidence by removing it from the context which gives it meaning. In the case of RCTs, failure to make clear the scientific principles which govern (a) what is being investigated and (b) what measures are being used to evaluate the outcome means that the results do not constitute “real effects” but beliefs. In short, the absence of a theory of medicine invalidates RCTs as a scientific test.
If orthodox medicine is scientific, it must have a theory of health and disease which can both explain and predict. If it has this, then Andy should be able to state it. He has yet to do this, and so he has yet to demonstrate that his views are scientifically founded rather than simply beliefs. Furthermore, until he has done this his attacks on homeopathy are not scientific but “idle speculation”.
As for the term “non-material”, THAT needs clarification before we can be certain that what Andy means by it is what he alleges LMSO means by it. For example, is magnetism non-material or material, and if it is non-material is it natural or supernatural?
March 29, 2008 at 9:53 pm
Andy Lewis
givescienceachance – RCTs depend on the deep and sophisticated scientific technique called ‘counting’. You count how many people got better with treatment and count how many people got better in a control group. What “theoretical perspective” of medicine do you want to look at this through? Facts can be established before a theoretical understanding of them is established. Did the fact that the Sun rises every day exist before the heliocentric model was established? Galileo established the fact of the equivalence principle before Newton and Einstein shed their light on this. The fact of atomic genetic inheritance was established before an understanding of DNA was establisjed. You make the same mistake of misunderstanding scientific theory as creationists.
March 29, 2008 at 10:06 pm
Andy Lewis
As for a general ‘theory of medicine’ – it is only quack medicine that seeks to obtain such a thing. You are creating a straw man. Only quackery seeks to explain illness through single unifying causes.
Osteopaths/Chiropractors have their ’subluxions’ as their medical theory of everything. Acupuncturists have their Chi and Meridians as their theory of everything. Nutritionists see illness as deficits in nutrients or surfeits of ‘toxins’. Homeopaths use syphilitic miasms or whatever. Its all pseudscientific ballony. No evidence for any of these things exists.
Medical science does not see illness as having a single cause, but multiple interacting causes. Your demand to seek one is a straw man. Scientific medicine does though require all explanations of illness to be based on a scientific footing, whether that be drawn from biochemistry, psychology, physiology and require treatments to be plausible according to established principles of science. Homeopathy cannot claim entitlement here.
And yes, this is a ‘material’ view of the world and that includes the known ways in which matter interacts according to the standard model – through the fundamental forces of electromagnetism, gravity, and the two nuclear forces. Life forces do not fit into this picture. There is no evidence for them. No need to invoke them to explain anything and so belong squarely in the realm of wrong pre-scientific ideas. Only people like homeopaths cling desperately to them against the evidence.
March 30, 2008 at 12:04 am
givescienceachance
Andy, you say:
— You count how many people got better with treatment and count how many people got better in a control group.
So how do you know they got better if you do not have a scientific basis for establishing what is better and what is worse, that is, a theory of health and disease?
As for facts, before Dalton nobody knew that there were whole number relationships between elements in a compound. Yet the very experiments which prove this were conducted not only after Dalton’s discovery but before it too – regularly. All that changed was the way the results were viewed. The facts were invisible because the wrong theoretical perspective was being used. It is the same for the sun rising. Before the heliocentric theory of the solar system the sun rose, but after it the Earth turned. Common sense was shown to be nonsense.
— As for a general ‘theory of medicine’ – it is only quack medicine that seeks to obtain such a thing.
I am afraid you are wrong. All medicine seeks such a theory as a matter of necessity. Take the following statements from a mid-nineteenth century orthodox medical work, as it is quoted in an orthodox medical work published in 1990: “The Newton of medicine has not yet appeared, and unfortunately we may fear … that we shall never see the genius who will convey that to medicine which physics found in algebra and which chemistry found in a pair of scales. Medicine is still what those sciences were a hundred years ago, a collection of unconnected theses.”
— Only quackery seeks to explain illness through single unifying causes.
What is that supposed to mean? How is it relevant to homeopathy? In homeopathy the causes of illness are many and varied, but the principle governing the relationship between cause and effect can be applied consistently. The same cannot be said for orthodox medicine.
You continue to use the terms “scientific ” and “pseudoscientific”, but these are meaningless without the proof of a science of medicine to justify your views.
Finally, can you prove that “the fundamental forces of electromagnetism, gravity, and the two nuclear forces” have no bearing on nature of living organisms? The evidence is that they do, so any model of such organisms needs to incorporate these forces. The biochemic model does not, whereas the homeopathic theory does. As a result homeopathy is as far ahead of orthodox medicine as Copernicus was ahead of Ptolemy.
March 30, 2008 at 12:28 am
Andy Lewis
In what way are fact invisible before a theory unites facts? My feeling is you are being obscurantist.
Let’s just cut to the chase and call your bluff. What does homeopathy have to say about the weak nuclear force? Precisely, how is homeopathy ahead in this regard? Please answer this and be specific.
Once you have answered this, perhaps you could tell me just one thing that homeopathy has added to our understanding of human life? In what way has your ‘complete homeopathic theory of medicine’ added to human knowledge? Where is the homeopathic birth control pill, anaesthetic, antibiotic? How does homeopathy add to our understanding of evolution, genetics and the diversity of life? Where are the homeopathic heart transplants, hip replacements? Where is homeopathic support for premature babies? Where is homeopathy in understanding genetic disorders, trauma and emergency medicine? What diagnostic techniques has it given us? Where is the homeopathic CAT scan, the ultrasound, the electron microscope? Can you name one are where homeopathy routinely saves lives where scientific medicine cannot? In short, where is this miraculous homeopathic science?
March 30, 2008 at 9:11 am
ez
To ANDY Lewis – do you see homeopathy as SCIENCE or as MEDICINE? You think that homeopathy is trying to add something to our understanding of the world or to cure sick people? Why do you try to put everything into the same pile?
March 30, 2008 at 9:20 am
ez
ANDY LEWIS writes: “Facts can be established before a theoretical understanding of them is established.”
Exactly, if you go to a clinic of a good homeopath, you can see many facts of people getting better. You will never see them published, though, as homeopaths are often forbidden by law to treat serious conditions, do you want them to disregard this, break the law and be all put in prison, as it happens sometimes in the States?
Now – after you have checked that there are FACTS of people getting objectively better, it’s up to those who have some spare time and money to indulge in pure research to try to provide theoretical understanding for these FACTS. Most homeopaths are busy treating people, so you cannot count on them to do this.
March 30, 2008 at 1:08 pm
givescienceachance
Are you always like this, Andy? Here you are yet again demanding answers and then alleging that someone who points out your errors is “obsrurantist”. All you have been asked to do is provide an answer to what should be a very simple question: If orthodox medicine is scientific, what is the scientific theory it is based on?
Getting hysterical suggests that you do not have an answer, and that this is challenging the foundations of your belief in medicine as a science.
Let me try making it easy for you again. Obviously defining the placebo effect was too difficult – even though you happily claim that homeopathy is based on that.
You seem very fond of referring to diseases and demanding which ones homeopathy can cure. Perhaps you can provide the scientific theory which underpins the definition of diseases? That must be easy, since diseases are the basic starting point for orthodox medicine.
March 30, 2008 at 1:20 pm
givescienceachance
By the way, as regards your comment:
— In what way are fact invisible before a theory unites facts? My feeling is you are being obscurantist.
If you did not understand the examples, please just say so. Otherwise they are self-explanatory, since they are both cases of the significance of “facts” being unrealised until an appropriate theoretical perspective came into existence.
It is interesting to note that in Ptolemy’s day there existed both a theory that the Earth went round the sun and the knowledge that the Earth was round. So why was it so difficult to establish Copernicus’s heliocentric system? Could it be the same reason as lies behind the refusal to accept the facts of alternative medicine, namely vested interests?
March 30, 2008 at 3:02 pm
Andy Lewis
The question is based on false premises – which I have made abundantly clear. It is begging the question. For the confused – scientific medicine draws on many areas of science and does not seek a single overarching theory.
Now, can you answer my question? Basically, what is scientific about homeopathy?
When the ‘facts’ of alternative medicine emerge, then minds will change.
March 30, 2008 at 3:04 pm
Andy Lewis
And if I am peering through your homeopathic rhetoric correctly, are you denying the existing of viral/bacterial based illnesses? Of medical microbiology in general?
March 30, 2008 at 3:11 pm
Andy Lewis
ez asked: “To ANDY Lewis – do you see homeopathy as SCIENCE or as MEDICINE?”
Neither. It it is pseudoscience and quackery. Homeopaths appear to want it to be both a SCIENCE and MEDICINE. Although, it does depend on who you talk to because there is much confusion out there.
March 30, 2008 at 7:55 pm
givescienceachance
— there is much confusion out there
Too right, Andy! Part of this confusion come from the fact that people like yourself cannot answer the simplest questions about the science of orthodox medicine, and yet continually assert that it is scientific.
For example, I asked if “you can provide the scientific theory which underpins the definition of diseases? That must be easy, since diseases are the basic starting point for orthodox medicine.” Instead of an answer I get a lot of nonsense about “homeopathic rhetoric”. Are you saying that there is no need for a theoretical analysis of diseases for medicine to be scientific? What kind of science are we talking about where nothing appears to have any theoretical foundations?
You assert that homeopathy works by the placebo effect, and yet you cannot explain this effect. You deny the need for an overarching theory, though orthodox practitioners recognise the need for one. You reject the theoretical analysis of homeopathy on the grounds that you consider it unscientific, yet you offer nothing but excuses and evasions and demands that I defend homeopathy. ‘From what?’ I ask. What is the scientific argument I am supposed to defend it from?
I am gradually being forced to the conclusion that you are profoundly ignorant of medicine, and that this is the reason you are incapable of answering any requests for concrete explanations. If this is so, how on earth do you justify your attacks on homeopathy? How can you attack one approach to medicine if you are ignorant of all approaches? Ultimately your attacks would have to be founded on prejudice and belief, not on science.
Please don’t get me wrong, everyone is entitled to have religious beliefs, whether faith in a god or gods whose existence is unprovable, or faith in an idea of a science the existence of which is unprovable. However, I do not accept that anyone has the right to force others to abide by their beliefs by removing their access to alternative views. That is totalitarianism.
March 30, 2008 at 10:09 pm
Andy Lewis
let’s ge tone thing straight. I do not believe ‘homeopathy works by the placeno effect’ and have never said such a thing, I have said that homeopathy is a placebo, but that is entirely different. There is a real difference between a placebo and the placebo effect. Whether a placebo therapy works or not is a an entirely different matter. For my part, I believe most homeopathic beliefs about effectiveness are due to false attribution. People get better. Homeopathy claims benefit. A reversal of cause and effect.
I have not evade your questions about the sceintific underpinnings of medicine. I have given clear answers. I have yet to see a homeopath on this thread answer anything.
Let’s give a ‘for instance’. Influenza is caused by a virus. If infected with a virus that your imune system has not seen before, it can multiple very quickly and cause illness. Do you doubt this?
March 31, 2008 at 1:27 pm
givescienceachance
Do you link to the same website for some other reason than agreeing with it? The following occurred earlier in this thread:
le canard noir Says:
March 7, 2008 at 10:08 pm
… Homeopathy can be best explained by the placebo.
But to take on your other explanation:
— For my part, I believe most homeopathic beliefs about effectiveness are due to false attribution.
This argument is fine *IF* you can distinguish between results due to medical intervention and results due to an unaided healing process. If you cannot, then it is purely hypothetical and certainly not scientific. Perhaps you could explain the scientific basis for distinguishing between these processes?
— I have given clear answers.
Like the following?
— Influenza is caused by a virus. If infected with a virus that your imune system has not seen before, it can multiple very quickly and cause illness.
You start by asserting that influenza is caused by a virus. Then you say that influenza is dependent on the state of the person’s immune system. By my count that is two causative factors, both of which are necessary, but neither of which is sufficient for influenza.
March 31, 2008 at 8:09 pm
Andy Lewis
But I also say quite clearly:
For most people, when they talk about the placebo effect, it means the broad range of reported effects due to treatment with an inert intervention. This ’soft’ placebo can be broken down into:
- normal improvement in health
- disease gets better anyway (short term illnesses)
- regression to the mean (chronic illnesses)
- psychological reinterpretation of severity of illness – ’someone is looking after me’.
- wrong attribution – people credit the intervention they would like to have been the cause.
- desire to please therapist – under reporting symptoms to them.
- selective reporting/cognitive biases.
Now, are you ever going to aswer a direct question or not?
March 31, 2008 at 10:10 pm
givescienceachance
So we are going to go round in circles, are we?
In your comment before last you stated: “I do not believe ‘homeopathy works by the placeno [sic] effect’ and have never said such a thing.”
Now you admit to saying: “Homeopathy can be best explained by the placebo.”
You then restate what you say “most people” think the placebo effect is, having said that: “For my part, I believe most homeopathic beliefs about effectiveness are due to false attribution. People get better. Homeopathy claims benefit.”
Clearly you include yourself among “most people”. However, among medical researchers the expression ‘placebo effect’ is normally used to refer to what you call “‘hard’ placebo effects … where a belief can genuinely alter physiological states such as temperature, swelling, pain response etc.”
Where is the clarity in this? Where is the clarity in anything you have posted here? The only clear conclusion a reasonable person can draw from this is that you keep changing your story to fit the moment. That is not a scientific approach, but sophistry. I ask you: “are you ever going to aswer a direct question or not?” I think not. I think you know that there is no scientific support for your beliefs, and you will just keep ducking and diving in an attempt to sustain the illusion that you know what you are talking about.
You are a fraud and a quack, and it has been a pleasure to expose you as such.
April 1, 2008 at 9:53 am
Ohreally
On the Misfortunes of Andy Lewis
If you follow on behind Le Canard Noir
You get a feeling of ‘je ne sais quoi’,
For the route you find he’s taken
Is so utterly mistaken
There’s no choice but to call out “Au revoir!”
Still you wonder if perhaps he just forgot
That in science statistics aren’t the lot;
That no matter if it’s dreary
You have to have a theory
So what you know explains what you do not.
But then perhaps it’s knowledge that he lacks
Since his arguments are always full of cracks,
And the increase in his rage
Is not difficult to guage
If you simply read the meter of his quacks.
The publishing of nonsense is not new:
In pamphlets, magazines and weblogs too
The glorious old tradition
Of ignoring erudition
Will support whatever money wants it to.
April 1, 2008 at 7:47 pm
Andy Lewis
And you contunue to attack the person and not the argument. Fail to answer any questions and just blutser through.
To repeat: what science is homeopathy based on? Have you an answer?
April 1, 2008 at 9:56 pm
givescienceachance
I did not continue to attack the person. I continued to describe the person as the person revealed himself to be. What would you call someone who states two opposite things to be true and expects to be believed both times?
The only thing you are consistent about is describing your own behaviour and attributing it to homeopaths. Such as blustering through.
As for the science homeopathy is based on, there is homeostasis for a start. Will you now produce a single scientific principle in support of your own opinions? I doubt it.
April 3, 2008 at 12:05 pm
openmind
Homesostasis? Really? Are you sure? Would you care to explain?
Whew, I bet this is going to be good, I’m looking forward to hearing some real science for a change, the stuff that GSAC thinks is science. Not the stuff that scientists call science.
April 3, 2008 at 3:24 pm
Andy Lewis
Yeh, I am q
April 3, 2008 at 3:25 pm
Andy Lewis
Yeh, I am quite interested too. Homesostasis? Can you explain to us what this has to do with homeopathy? How it gets around the ‘zero molecules’ might be a good place to start.
April 3, 2008 at 6:30 pm
openmind
GSAC could be onto something here because if you think about it logically then there must be some connection. Homeostasis. Homeopathy. See? That’s no coincidence.
April 4, 2008 at 3:12 pm
givescienceachance
Openminded:
“Not the stuff that scientists call science.” Do you mean all that stuff Andy has been unable to provide when asked?
“Homeostasis” Etymologically of course there is a connection. Historically the principles were identified before homeopathy and form part of the explanation of homeopathy, but the word itself was not coined until later.
I am not convinced that either you or Andy Lewis know what homeostasis is, so rather than get into an argument about it, why don’t you explain what it is and we can go on from there. Since Andy believes in science in medicine, he should be able to cope with this bit of science even if he failed with diseases, placebo and counting to 3.
April 4, 2008 at 8:43 pm
openmind
Look, let’s be adult about this. Let’s assume we’ve all read the wiki entry on homeostasis and have agreed that this provides a reasonable explanation. You have made the claim that homeostasis is the science that homeopathy is based on. The onus is on you to explain how. I’m sure Andy and I will manage to keep up.
April 5, 2008 at 8:35 am
ez
Well, if we are discussing things with people who derive their knowledge from wikipedia articles…
April 5, 2008 at 9:25 am
Andy Lewis
OK. Let’s be specific. What biological mechanisms allow homeopathic treatments to enable homeostatsis in humans?
April 5, 2008 at 3:19 pm
givescienceachance
Andy: “What biological mechanisms allow homeopathic treatments to enable homeostatsis in humans?”
I beg your pardon, what is that supposed to mean? Are you really saying that homeostasis has to be enabled in human beings as opposed to being a fundamental aspect of their nature as living organisms?
I really think you do need to explain what you understand homestasis to mean before we can get anywhere.
April 5, 2008 at 8:00 pm
openmind
What I said was:
I think it provides an excellent summary. If you or GSAC don’t agree and have your own special definition of what homeostasis is then let’s hear it.
GSAC made a claim that homeostasis is the science that homeopathy is based on. The onus is on him/her to explain how. Answering Andy Lewis’s question “What biological mechanisms allow homeopathic treatments to enable homeostatsis in humans?” would be a good start.
April 5, 2008 at 8:14 pm
Andy Lewis
So far all we have is a word. I am merely asking in what way you think it has anything to do with homeopathy. If you need a definition then I will kick off with “the ability of a living system to maintain and regulate stable values for biological system parameters”.
Please feel free to disagree and say what you mean by your chosen word. An example would be for mammals to regulate body temperature or blood glucose.
As far as I can see, homeostasis is not a ‘universal law’ but a property of some biological feedback systems. The methods of homeostasis vary between the parameters being regulated.
I think then it is quite fair to ask how homeopathic pills can have any general influence on biological homeostasis. I am sure you have worked this though, yes?
April 5, 2008 at 10:07 pm
givescienceachance
I have multiple problems with the meaning of “the ability of a living system to maintain and regulate stable values for biological system parameters”.
1. In what way is homeostasis an ability, that is, an optional function?
2. If it is an ability, what determines whether and when the ability is used?
3. What is the difference between “maintain” and “regulate”?
4. What is meant by “stable values”?
5. What is meant by the phrase “regulate stable values”?
6. If the values are stable, why do they need regulating?
7. What is meant by the value for a parameter?
8. What exactly are “biological system parameters”?
You really have a problem with clarity, don’t you?
April 6, 2008 at 8:22 am
Andy Lewis
You bought up homeostasis! What do you mean by it then? Your questions are quite absurd!
When will you actually say what science homeopathy is based on?
April 6, 2008 at 7:15 pm
openmind
GSAC, you made the claim that homeostasis is the science that homeopathy is based on.
Please explan what you mean by homeostasis and then explain how it relates to homeopathy.
April 7, 2008 at 12:16 am
laughingmysocksoff
Interesting debate. And apologies once again for being absent for so much of it. Present work loads are unlikely to let up much for the time being, so I’ll just pick up on the couple of points which were addressed to me plus Andy’s last question.
GSAC wrote
GSAC, we’re saying the same thing. My words “Science has to be grounded in empiricism. That’s its foundation.” were used in the context of Andy’s insistence on adhering to a rational construct with no rigorous empirical confirmation. In other words, there needs to be a fusion of the two. Rationalism without empiricism is mere speculation.
Andy Lewis wrote
It might look like we’re getting towards the bottom of this, Andy, but I’m not sure that what’s down here is going to look the way you think it does. For starters, I hardly think many homeopaths would dispute the assertion that homeopathy has a non-material basis since Hahnemann makes that plain from the outset. Perhaps you’ve been projecting your own material bias onto what you’ve been reading?
Because we haven’t yet discovered and verified the precise mechanisms of how homeopathy works in terms of a modern narrative, you’re claiming we’ve “lost the argument that homeopathy has any claim to science”?!! That’s completely illogical.
Firstly, it ignores the fact that to discover something works in a certain way, and to use the fact that it works that way, it’s not necessary to know exactly how or why it does, only to map the parameters within which it does and model a rationale which confers predictability, replicability and consistency. The reliable and replicable results achieved from the application of Hahnemann’s method were derived by employing scientific principles and method.
Secondly, the non-material aspects of living organisms and the role of consciousness in creating physiological change are only just beginning to be investigated from a mainstream scientific standpoint, so your judgement is astoundingly premature, and as such can only reflect personal prejudices and beliefs. Not very scientific.
But then you go on to say to GSAC
What definition of “science” is this? “Science” is either a process, a way of approaching the investigation of natural phenomena (and which can be applied to any phenomenon in existence), or it’s a noun referring to a body of knowledge assembled using the scientific method. However, your context here seems to imply you mean something different. Something more along the lines of “conventionally accepted consensus scientific dogma”. You can’t conflate this definition of “science” with the preceding ones because they’re not the same thing at all. The meaning you seem to be implying is closer to scientism than science.
Science-as-collective-body-of-knowledge is in a constant state of flux, and although by rights it ought to apply to anything which has been scientifically investigated, it’s become corrupted into “what’s generally accepted”. As a result, definitions of what constitutes the body of “science” often amount to no more than an objectivised statement of the individual scientist’s personal boundaries of belief, regardless of whether or not scientific methodology has been used to assemble knowledge that’s accepted, or that’s rejected. To paraphrase Humpty Dumpty, “When I use the word science, it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.”
Medicine isn’t a “hard” science. Neither can it be, so looking at it in that way is illusory. From the perspective of a medical historian, a disease “entity” is no more than an intellectual construction that’s peculiar to some form of medicine; and every form of medicine is nothing but a historical variable in any human community. The same might be said for any theoretical model underpinning any form of medicine (should it even have one), which is why Hahnemann advocated focusing primarily on what could be consistently verified through rigorous application of scientific principles.
Any form of medicine is both an art and a science. It uses scientific method to assemble the empirical data and supporting rationale which form the basis of therapeutic intervention. It uses art as well as science to apply it. Homeopathy is no different.
I agree with GSAC here Andy. Your comments are increasingly betraying the gap in your understanding between the area of science you work in and science as it can be applied in medicine. What’s more, your definition of “science” looks to me to be more a case of “what Andy Lewis does and doesn’t believe in” than a body of knowledge assembled through the use of scientific method.
Consequently, to answer your question in a way that you might find acceptable would mean trying to shoehorn homeopathy into the narrow confines of your world view, which it plainly stands outside. Catch 22.
April 7, 2008 at 6:15 am
Andy Lewis
You still have not answered the question. You claim homeopathy is scientific. How so?
April 7, 2008 at 7:28 am
openmind
LMSO, why don’t you define what you mean by science and then explain how homeopathy is scientific.
GSAC, you made the claim that homeostasis is the science that homeopathy is based on, define what you mean by homeostasis and then explain how it relates to homeopathy.
April 7, 2008 at 8:31 am
Annemieke
Although this debate is a little over my head and to difficult for me to participate, I think it is a very good one. And trying to define science, medicine, homeostasis, homeopathy and so on, is essential in my opinion. It seems that everyone has a (sometimes only slightly) different definition.
But somehow it seems to be going to the bottem, so I will keep following it with interest.
April 7, 2008 at 12:08 pm
givescienceachance
Homeopathy is scientific because:
1. It took the available evidence of disease processes and medicinal interventions from as wide a range of sources as possible
2. It developed an explanatory theory for the success and failure of these interventions
3. It used the theory to make predictions and then tested these predictions against the evidence from experiments
4. When discrepancies were observed between the predictions and the results, further research was carried out to develop and refine the theory
5. This research involved further detailed study of how the process of disease acts over multiple generations
6. It also involved experiments with the preparation and administration of medicines
7. This has formed a secure basis for further study and research, since neither the knowledge of the action of medicines, nor the basic principles by which they are used have not been found to conflict with later evidence, though further refinements have been made to the theory.
For any real scientist this constitutes an excellent scientific approach.
April 7, 2008 at 5:10 pm
givescienceachance
Andy: “You bought up homeostasis! What do you mean by it then? Your questions are quite absurd!”
I asked you to define it to check (as I stated) that you understood it. Your reply showed that you did not understand it, and my attempts to get clarity have been understood even less.
How can I discuss what is scientific with someone who does not even understand what they are saying themselves?
April 7, 2008 at 6:09 pm
Andy Lewis
I gave you the opportunity to describe what you mean homeostasis and how it relates to homeopathy. You have not done so, even after repeated attempts. I made an attempt at explaining what I thought and you respond with bizarre questions. Please state what you mean by homeostasis. If you will not, I can only assume you cannot and it is just homeopathic pseudo scientific bluster.
Go on. Have a crack at it.
By the way, your description of science and how it relates to homeopathy is a little odd. No homeopath has ever come up with a theory of homeopath. Theories are an endpoint not a starting point. I think you mean hypothesis. There is no evidence as far as I can see to support any homeopathic hypothesis. Like cures Like? There is no general evidence to support this hypothesis – only flawed ‘provings’ methodologies. The hypothesis that succussion and dilution activates remedies? No response curve has ever been established and no mechanism to support this hypothesis has withstood even the slightest scrutiny. Any theory of homeopathy should be consilient with other areas of science. That is the nature of science. Believing in ‘life-forces’ and the like is just in the wrong ball park. To claim this is science is to claim black is white.
Homeopathy has a long way to go before it can claim it has a theory to describe it.
April 7, 2008 at 6:40 pm
openmind
GSAC, you made the claim that homeostasis is the science that homeopathy is based on, define what you mean by homeostasis and then explain how it relates to homeopathy.
April 8, 2008 at 1:49 am
ez
Andy writes,
“Any theory of homeopathy should be consilient with other areas of science. That is the nature of science. Believing in ‘life-forces’ and the like is just in the wrong ball park. To claim this is science is to claim black is white. ”
Very interesting, can you please elaborate how exactly the existence – or non-existence – of “life force” (and what is “the like”, exactly?) contradicts any of the current “science” – whatever this means to you?
THanks!
April 8, 2008 at 7:42 am
Andy Lewis
Seriously? The whole of biological science is now based on the central dogma of molecular biology (DNA to RNA to protein) and the evolutionary origin of the diversity of life. Concepts of ‘life force’ are pre-scientific and magical ways at looking at life that have been abandoned in the face of overwhelming evidence that life is a molecular process. Conversely, there is no evidence that life requires any extra ‘ghost in the machine’. In my opinion, this is one of the greatest intellectual achievments that humans have made. If homeopathy cannot be consilient with this view then it is just not science. You may claim differently, but you would be simply and completely wrong.
Now, those questions? Anyone want to take a stab at explaining how homeostasis has anything to do with homeopathy?
April 8, 2008 at 12:33 pm
ross
“Now, those questions? Anyone want to take a stab at explaining how homeostasis has anything to do with homeopathy?”
It is pretty clear they were using the CAM technique of throwing around sciency sounding words to spice up their arguments without knowing what said sciency sounding words mean.
April 8, 2008 at 2:21 pm
ez
“The whole of biological science is now based on the central dogma of molecular biology (DNA to RNA to protein) and the evolutionary origin of the diversity of life.” Yes, well, you mean that there have been many processes found in the body that proceed on molecular level, this is true, but I do not really see how this precludes the existence of life force, however “magical” it might seem to you? What’s so magical about it? Or rather how you define “magical” then, if you do not wish to define “scientific”?
You write: “Homeopathy has a long way to go before it can claim it has a theory to describe it.”
But earlier in this dialogue you have written:
“Facts can be established before a theoretical understanding of them is established.”
Well, this is one occasion where I can fully agree with your views.
:
“
April 8, 2008 at 3:45 pm
Andy Lewis
“I do not really see how this precludes the existence of life force”
Because, life forces appear to be supernatural. They are often described in spiritual or mystical terms, are unnecessary to describe biological systems, and there is not a shred of evidence to suggest they exist or any rational reason to presume so. Science, by definition, is the study of the natural, not supernatural. If homeopaths claim there are supernatural elements to their beliefs, then fine. But this thread developed on the premise that homeopathy was scientific.
Still waiting for an explanation of homeostasis.
April 8, 2008 at 5:40 pm
openmind
LMSO, why don’t you define what you mean by science and then explain how homeopathy is scientific.
GSAC, you made the claim that homeostasis is the science that homeopathy is based on, define what you mean by homeostasis and then explain how it relates to homeopathy.
April 8, 2008 at 11:16 pm
Derik
I have read these posts with great pleasure. I’d like to throw in some of the evidence for the current scientific ideas about matter and at the same time illustrate what scientific evidence looks like.
The basic building blocks of matter are atoms that cannot be divided without their properties being changed:
Substances can be boiled into the gas phase and bombarded with electrons or blasted with lasers and the resulting charged partials accelerated into a magnetic field. The degree to which these partials are deflected by the magnetic field is determined by their mass to charge ratio. If you measure the degree to which ions are deflected you can determine their mass to charge ratio, if you know their charge you can determine their mass. We can do these things.
If you do this with graphite you get ions with masses of twelve (6.0221415 × 10^23)ths of a gram. If you do this with pure oxygen you get masses of sixteen (6.0221415 × 10^23)ths of a gram and thirty two (6.0221415 × 10^23)ths. If you burn the graphite in oxygen you get a clear colorless gas with properties very different from both the graphite and the oxygen. When you ionize this, you get both elemental ions listed above and one ion of mass forty four (6.0221415 × 10^23)ths of a gram.
This suggests that carbon and oxygen are made of indivisible units of different mass. In the case of carbon each unit has mass twelve (6.0221415 × 10^23)ths of a gram. In the case of oxygen the smallest unit has mass sixteen (6.0221415 × 10^23)ths of a gram but exist in its natural state oxygen exists as a dimmer of mass thirty two (6.0221415 × 10^23)ths of a gram. These elemental units are combined to produce the clear colorless gas and can be broken apart again to produce the ions of its constituent parts. This gas comprises of molecules of mass equal to the sum of one unit of carbon and two units of oxygen and is in fact carbon dioxide.
These kinds of experiment have been done repeated with many substances to identify the indivisible elemental substances and, which of these, are combined to form other substances.
The number 6.0221415 × 10^23 is obviously Avogadro’s number. I’m sure by now even the homeopaths can fill in the rest of the anti-homeopathy argument that shows how not a single molecule or atom of the substance on the label is left in a preparation of 12C potency or above.
Still you say that some essence of the compound remains in such preparations to jar some essence of the patient into healing. You also say there is some scientific reason for believing these seperate essences exist and can interact. Please explain the evidence that convinsed you of this just as I have explained the evidence for whole numbers of elemental atoms of specific masses combining to form compounds.
Resources:
Paper detailing carbon mass spectrometry:
http://scitation.aip.org/getpdf/servlet/GetPDFServlet?filetype=pdf&id=JVTBD9000018000002000653000001&idtype=cvips&prog=normal
Oxygen mass spectrum:
http://webbook.nist.gov/cgi/cbook.cgi?ID=C7782447&Units=SI&Mask=200#Mass-Spec
Carbon Dioxide mass spectrum:
http://webbook.nist.gov/cgi/cbook.cgi?ID=C124389&Units=SI&Mask=200#Mass-Spec
Apologies for the length of the post. Explaining science takes space, unfortunately.
April 8, 2008 at 11:24 pm
ez
Andy says:
“Because, life forces appear to be supernatural.”
Appear to whom, to you?
“They are often described in spiritual or mystical terms, are unnecessary to describe biological systems, and there is not a shred of evidence to suggest they exist or any rational reason to presume so. Science, by definition, is the study of the natural, not supernatural. If homeopaths claim there are supernatural elements to their beliefs, then fine. But this thread developed on the premise that homeopathy was scientific.”
Gravity is often mentioned as an example of a natural but completely unknown as to the mechanism of action etc. phenomenon. (It is directly observable, though, as well as the response of the vital force, whatever it is, that is visible after a person takes a homeopathic remedy, which you’ll have to do in person, though, the observation, I mean.) Is it natural or supernatural from your point of view – gravity?
There must be a lot on the internet about homeostasis, including the wikipedia, which I find a bit eclectic, superficial and disordered in terms of compilation, and as GSAC mentioned that they tried to see whether you understand what you read and what you say and failed to confirm this, they are not going to discuss anything with you, so you’ll need to come up with some real understanding before you get the answer to your queries.
April 8, 2008 at 11:40 pm
Derik
You can measure gravity:
You can get two large balls of lead and attach them to each other by a rod. Attach a wire, of which the force required to twist through any degree is known, to the middle of that rod so that the balls balance and the rod remains horizontal. Hang the balls from the ceiling by the wire. Attach a mirror to the wire. Fire a laser beam the mirror so that you can measure the twist of the wire through a tiny arc can be determined by change in the angle of deflection from a distance. Protect balls from all air movement. Bring other balls of lead up to the suspended ones and measure the ark through which the gravitational force between the balls twists the wire. Work out from this the relationship between the mass of the balls, the distance between them and the force of gravity exhibited.
Bish bash bosh. Job done.
How do you measure vital force?
April 8, 2008 at 11:50 pm
Derik
Confused ark and arc. It must be the subconscious expression of my scientific dogmatism
April 9, 2008 at 6:58 am
Andy Lewis
Gravity has a full scientific framework around it. Mathematical descriptions that make extremely accurate predictions about how the universe behaves. Experiment confirms these predictions. Only the perverse would claim that gravity is ’supernatural’. Supernatural describes “forces or phenomena which are not subject to natural laws, and therefore beyond verifiable measurement”. There are no natural laws that describe Life Forces and there are no verifiable sets of experiments to show that they exist. I can descibe simple experiments which would show you should take the concept of gravity very seriously. You cannot do the same for Life Forces.
As for LMSO et al not wanting to discuss homeostasis with me, it has nothing to do with my lack of understanding, but everything to do with the fact that they will be exposed if they attempt to justify the statements that homeopathy is based on homeostasis. It is nonsense; they know it; and will just hide behind word games to avoid being exposed.
April 9, 2008 at 8:04 am
openmind
GSAC has dug a great big hole by claiming that homeopathy has something to do with homeostasis. It’s not something I’ve ever heard any other homeopath claim and I suspect that he/she made it up on the spur of the moment and is now having to do all he or she can not to have to explain how.
Since GSAC made the claim that homeostasis is the science that homeopathy is based on, it is not unreasonable to ask him or her to define what he or she means by homeostasis and then explain how it relates to homeopathy.
It really is that simple. Of course, if it was possible to justify this extraordinary claim then I’m sure GSAC would have done so by now, instead of making unreasonable demands that we all agree on GSAC’s idea of what homeostasis is before the knowledge is handed down on stone tablets from on high. I’d like to keep the debate civil but this really is childish.
Can you provide a reference to a study in a peer reviewed scientific journal demonstrating the existence of a ‘life force’ that has been replicated by further experiment? Neither can I. Therefore the idea of a ‘life force’ contradicts ‘any of the current science’.
April 9, 2008 at 8:36 am
ez
openmind,
Well, I’m not really into the task of trying to prove homeopathy’s validity to someone, I just use it on a daily basis and I find all denials of it by people who have never really used it really funny. However,
you write:
“Can you provide a reference to a study in a peer reviewed scientific journal demonstrating the existence of a ‘life force’ that has been replicated by further experiment? Neither can I. Therefore the idea of a ‘life force’ contradicts ‘any of the current science’.”
Saying that something is impossible and improbable because it was never done before is … how to put it mildly … strange, do not you think so? Nobody has tried to do a demonstration “of existence of a life force” as such, are you talking about those various trials that have been designed by people ignorant of homeopathic principles? Not any purported “scientific” principles, mind you, but principles of its application in real life.
I thought “contradict” means “deny the truth of a statement by asserting the opposite” (Oxford Dictionary of the English Language). What proposition of modern science does the notion of life force contradict under this definition? I still do not see any real answer except for “prehistoric” “supernatural” and “magical”… Again, you take all that we know today, add a notion of “life force” and see what inconsistencies arise? An example? I admit I did not think much of it, but maybe you can help?
When I studied my Anatomy and Physiology as a part of my Homeopathy course, I was struck that the action of the remedy – which I personally observe when I use it on myself and other people, – and the whole procedure of managing a chronic case, with the timing of repetitions etc. – is so consistent with the way in which the homeostasis is maintained within the body. Why, it’s a replication of the body’s own mechanisms, the process of the [proper] management of a chronic case by a classical homeopath. This only reinforced my interest in the whole thing. But obviously, Hahnemann and his followers did not know about all this body chemistry in their time, and arrived at it through pure observation of responses of their patients. And the “protocol” was refined by “trial and error” in their clinical practice, some ways of application of reedies were more effective than others – this really does not sound like we are talking about “placebo” or any “void intervention”.
However, I do not claim to talk for GSAC, so please do not take what I wrote as something that GSAC might think about the matter. THe fact that “there is so much confusion” as you put it, among homeopaths when they are asked to explain what’s behind the action of the remedies, simply means that different people may have different ideas and preferences and thoughts about life and universe, but the good thing is that the actual practice of homeopathy DOES NOT DEPEND on what someone beleives about it. A certain set of action has been shown by clinical practice to lead to higholy satisfactory results by the practitioners, so if one grasps these “rules of application”, one can achieve a lot. If you just take the potentised remedies and apply them haphazardly – you get nothing at best, so ignoring the set of rules – which is done in the portion of the published trials that you are referring to – is nothing to wonder about. And it proves nothing at the same time – because the set of rules was ignored – what do you want? The result is basically unpredictable. That’s so simple!
April 9, 2008 at 9:54 am
Andy Lewis
Homeopaths do talk lots about homeostasis but it is pure pseudoscience. Obviously, LMSO and co are too cowardly to make a defense of their beliefs on this site, but I am sure they are well aware of sites like HM21C that do stick their necks above the parapets. HM21C talks to homeopaths and makes no room for discussion, so its a safe place to expound nonsense ideas.
Homeopaths make two fundamental mistakes with homeostasis. Firstly, they see the body does have specific homeostasis mechanisms (pH, temp, blood sugar, urea etc), but they make the mistake of turning this into a general principle where the body can regulate arbitrary variables. There is no evidence for this and no reason to believe it is true.
The second big problem is that homeopaths do not say or know how homeopathic remedies can perturb homeostasis. Since, the pills are just plain sugar it is not clear how they can interact with the known mechanism of homeostasis.
Homeostasis is an ill thought out hypothesis with no explanatory power, no evidence to support it and no plausibility. It is not science, it is classic pseudoscience.
And to ez:
You clearly think that their such a thing as a life force. How would you convince me? What set of observables are best explained by life force ideas? I can do this for gravity? Can you be convincing about life force?
(ps: clue: I am not talking about ideas that would convince you, but ideas that would convince a scientist – e.g. they should be unambiguous, repeatable and distinct).
April 9, 2008 at 12:41 pm
openmind
Ez, I’m sorry, I think I was at cross purposes.
<blockquote<can you please elaborate how exactly the existence – or non-existence – of “life force”[...]contradicts any of the current “science”
There is no solid evidence for a ‘life force’ (which is what I was getting at when I said that there are no peer reviewed and replicated experiments demonstrating it exists) & there is no need to assume a ‘life force’ exists in order to explain any particular phenomenon.
(If you do have recourse to use it as an explanation for a particular phenomenon, such as homeopathy, then the onus is on you to demonstrate that it exists, which shouldn’t be too hard. Although I would note that homeopaths have had over 200 years to do it in and haven’t come up with any evidence yet).
In the absence of any evidence to the contrary, it is reasonable to assume that a ‘life force’ does not exist and is, at best, wishful thinking. In which case it will not contradict ‘any of the current science’ because it is just made up.
As a notion? None. Because you can pretend it to be whatever you want it to be. My firmly held belief that a species of highly intelligent micro-termites is responsible for all of the things you believe are attributable to a ‘life force’ has as much validity because it has the same evidence base, i.e. none.
I think it is highly improbable, based on the best available evidence, but not impossible. I could easily be persuaded of the existence of a life force and I would be quite happy to be proven wrong. But to believe in things that are highly improbable, despite a lack of evidence, just because you wish they were true is…how to put it mildly….being credulous, do you not think so?
LMSO, why don’t you define what you mean by science and then explain how homeopathy is scientific.
GSAC, you made the claim that homeostasis is the science that homeopathy is based on, define what you mean by homeostasis and then explain how it relates to homeopathy.
April 9, 2008 at 4:48 pm
doctorlimpy
Here’s a new blog about this: http://limpyblog.wordpress.com/
April 9, 2008 at 5:20 pm
bewaiwai
Andy says: “Gravity has a full scientific framework around it. “ How many times has this changed in the field of physics even eons ago when Einstein got hold of it?
Its interesting you talk about gravity in this way since your arguments and view of what is and what is not science is very Newtonian. You are a Newtonian physicist! How quaint!
And also you all claim to be arbiters of what is science and what is not….It is post # 90+, so the word science fascism I believe can be legitimately used to describe the whole jist of skeptic argument that homeopathy is not scientific and many of the posts here.
I think a lot of what is being said here would make most of modern physics, (not your newtonian stuff, Andy) “unscientific”. It is representative of the new materialism in science.
April 9, 2008 at 6:32 pm
Andy Lewis
bewaiwai – I am not convinced you have any idea. I would be quite happy to be called a Newtonian physicist. Newtons laws of gravity have done remarkably well. Even space missions, e.g. the moon landings (you do believe in them, yes?) relied entirely on Newtonian mechanics. Einstein showed the limits to Newtonian mechanics and how newtons laws were incomplete and approximations applicable at human to planetary scales. When discussing huge masses, high energies, cosmic distances, then refined laws are required. If by this you wish to call Newtonian Laws wrong then all I can say is that I hope all my faults are similarly wrong.
Perhaps, if you believe this is science fascism then you would like to describe what you think science is or should be? How would you improve science? How would you let science embrace homeopathy? What do we have to abandon or add to include your magic healing?
April 9, 2008 at 7:08 pm
bewaiwai
Andy says: …limits to Newtonian mechanics and how newtons laws were incomplete. So you are saying that to all known phenomena and scientific “laws” there are limits and much is incomplete.
Good.
Homeopathy is one of those phenomena that are testing the limits of your knowledge and “laws”. So be it.
April 9, 2008 at 7:44 pm
Andy Lewis
Homeopathy is yet to test the laws of science because it cannot produce a consistent data set that cannot be best explained by delusion thinking.
April 9, 2008 at 8:17 pm
Andy Lewis
freetochoosehealth said: “Andy says: …limits to Newtonian mechanics and how newtons laws were incomplete. So you are saying that to all known phenomena and scientific “laws” there are limits and much is incomplete.
Good. ”
But of course. Any training in science would begin with the fact that just stating your results is not scientific. You must also state your confidence in the result too, i.e. errors both random and systematic. Look at any respectable scinece journal and papers will always do this.
Maybe one day we will see homeopaths stating their sources of bias, error and limits on knowledge too.
April 9, 2008 at 8:41 pm
bewaiwai
Andy- everything outside of your experience or allowance is a delusion- way to go – that is bigoted thinking and certainly dimwitted but I wouldn’t expect anything more from you!
April 9, 2008 at 8:46 pm
bewaiwai
Andy- AND THERE ARE MANY SCIENTISTS WHO BELIEVE DIFFERENT THAN YOU and support homeopathy- ARE THEY DELUSIONAL THEN? YOU ARE THE ONLY ONE WITH A FEW OTHER GREAT RANDINI FOLLOWERS WHO ARE NOT?
April 9, 2008 at 8:47 pm
Derik
We have no reason yet to think that homeopathy is a phenomenon at all. We are talking to you because it is fun. There is a make believe element that you have something to offer. You don’t have anything to offer really. You shrieks of fascism are more like the tantrums of a child bringing a mud pie to the table and discovering that the adults refuse to eat it, than anything else.
Never mind, you are rather sweet.
April 9, 2008 at 9:18 pm
Andy Lewis
Oooh, capitals.
‘ARE THEY DELUSIONAL THEN?’
Yes.
The number of ’scientists’ who support homeopathy is measured on the fingers of one kit-kat. Find me one university level physics or chemistry standard textbook that shows how homeopathy fits into science.
April 9, 2008 at 9:40 pm
bewaiwai
And show me one physics textbook that shows how surgery fits into science.
April 9, 2008 at 9:49 pm
Andy Lewis
Surgury does not depend on physics. Homeopathy does.
April 9, 2008 at 10:25 pm
bewaiwai
So surgery is not explainable by the laws of physics and therefore unscientific- is that what you are saying?
April 9, 2008 at 10:31 pm
givescienceachance
Jumping to conclusions is a bad example to set when you are claiming the scientific high ground. I have not posted a comment because I have been too busy, and I will be too busy for some days yet to add much.
Three points to be going along with:
1. Andy has confirmed my claims that his “science” is belief: “The whole of biological science is now based on the central dogma of molecular biology.” An opinion that becomes a dogma is not open to change. It becomes a belief and as it becomes increasingly irrelevant so to it is increasingly aggressively defended. It does not become any more correct.
2. Andy says: “Homeopaths make two fundamental mistakes with homeostasis. Firstly, they see the body does have specific homeostasis mechanisms (pH, temp, blood sugar, urea etc), but they make the mistake of turning this into a general principle where the body can regulate arbitrary variables. There is no evidence for this and no reason to believe it is true.”
A simple and readily available definition (both in dictionaries and anatomy textbooks) is is that: “Homeostasis is the existence and maintenance of a relatively constant environment in the body.” This is a general statement, and all the specific changes are a result of the general principle. What is more the mechanisms involved in homeostasis are systemic response mechanisms: the nervous, endocrine and immune systems. All these systems involve interactions too complex to be predictable at the molecular level, but only at more systemic levels. The evidence for this is substantial.
3. Andy says: “Surgury does not depend on physics. Homeopathy does.” It takes very little research in a medical library to notice that the field of biophysics is barely explored, and that it lags way behind the field of biochemistry. That does not make biochemistry the only reliable method of understanding living organisms, it just makes it a more richly researched perspective in a field in which there is a large territory of the unknown. To suggest that we know everything about living organisms at this time is to state that what we know is everything, and that what we don’t know is nothing.
April 9, 2008 at 10:38 pm
bewaiwai
1. Andy has confirmed my claims that his “science” is belief: “The whole of biological science is now based on the central dogma of molecular biology.” An opinion that becomes a dogma is not open to change. It becomes a belief and as it becomes increasingly irrelevant so to it is increasingly aggressively defended. It does not become any more correct.
It takes very little research in a medical library to notice that the field of biophysics is barely explored, and that it lags way behind the field of biochemistry.
Thank you! Very well said.
April 10, 2008 at 12:13 am
ez
I must apologise to GSAC, but Andy and his friends looked like they wanted to express themselves so much that I felt it might be interesting to hear what more they can tell us about what they think, so I just wrote a couple of comments, but I apologize for suggesting the unfounded assumption on my part!
Open mind – convincing someone of the existence of a life force (vital force) is not what I’m into, as I have already mentioned. I personally prefer not to gauge as to the nature of that “something” that causes people to respond to homeopathic remedies in the way they do, kind of a “black box”, if you will, however because my personal experience confirms what I am reading in a number of books written by homeopaths of various creeds and time periods, and countries and I find the result of application of the remedies quite satisfactory – at my level of knowledge, which is only halfway through the course of the homeopathy offered at my school, – all I can tell you that I’m going to continue to use them, and if someone else becomes interested I’ll suggest them the effective way to use them, that’s it. If you want to find something out – try it out yourself, that’s all I can suggest. I think it is not wise to indulge in empty theorising – given that our current knowledge is clearly incomplete, and I personally have no time for this. That is – if you were asking me personally, this is my answer. Sorry if it was not really interesting. I beleive in things which I have seen work, I’m quite pragmatic, as a matter of fact, but this is something I could not “prove” to you on an internet site not matter how I wished.
Seriously researching the scientific validity of some hypotheses is a completely different matter which requires time and resources and interested people – well, the latter is actually not as hard to find as Andy seems to beleive, my own father is a biochemist who would very like to try to dabble into it and he personally knows a lot of doctors around him who would like to know more, – but there are no funds and no equipment, and no time for real basic research – that is, research that is not supposed to give relatively immediately applicable results. The current “social order” is somehow not interested in basic research – how short-sighted, I must say, but that’s the reality! Homeopaths of all times have been busy treating patients, a very good woman doctor Margaret TYler, who was writing as much as she could, did this with the help of a short-hand secretary, as she could not find any other time and energy to do this – all the rest was devoted to the suffering people. Demanding that practicing homeopaths prove something to someone – except their patients – is simply unrealistic.
April 10, 2008 at 8:27 am
Derik
I’m afraid that despite its name the “central dogma of biology” that states that information in a cell passes only in one direction from DNA to mRNA to protein is no-longer considered accurate. It is clear that there are many feedback loops whereby proteins regulate the decomposition of mRNA and the transcription of DNA themselves. It’s still name with a nice ring to it though “central dogma” so I think we will keep it. Being misrepresented by people think that names always mean what they say is of little concern to us.
April 10, 2008 at 8:43 am
Derik
Interesting comment ez. It’s interesting to hear how you feel about it. I would say if you want to help suffering people you must first find out what will actually help them. There is the famous case of the charity that raised a lot of money to by tractors for Indian farmers. Of course after delivery the farmers could not obtain the fuel to run them to they just stood in the field and rusted.
Homeopaths are also people that wish to aid the suffering. This is a very laudable desire. Unfortunately they have not taken the time to make sure their mode of helping actually does so. When such studies have been done they indicate that people are no better served by being given a carefully selected, remedy infused pill, by a homeopath than by being given a remedy free pill. It would be fun to run a couple of experiments to see if homeopathy works. Have you seen Andy’s “challenge”:
http://www.quackometer.net/blog/2007/12/extending-simple-challenge.html#links
Perhaps you could do something like it with your class mates?
April 11, 2008 at 11:50 am
openmind
LMSO, could you please define what you mean by science and then explain how homeopathy is scientific.
GSAC, you made the claim that homeostasis is the science that homeopathy is based on. You defined homeostasis as ‘the existence and maintenance of a relatively constant environment in the body’. (Not a million miles away from Andy Lewis’s definition: ‘the ability of a living system to maintain and regulate stable values for biological system parameters’.) Could you please explain how homeopathy works with reference to your definition of homeostasis.
April 11, 2008 at 3:31 pm
Andy Lewis
Well, it looks like ez has thrown in the towel and admitted that they do not think homeopathy is scientific. Can you think of any other human endeavour where people do not think it worthwhile understanding why something should work or even if it does? Perhaps religions.
ez said “Demanding that practicing homeopaths prove something to someone – except their patients – is simply unrealistic.”
Substitute the word “patients” for “customers” and see if that statement still holds up. Again, substitute the word “something” for “life critical decisions” and see again if it is defensible. Tonight on BBC South West we will see Neil’s Yard caught red handed trying to tell customers that sugar pills can prevent malaria. Is it OK for Neil’s Yard to just “know” that this is OK, or should they do due diligence and do proper research? If they are wrong, people will die. Would you allow an electrician to wire up your house without recourse to standards and proof of their skills? Is it OK for your electrician to tell you that he just “knows” he is good at wiring things up?
And it is just plain wrong that there is no money to investigate this. Boiron the French homeopathy company is a $500 million outfit. Neil’s Yard is not exactly small with operations in the UK, japan and the US. Public funding for research into alternative medicine is pretty large with a billion dollars going to NIH public research into CAM in the US. We have our own publicly run department of complementary medicine in the UK – homeopaths do not like it though becuase the research shows that CAM is mostly bunkum.
The irony is that you could prove homeopathy is not made up rubbish and delusion for just a few quid. I have made that quite clear on my web site.
http://www.quackometer.net/blog/2007/12/simple-challenge-to-homeopaths.html
No homeopath is prepared to step up to the mark though. “Too busy healing”. Thankfully, real scientists don’t say such things. That is why we are not sitting in caves, banging rocks together, and dying by the age of 30.#
So, LMSO and GSAC. Do you share the same beliefs as EZ that research into homeopathy is not worthwhile? And how does it square with your belief that homeopathy is scientific?
April 11, 2008 at 11:05 pm
yeshomeopathy!
Ah, yes, one homeopath means all homeopaths when you come from a hard and prejudiced point of view.
And who the hell are you to say that I should not use something that has worked profoundly for my family and for millions of people for over 200 years. It is bizarre that someone who has no medical training now thinks he is the the arbiter and censor of what is good medicine and what is bad medicine. The age of the internet!
You of course won’t apply the same ’standard” to surgery and much of clinical medicine. In the meantime, if every medical treatment out there had to pass your “scientific” physicist censor board then we’d have a new form of restricted medicine-a handful of treatments at the most arbitrated by amateurs like yourself. The age of the internet!
April 12, 2008 at 1:13 am
ez
Andy, why do you pervert everything? Are you sure you can read well? Do not the letters run before your eyes? Any problems with eyesight in the past?
I did not say it was not worthwhile, on the contrary. I said that I personally, being a housewife, cannot do it, and do not wish to pretend that I’m going to do it in any near future BECAUSE it is a difficult and serious thing – to do scientific research, which I know because I worked in biology-related research institutes in the past.
If you come across a homeopath that sees the people as “customers”, you’d better avoid them for your own sake.
And crucial life decisions you should do yourself, and not hold anyone responsible – this is a “victim” complex, if you are trying to shift the responsibility for such decisions on someone else, and it is not a healthy attitude in life.
April 12, 2008 at 8:42 am
Andy Lewis
My point about customers was that anyone who accepts money for a service has responsibilities, and when those services are serious, then those responsibilities extend beyond mere statements of personal belief. If I have one concern about homeopathy, it is that. Homeopaths appear not to want to engage in the critical appraisal of their work that is not just interesting, but morally imperative for the huge role of healer you take on. If you cannot convince anyone but yourselves of what you do then I think you should forfeit your right to take on that responsibility. I would apply the same standards to any trader. I would not employ an electrician unless there was an objective demonstration of competence.
And science does not take place in the lab. My homeopathy test could be done in a kitchen – it requires no more expensive equipment than a stamped addressed envelope.
April 12, 2008 at 10:20 am
Andy Lewis
Here is the result of a billion dollars of research into the ’science’ homeopathy and other CAM:
April 13, 2008 at 12:28 am
ez
Any writes : “If you cannot convince anyone but yourselves ”
Well, it’s clear, of course, that you personally are not convinced, and some other people that post here and on other forums, but why do you generalise this to the rest of population? Have you conducted a poll – in real life, not on the internet, about people’s opinion concerning homeopathy – I suggest also that you do not lump all “alternative” treatments together also, they are quite different in nature and objectives, and each should be considered on their own terms, one by one. I know it’s time consuming and probably not always rewarding, but one has to do their homework oneself – again, and only then make conclusions. Your personal conclusions. And not relying on the hearsay, even from R. Barker Bausell, Ph.D. – whoever this person is.
You also write – “Homeopaths appear not to want to engage in the critical appraisal of their work that is not just interesting, but morally imperative for the huge role of healer you take on.”
The work of a homeopath does not consist in providing ailing patients with materials of clinical trials, but in trying to actually improve the person’s individual health. Please, do not substitute one for the other! It would be good if any such materials were handy, of course, but one somehow manages without.
I usually explain – based on the clinical evidence that I’ve read in books and have myself – what people can expect as a result of treatment (all the holistic medicine approach about stages of the diseased state etc. ) and what is needed from them in the course of treatment – regular feedback etc. – and if people are not convinced they want to try, then they just go away, I’ll admit this happens sometimes even before the treatment starts. And I think people have their right to decide – which I let them exercise, of course. But much less people go away than the numbers you suggest! I actually had only one such person – out of about 100 others who proceeded to try. As I said, I do not have any real practice, I’m still a student and have a lot of family commitments, but I have people coming once in a while pleading me to try to help although I tell them that I’ll not be able to spend all the time and effort needed for their cases, which I explain to them, they are still willing to try. And as a result the indicated remedies work and those that were not chosen correctly – do not.
So your suggestion that noone except homeopaths themselves are convinced in homeopathy’s ability to improve someone’s health is obviously – to me, and to many other homeopaths, who post here and elsewhere – and simply NOT TRUE.
April 13, 2008 at 9:18 am
Andy Lewis
Let’s be clear. You may fool people but one would not wish to consult with fools. But anyone with a knowledge of what homeopaths propose and a good understanding of basic science has a hard time reconciling the two. This is not true for herbalism where herbs are at least plausible healing agents. Sugar pills are not.
You say that you are “trying to actually improve the person’s individual health.”
My entire point is “how do you know if you are successful?”. Personal testimony is the weakest form of argument. And if you rely on it you are being intellectually dishonest. People get better on their own. They may have a bit of placebo effect. They may please you by telling you they are better. And so on.
The point is that you do not know if you are successful. Your wishful thinking overrides your desire to find the truth.
And this matters. When the BBC caught yet again homeopaths dishing out sugar pills as preventive treatment against malaria, did Neils Yard know they worked? Their chief ’scientist’ admitted she did not. She used the excuse of ‘evidence by extension’ which is meaningless and really juts translates to ‘we really wish it were true’. This action will kill people. It was described on the BBC as ‘amoral and unethical’. What makes your practice so different?
Where is the science in homeopathy that allows you to practice morally an ethically?
April 13, 2008 at 10:01 am
ez
Well, if you cared to learn about holistic sciences, there is such a thing as Direction of cure, which is a rather clear indicator of whether the treatment is successful or not. THere are other indicators too, but they are a part of that “set of rules” that should be best followed, as they constitute a part of assessing whether the remedy worked or not next time you see the patient. Again, these are based on empirical evidence from Hahnemann’s and his follower’s experimentation with the remedies and people’s reactions to them, which can be widely varying.
And if people get better on their own in the cases that I personally have seen getting better after homeopathic remedies, then conventional medicine practitioners should be banned from giving medicines to people with such conditions – as people get better on their own, while conventional drugs almost always have side effects plus public money is wasted through insurance schemes. And after such conventional interventions would have been banned for the above reasons for some time, let’s see how many people are really going to get better on their own.
And I for one would not recommend anyone anything “preventative” in the same sense as is being attributed to vaccines in conventional medicine. WIth homeopathy you can only give a remedy when there are symptoms indicating what has to be given – the similar picture must be there in the first place, if you are interested to know my opinion in homeoprophylaxis in general.
So again, you are generalising things that you do not understand and lump all people together according to a label. Of course, there can be a “homeopath” there who is a complete fraud, consciously or unconsciously of this themselves, that’s why YOU need to STUDY a lot of things first, not relying on the experts all the way from the start as you do, although it’s inevitable that you will have to trust them at some point, – so if you – I have to stress – YOU PERSONALLY, or any other person making some critical life decision, – cannot trust the person you are asking for help, then the best thing you can do is NOT TO ACCEPT what is being handed to you.
Why did the people who bought the “malaria preventative” things from Neils Yard not ask them the question that the BBC did in the first place? I’m not sure anyone has really bought them, though, it can just be a freak scare. But, I personally would try to find out just how the preparations are supposed to prevent something that has not yet showed any symptoms – and for this you need to know something about how (not why) homeopathy works, that is what reaction will typically ensue after a correct or incorrect remedy. So I would not buy anything which is simply working “by extension”, because it might or might not work for me personally, it’s a hit and miss strategy, but that’s because I KNOW how homeopathy is normally prescribed. Obviosuly, the public should be educated about what is out there, but why do you suggest that everyone is so stupid as to simply trust immedieately all they are being told? Is this the way you behave yourself? You choose some “gurus”, and after that you simply follow and repeat everything they tell you? This resembles more a religious sect follower than a freely thinking person.
It’s also interesting to know what is your image of a homeopath? Do you think that they just kind of “fall from the sky” fully trained etc.? Who are these people, how and why did they become homeopaths? A typical pattern would be a former homeopathic patient who had been treated successfully and felt the need to help other people using this powerful healing tool. I know at least 3 such persons, one of whom was relieved of convulsions and vast disability that were left after he suffered a stroke. He spend several years trying to find relief from conventional medicine, which only gave him sedatives that did not work, but just two doses of remedies have caused it all to stop, returned him to normal life. Does this typically happen to people who survived a stroke and had such after-effects?
April 13, 2008 at 10:54 am
Andy Lewis
‘Direction of Cure’ is just one more delusion. it is a narrative that can be applied to any situation whether the remedy works or not. Entirely subjective and unscientific.
How does the homeopathic community resolve disputes like homeoprophylaxis? You obviously feel strongly that this is not good homeopathy – and if you genuinely feel this way then you should be as angry as hell, as such actions will kill people and give homeopathy a terrible reputation. And yet I see no outcry in the homeopathic community. That makes me think that homeopaths are not sincere.
Do we see any scientific experiments to settle the dispute of homeoprophylaxis ? Any attempt by organisations such as SoH or ARH to stamp out such dangerous practices?
No. And the reason is that Directors of SoH actually offer homeoprophylaxis to patients. Fellows of SoH believe homeoprophylaxis is true and tell their customers to take sugar pills and so consign them to the mosquito lottery of life or death. Ordinary Members are just left to practice however they see fit. No one is ever censored for practicing outside the bounds of due diligence, common sense or rationality. I call that highly amoral. You just do not care.
If you genuinely feel that homeoprophylaxis has no basis then you should be as angry as I am about the BBC findings. But you have no way of settling such disputes because you reject scientific methods of settling such issues. For that reason, I see all people who call themselves homeopaths as complicit in this crime.
No one on this thread has been able to say how homeopathy is scientific and there is a very good reason for that – it is pure fantasy and delusion. And it is a delusion that endangers people. The honest homeopath would respond to this in one of two ways – seek solid evidence of what they do, or practice within the boundaries set by the knowledge that what they do is a placebo at best. I would have no problem with homeopaths who took the latter path.
April 13, 2008 at 3:30 pm
ez
What do you mean by saying that “Directive of Cure” is a narration?
I do not live in UK, EU or even US, so I cannot participate in all those activities that you suggest should take place… HOwever, I still do not think that people should try to force other people into ANYTHING at all.
April 13, 2008 at 5:14 pm
Expose The Conspiracy
ez said: “What do you mean by saying that “Directive of Cure” is a narration?”
Let me explain to you how the highest level homeopathic narrative works:
1) If a customer gets better then the remedy worked.
2) If a customer gets worse then they are suffering aggravations/healing crisis etc.
3) If a customer stays the same then “hey! this is a subtle healing art. It takes time!”
4) go back to step 1
You see, the outcome of all homeopathic consultations can always be spun into a success according the ‘narratives’ of homeopathy. There is no room for failure. No possibility of being proved wrong. This is fundamentally anti-scientific as homeopathy cannot be falsifiable within the narratives of homeopathy.
This can be demonstrated by a very simple question that has been asked many times before to homeopaths: “What outcomes or experiments can you imagine that would change your mind that homeopathy was effective?”. I have yet to see a homeopath answer that question honestly and critically. In the homeopaths mind, there is no room for doubt that homeopathy works and so all outcomes with customers must be spun into a success story for homeopathy (or a sabotage by ‘allopathy’).
Can anyone think of a scientific experiment that would change their mind about beliefs they have about homeopathy. This is a very important scientific question. If you cannot answer this fully then you cannot claim a scientific basis.
April 13, 2008 at 5:20 pm
Andy Lewis
ez – your geographical location should not stop you condemning homeopaths who practice homeoprophylaxis. Your geographical location does not stop you supporting homeopathy!
Do you condemn those that risk lives by offering homeoprophylaxis?
April 13, 2008 at 6:29 pm
bewaiwai
I agree ez. Andy is sounding very fascist but he thinks he is protecting the public, like the line we’ve heard too many times before that “we need to protect the purity of the race….” He continually asks for proof but then states without any evidence that homeopathy “risks lives”.
For his opinions and condemnation, we should rely on something other than scientific proof or any evidence at all and then anything we say about homeopathy we have to show material scientific proof. I won’t even get into the facts about pharmaceutical medicine, vaccines being dangerous although apologists state otherwise.
And I discuss this because this attitude is the real story. Science fascism- if your world and choices doesn’t revolve around the traditional science viewpoint then you should be condemned. It does not leave much open for new directions like homeopathy.
Here is an interesting new film that touches on this:
WATCH THE SUPER TRAILER FIRST.
http://www.expelledthemovie.com/video.php
It reminded me of Andy Lewis comment on another blog that a physicist who has come out in favour of homeopathy is now according to Andy Lewis a “pseudo-scientist” and should be condemned.
And he and Ben Goldacre, David Colquon and other medical people like Gimpy marginalizes every scientist and published paper in a similar vein to this movie.
In this climate, who really wants to re-prove the scientific validity of homeopathy.
Although in the next week, I’m curious to see how they condemn a new article in a traditional scientific publication that shows without any doubt that potentized homeopathic remedies are individually different and valid.
April 13, 2008 at 7:42 pm
ross
Crikey, a creationist as well as a homeopath.
Says it all really.
April 13, 2008 at 7:51 pm
laughingmysocksoff
Openmind wrote, several times
I said at the start of my last post that the amount of work I have on at the moment means I can only check in on this blog occasionally — like Sunday evenings — so there’s no point in repeating yourself over and over and then concluding that because I haven’t answered it’s because I’m avoiding the issue. It’s because I haven’t read your posts yet. Apologies to those who’ve been waiting for their comments to be moderated.
What I mean by science is exactly how the dictionaries define it: The investigation of natural phenomena through observation, theoretical explanation, and experimentation, or the knowledge produced by such investigation. The scientific method includes the careful observation of natural phenomena, the formulation of a hypothesis, the conducting of one or more experiments to test the hypothesis, and the drawing of a conclusion that confirms or modifies the hypothesis.
This is the whole basis on which Hahnemann formulated homeopathy. GSAC has already explained this above, so there’s no point in me repeating it.
Andy wrote:
Andy you really do come out with some incredible statements sometimes. For starters, perhaps you’d like to explain why children with ADHD, a defining symptom of which is hyperactivity, are treated (apparently successfully to some extent at least) with amphetamines?
You then go on to say
Hmmm … was quantum mechanics consilient with other areas of science at the time it was first proposed? It encountered enormous resistance from the scientific “establishment” of its day, who used very much the same sort of arguments you’ve been airing here.
But you’re making a huge and fundamental error in assuming the only way homeopathy can work is through material biochemical means. It’s already been said numerous times on this site that it’s glaringly obvious it doesn’t. There’s nothing in the sugar pills, right? Hahnemann stated his therapy was predicated on “immaterial substance”. So why do you keep imposing this presumed materiality on homeopathy and then getting all full of righteous indignation about the fact that it has none? You’re barking up entirely the wrong tree. The consilience you’re looking for is in the latest findings of consciousness research and in explorations of macroscopic quantum coherence.
Here you are again talking about “science” as if it’s some sanctioned and approved body of knowledge which homeopathy stands outside. That’s not science. It’s scientism. If there’s any black or white here, it seems to be in your personal views of what constitutes “science” and what doesn’t. Complementary medicine offers the potential to derive radically new understandings of both biology and medicine. If you want to stand in the luddites’ corner, be my guest, but why try to stand in the way of people wanting to take their scientific explorations into fresh pastures?
For “life-force” read consciousness. David Chalmers has said no scientific system can be considered complete without a theory of consciousness. I think he’s right. Roger Penrose’s work follows similar lines and his scientific credentials are pretty sound. There are many others working in this area. So while this might not be the ball park you like to play in, you can’t say it’s not science. It’s the application of the scientific method that determines whether it’s science, not whether it fits with a particular reductionist view of existence.
Yet nobody knows how or why gravity exists.
Homeopathy has a scientific framework around it. Exhaustive observations in respect of each remedy which allow us to make accurate predictions about how an individual patient will respond to a given prescription. Experiment confirms those predictions.
Your usual mantra concerning alternative explanations is, as I’ve pointed out several times already, unsubstantiated speculation. Your hypothesis is untested. Unlike homeopathy’s.
You have a short memory, Andy. I agreed to take your challenge, only I said I wasn’t prepared to do it without your participation, which you ducked.
I don’t think that’s what EZ was saying. Research into homeopathy and other CAM techniques is very worthwhile, and will ultimately yield new understandings which will be applicable to all forms of medicine, the biomedical model included. More DBRCTs aren’t the answer, but there’s a lot more to the scientific method than DBRCTs. Personally I think the most rewarding areas of study will be found in consciousness research.
April 13, 2008 at 8:44 pm
Andy Lewis
Firstly, let’s get the challenge out of the way. My participation would only give grounds for non-acceptance of the result. I am not needed to take part. You can do the test on your own. Just do it.
You said “Experiments confirm those predictions?” Where? The only decent blinded and published study of the efficacy of provings I know of was done by academic homeopath George Lewith who concluded that provings were “without clinical effects”.
http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/12449/
Why should I read ‘consciousness’ for ‘life force’? Are these things equivalent? Do I lose my ‘life force’ when I am asleep? Or is it just mumbo jumbo? Like bewaiwai ‘expelled’ movie. (BTW, that proves bewaiwai has no idea about science.)
Yes, quantum mechanics was consistent with observation when it was proposed – it required an extension of thought, but it correctly predicted observed results like the spectrum of hydrogen, the photoelectric effect and why atoms do not collapse. It was accepted for the very reason that it was consistent with what we observe. You are right that the nature of gravity still has mysteries. That is why the LHC has been built and will be switched on this year to look for Higgs bosons. What experiments are homeopaths proposing to research areas they do not understand?
April 13, 2008 at 9:51 pm
laughingmysocksoff
Expose The Conspiracy wrote
Interesting theory. Thing is though, in practice you don’t find this happening; leastways I don’t personally know any homeopaths that operate under such naive and uncritical reasoning, and I know quite a few homeopaths. There are cases of false attribution, certainly. There are also cases where all the other explain-aways the sceptics enumerate are valid. But this doesn’t mean that every homeopathic case can be accounted for through this reasoning. The majority can’t.
It’s also fundamentally unscientific to make speculative assertions that aren’t backed by empirical evidence.
You people must have incredibly over-inflated views of your own intellects if you assume that a therapy which survives for over 200 years does so purely through the combined stupidity and wishful thinking of its practitioners and patients, many of whom have come from a scientific background with exactly the same prejudices about homeopathy as you’re outlining here!!
It seems to me about time you actually did some proper research on your subject before regaling us all with your conclusions. This means taking your theories and testing them out in a clinical setting on individual cases treated by homeopathy. Not on written reports of those cases, but the actual cases themselves as they’re being treated. Until you do that, you’re being no less unscientific than you accuse homeopaths of being.
I’m more than happy to acknowledge that there’s foundation for many sceptical criticisms of the profession — failure to engage, lack of critical self-appraisal, failure to walk the talk — all of these ARE evident in the profession. You’re not wrong on that. We’re a young profession and we have a lot still to do to put it in order. However, just because those criticisms have some validity, doesn’t make them universally valid. You’re using the same weak inductive reasoning in support of prejudice here as you do in suggesting placebo effect, regression to mean, false attribution, etc, are responsible for all effects observed in homeopathic treatment. It simply doesn’t stand up when put to the test.
April 13, 2008 at 10:39 pm
Andy Lewis
what test?
April 13, 2008 at 10:46 pm
bewaiwai
Laughingmysocks off- I want to apologize to you for some of my entries because your answers are so eloquent and meaningful about science in general and homeopathy in particular.
The reason I have taken this approach is that I feel that no matter how good your arguments are you are up against literally a brick wall with Andy. So that is why I attempt to chip away at his bigotry with comments that are not necessarily congruent with your depth of understanding and eloquence and therefore perhaps the intent of this blog.
But like all bigots Andy seems to rely on his own odd tiny world view for the basis of his beliefs and opinions. They are in fact beliefs and opinions and it seems like the more he is on this blog and others the tinier they are getting.
He has narrowed down science so it doesn’t include any reasonable openness, discourse or possibility for phenomena that millions have experienced such as homeopathy. At this point, I do not see that he has any room for homeopathy even potentially “working” let alone the body of evidence that is already there.
And the reason I linked to the movie Expelled by Ben Stein is to show that there is a movement now recognizing the bigotry in closed conservative science in general. It is not that I believe in the ideas that are being shown to attempt to be “expelled”.
Keep up your wonderful work, Laughingmysocksoff and others who have positively commented on this blog and are making a contribution towards understanding the wonderful art and science of homeopathy and towards understanding in general.
April 13, 2008 at 10:58 pm
laughingmysocksoff
Andy Lewis wrote
You’ve devised this experiment on the presumption that homeopathy claims a material effect for its remedies, and that therefore if there is any effect, it will reside in the sugar pill. You’re not allowing for other possible mechanisms of action to come into play. If you set up an experiment which doesn’t accurately replicate the situation in which homeopathic remedies are prescribed, then you’re biasing the experiment. My assertion is that homeopathy’s mechanism of action is through some correlation in consciousness that requires the presence of a prescriber who knows what remedy is being given to the tester on each occasion. If you really don’t believe there’s any way possible that I can identify those remedies, what have you got to lose by allowing me that concession? I’m still going to be taking an unidentified remedy, so my end of the experiment remains blinded.
Your apparent assumption that homeopaths somehow “owe” you this “proof” isn’t one I share. I’ve said to you I’ll accept your challenge on my conditions. If you don’t want to accept them, that’s up to you. But you can’t turn round and say no homeopath has answered your challenge.
You’re dictating the terms of the experiments now too, eh? The experiments that confirm those predictions are taking place every day in homeopathic clinics all over the world. I can’t say this enough, Andy. You really have to go and observe homeopathy in application for yourself. It’s the only scientific way of finding out whether or not your hypothesis holds any water (!). It’s pointless getting hung up on blinded experiments if the blinding process destroys the very thing necessary to make the whole thing work.
They are both approximate descriptions for an unquantifiable motivating force existing in association with life forms. Whether they’re seen as equivalent or not depends on your personal conception of what they represent and how they operate. Consciousness is more than awareness in the waking state. The dreaming consciousness in sleep is no less consciousness.
Eventually. But it took a long time and a lot of resistance to overcome and many people at the time did not see it as consistent with existing thought. Homeopathy will eventually be accepted for the same reasons, even if its 19th century concepts and terminology need reframing and updating — it’s consistent with what we observe.
Homeopaths aren’t scientific researchers any more than GPs are. They’re clinicians. I suggest you take out a subscription to the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine if you want to know what’s going on in the research area.
April 13, 2008 at 11:18 pm
Andy Lewis
As I said,
what test?
And as for,
When I walk into Neal’s yard or Nelsons and pick up some pills, should I not expect an effect from the sugar pills? Does the shop assistant need to have some voodoo ‘correlation in consciousness’ as I pay my £6.60?
Seriously?
April 13, 2008 at 11:18 pm
laughingmysocksoff
bewaiwai — no need to apologise and your contributions are welcome. There’s always more than one way of approaching any issue.
And for a good article on fascism in science see Deconstructing the evidence-based discourse in health sciences: truth, power and fascism by Dave Holmes, Stuart J Murray, Amélie Perron and Geneviève Rail, Int J Evid Based Health 2006; 4: 180–186
I believe the sceptic camp consider this paper “post-modernist bollocks”. Kind of says it all really.
April 13, 2008 at 11:25 pm
Andy Lewis
Have you never read Sokal?
April 13, 2008 at 11:28 pm
laughingmysocksoff
Andy wrote
The test of verifying your hypothesis in a clinical setting on actual individual cases treated with homeopathy.
No. This isn’t necessary because you’ve already established your correlation with the remedy by deciding what you’re going in to buy and verifying it by looking at the label on the bottle, so you have that element of the non-local mechanism of action in place. That’s missing in your experiment because of the blinding. You’re relying on the physical remedy alone to carry the entire effect which, as DBRCTs have already shown, is too weak to be convincing, so if I’m going to do this blind, then I want to increase my chances of success by having another non-local correlation in place.
April 13, 2008 at 11:41 pm
laughingmysocksoff
No. Have you ever read Jan Hendrik Schön?
All this is is clashes of different world views where the frightfully unscientific tendency to throw the baby out with the bathwater is all that’s in evidence on all sides. The truth lies in the middle ground.
April 13, 2008 at 11:44 pm
Andy Lewis
Right, so homeopathy is all about ‘correlation with the remedy’. So what’s all this about succussion, minimum dose, the memory of water and so on? Some homeopaths believe that simply writing the name of the remedy down is enough to establish the ‘correlation in consciousness’. Do you?
If I walk into nelson’s and read ‘travellers diarrhoea’ on the label, is that enough to establish a future ‘correlation with the remedy’ when I go on holiday? Would blank sugar pills be OK as long as it had the correct label on it? Is the label more important than the remedy?
Can you think of a test that would determine if you were right?
April 13, 2008 at 11:44 pm
ez
Bewaiwai,
Yes, I agree with you completely that most of the wonderful prose of LMSO is lost on Andy and his friends, and indeed, that’s exactly the reason why I’m trying to say something on the “everyday common sense level”, just as you say… Thank you for understanding!
LMSO, thank you for the links!
To ANdy, I think most of the people who promote homeoprophylaxis do so in an attempt to suggest a substitute to conventional vaccination, so that people could at least avoid the harm and actually get about the same level of protection. That’s my personal opinion, again, but I think this strategy is a bit of “hit and miss” in terms of homeopathy and “walking on treacherous grounds” in terms of political standing, showing that one should really be courageous and firm and that attempts to “sit on two chairs at the same time” (do homeopathy with one hand and allopathy with the other, or rather please everyone at the same time), so strongly condemned by Hahnemann and Kent, do not really yield the results intended. But if these people think that they need to do it who am I to condemn them? I do not think one should try to assume someone else’s responsibility, but neither try to shift their own responsibility onto someone else.
April 13, 2008 at 11:47 pm
Andy Lewis
“who am I to condemn them?”
That is my point. You do not have the courage of your convictions to tell them they are killing people.
April 14, 2008 at 12:41 am
laughingmysocksoff
Let’s be clear about one thing. This is a personal hypothesis based on repeated and replicable experience combined with assessing the results so far of research into homeopathy. It’s a suspicion shared by others including some homeopathic researchers who’ve come to the same conclusions independently. I’m not saying this is what homeopathy is. I’m saying this is what I suspect is a large part of the mechanism of action of homeopathy. Among other things, it offers an explanatory rationale for people’s experiences of “paper remedies” and other demonstrations of effect produced without the sugar pill being taken. I have no experience of paper remedies myself, but if the hypothesis is sound, then there’s no reason why they shouldn’t be useful.
How do you quantify something that’s intangible? And also dependent on the idiosyncrasies of an individual consciousness? I can only answer “maybe” to your questions. It might work for some people. But that’s not going to prove anything to anyone.
Not a single test, no. Can you? I think you would have to perform a whole series of different tests and apply Occam’s razor. The difficulty in devising a test is that if the effect is non-local, how do you convincingly demonstrate the chain of cause-and-effect? Any other imputed non-local influence can be invoked as a alternative rationale by people unwilling to entertain the concept that there is some kind of immaterial influence attributable to the remedy (rather than just the practitioner and the patient) at work in all this. So it would be a matter of repetition and yet more repetition under all kinds of conditions to establish the parameters of replicability and see how well they correlate with the hypothesis.
But there is a further complication. And this is not homeopath-being-deliberately-awkward. Intent has an effect. Intent to test is quite different from intent to cure. It could well be the case that an individual is more receptive to influence under the conditions of intent to cure than they are under intent to test. This has been observed in conventional medicine, so it’s not unique to homeopathy.
April 14, 2008 at 12:50 am
laughingmysocksoff
Andy, they are only “killing people” in the realms of your imagination. There’s a small matter of personal responsibility here. If I choose to go to a homeopath for prophylactic treatment rather than visit a GP for same, that’s my choice and my responsibility, not the homeopath’s.
You seem terrified on behalf of this mythical Joe Public person who’s apparently being led astray by wicked homeopaths. But get this in perspective. Look at the immense amount of harm being done every day by conventional pharmaceutical treatment. Treatment, what’s more, that’s only been proved beneficial in around 25% of its applications. People are dying every day from something you’re trying to defend as the “safe” option, while someone has yet to be proven to have died as a result of ineffective homeopathic prophylaxis. The public are making their own minds up about what treatment they want. This is why homeopathy has become so popular.
April 14, 2008 at 6:35 am
Andy Lewis
Can you define a ‘non local action’?
April 14, 2008 at 1:09 pm
ross
“This is why homeopathy has become so popular.”
There is a massive difference between popular and good. See Westlife, Jeffrey Archer, The Daily Mail and Pirates of the Caribbean.
April 14, 2008 at 2:26 pm
givescienceachance
… and orthodox medicine.
They all have serious financial backing to push their case. However, when people have a genuine choice, they go for what is good.
History shows that when homeopathy and orthodox medicine are available on an equal basis, homeopathy is preferred. Because it is better. Even in the highly distorted market place of medicine in the UK you find long term users of orthodox medicine giving it up for homeopathy, but I have yet to hear of a long term user of homeopathy giving it up for orthodox medicine.
I’ve lots more to add to this thread when I have the time.
To be going along with, Andy said:
I quote from the full report:
“It is also possible that the methodology employed to investigate these concepts is inadequate. The essence of homeopathy lies in its individualized treatment and it could be that this quantitative approach is not the most appropriate tool. Further methodological concerns include: (i) the sensitivity of the proving definition. The verum subject experienced severe Belladonna-type symptoms that resulted in a SAE but was not classified as a prover as she experienced two false symptoms, the criteria only allowing one false symptom; (ii) young healthy subjects were recruited as they would be good responders but their consumption of alcohol and possible undisclosed recreational drug intake may minimize any homeopathic response. Lifestyle factors may colour the outcome, e.g. Belladonna-related symptoms of ‘headache’ and ‘sinking and rising sensation in his head’ were reported following high alcohol intake the previous evening.”
I would agree. The Patient Questionnaire left a lot to be desired.
April 14, 2008 at 3:58 pm
Andy Lewis
gsac said “History shows that when homeopathy and orthodox medicine are available on an equal basis, homeopathy is preferred.”
Can you substantiate any of this?
April 14, 2008 at 9:34 pm
givescienceachance
If you know enough about homeopathy to claim that it is nonsense, Andy, you should know about its history.
April 14, 2008 at 10:50 pm
Andy Lewis
But homeopathy is demonstrably a minority pursuit. Its failure is obvious. That is why I ask you to substantiate your claim.
The number of people who choose homeopathy as their sole source of medicine when they are really ill is negligible. And thankfully so.
April 14, 2008 at 11:15 pm
bewaiwai
What a nasty comment Andy Lewis. There are some very reasonable arguments by homeopaths and homeopathic supporters here. Some very bright individuals and generous comments and I don’t think they deserve your nastiness. But it is a strong statement to the homeopaths and homeopathic supporters who have been attempting to explain their methodology to a small minded physicists who has no experience in the real medicine.
Its very apparent that in YOUR small world, one devoid of any contact with the the real medical world there is little that is bright and uplifting- in opposition to the homeopaths and homeopathic supporter’ comments.
And if you had any concept of the real medical world you would see that your trap of a mind is not really very clever as far as clinical medicine is concerned. Since in the real medical world, in spite of the conservative science developments there is a lot of suffering going on that is not being met at all.
And unfortunately much of that suffering is generated by the conventional medical system that you are so strongly supporting and promoting.
April 15, 2008 at 8:35 am
Andy Lewis
So, bewaiwai. Can you substantiate the claim?
April 15, 2008 at 7:42 pm
givescienceachance
Andy said:
Don’t be silly.
Your first point is conditional on context, particularly the economic and legal context.
Your second point is pure opinion
Your third point has already been answered – I am not going to waste time rehearsing the history of homeopathy here, though the USA and India would good places for you to start.
Your last point is a conflation of unsupported opinion and a failure to take into account the context, as with your first point.
April 15, 2008 at 7:49 pm
givescienceachance
Expose The Conspiracy Says:
Could you provide evidence for this nonsense? Kent describes 12 different responses to the remedy – excluding no reaction and the reaction in the face of drug treatments. One of these reactions indicates that the patient will not recover at all; another that there is serious pathology; and so on.
If what you say were true I would ridicule it as readily as you, so I can only say that this is simply a ridiculous fantasy which helps no-one to understand the truth.
April 15, 2008 at 9:12 pm
givescienceachance
Andy Lewis quotes:
Who says:
When did homeopathy ever pretend it did?
The quote goes on:
Now I can see where some of Andy’s methods of arguing come from. What we have here is the familiar tactic:
1. Assert a piece of nonsense.
2. Claim that there is no reason why it should not be true.
3. Point out that there is no evidence for it – by reference only to RCTs and their follow-ups.
4. State a conclusion as if it were a proven fact which is only valid if you accept the absurd premise and the particular method of testing it.
The only legitimate conclusion one can draw from this is that the person in question has a vested interest which completely distorts their ability to reason scientifically – or even logically.
April 15, 2008 at 9:26 pm
givescienceachance
Homeoprophylaxis does have a basis, but the original proposal was tightly defined. You can hardly complain, though, about the attitude of some homeopaths to prophylaxis given the inadequately researched scientific basis of orthodox vaccination.
Also the BBC is quite capable of stating something which (on the very same day) it and its competitors have shown to be wholly untrue.
April 15, 2008 at 9:38 pm
Andy Lewis
Homeoprophylaxis? Show me the evidence.
April 15, 2008 at 9:40 pm
Andy Lewis
Despite all you bluster, you have not yet shown how homeopathy is in the slightest bit scientific. It’s about time you stepped up to the mark. Can you even demonstarte whu homeopathy is a ‘preferred medicine’?
April 15, 2008 at 10:01 pm
Derik
In fact you are right, these ARE the tactics, and the basis of sound scientific reasoning.
1. Assert a piece of nonsense.
Or rather the premise to be tested. We try our best to pick something coherent out of your disperate theories and assertions, but you are right, it is usually nonsense.
2. Claim that there is no reason why it should not be true.
We give the silly idea the benefit of the doubt as far as we are able, so as not to condemn it out of hand on the basis of current scientific understanding, which is, as we all know, limited.
3. Point out that there is no evidence for it – by reference only to RCTs and their follow-ups.
Data is the deal in the empirical sciences. If you don’t want to deal with data don’t try to be a science. If you don’t like RCT’s you need to think of another cunning experiment to test your ideas. You know the most about homeopathy and why you think RCT’s are bad so you are best placed to design the experiment. Designing an experiment is FUN, I enjoy it so much I talk to you guys just to get some silly ideas I can invent experiments to test, it’s an odd hobby but I enjoy it. You guys never propose experiments.
4. State a conclusion as if it were a proven fact which is only valid if you accept the absurd premise and the particular method of testing it.
The absurd premise is something we get from you, remember. We are trying desperately hard not to set up straw men but it is hard to get a coherent position out of you. We have asked you to come up with a better way of testing those possitions. Until such time as you come up with something you yourselves regard as sensible and a cunning way of testing it the evidence remains against you I’m afraid. Of course if your not interested in testing your ideas that’s your lookout, but then you really arn’t a science, and worse your compatriots are going to continue to play at being scientists so the pressure on homeopthay isn’t going to go away.
April 15, 2008 at 11:00 pm
Andy Lewis
I think Derek has hit the nail on the head – you never propose experiments. Even if you don’t have the money or can spare the time away from emptying the wallets of your customer, you should at least be able to suggest good experiments to show that what you believe is right.
Can you propose an experiment that would demonstrate any aspect of homeopathy being correct? That would show you were real scientific thinkers.
April 15, 2008 at 11:42 pm
ez
Andy,
you surely have someone particular in mind when you write
“can spare the time away from emptying the wallets of your customer”?
I’m doing all my prescribing work for free and only accept small fees from some people who say that they feel bad if they had to exploit me like this and they will not be able to come next time if I did not take their money…
April 16, 2008 at 6:46 am
Andy Lewis
ez – that is very noble of you. Can you think of an experiment?
April 16, 2008 at 7:49 am
ez
Andy, considering that you obviously think that scientific research can be done by housewifes in their spare minutes… Well, right now I don’t even have time for that. Sorry.
April 16, 2008 at 10:10 am
ross
ez, I’m not sure what you think Science is, but the Quackometer homeopathy experiment could easily be done by a housewife in her spare time. Believe it or not they are not they are not all simpering morons (housewives that is).
And since you are clearly very generous with your time why don’t you do the experiment?
April 16, 2008 at 10:23 am
Andy Lewis
I would like to echo the comment by ross. Yes, homeopathy requires some basic validating research that has not been done and could be done by anyone at very little cost and little time. You included.
My point is that you cannot even think up an experiment that would confirm or refute your beliefs let alone do an experiment. Thinking up ways of testing your beliefs in an objective manner is the bedrock of science.
As Richard Feynman said,
This thread has discussed many ways we can be fooled by healing – placebo, regression to the mean, wishful thinking, etc. With so many ways we can be fooled, do you not think that you have a huge responsibility in your healing profession to undergo proper due diligence on your beliefs?
I see little evidence that homeopaths take any care in not fooling themselves. Showing that you can think of ways of testing your beliefs through experiment is a good indicator that you are thinking and caring about the truth.
April 16, 2008 at 12:45 pm
ez
Well, I’m currently a housewife with 2 small children and can only write on the basis of what I had the chance to learn and think before, which I did – write, I mean, – but to come up with something serious – suggest a test, or something, would require a lot of intellectual work, I cannot do that know no matter how I wished.
If Feynmann felt that he is easy to fool that does not mean that everybody else is equally easy fooled as well. My observations show that people often project their internal state onto others – obviously, that is true re Feynmann?
And it’s very funny that you insist on someone SHOWING something to you over internet – you regard this sufficiently reliable? Obviously, if you have not seen a real homeopath in real life, you cannot see but “little evidence that homeopaths take any care in not fooling themselves.” I hope you are aware how treacherous the internet communications can be?
I’m writing a lot because I was upset that someone writes so nastily about something they clearly don’t understand or even try to, otherwise I really hardly have time to get enough sleep, although I do not really see why I have to explain all this to you or even expect that you beleive what I write. I guess I’ll just return to my family commitments and to the people to whom I prescribe over the phone mostly. Thanks for reading, everyone!
April 16, 2008 at 12:59 pm
Andy Lewis
Believe me, I am trying to understand homeopaths and homeopathy. Do you believe that I am sincere in my concern? When I see people giving sugar pills as protection against malaria, do you not understand that people should be alarmed?
Thinking up tests is not hard. I did it. Did you read my challenge? It is dead simple. Just be able to tell 6 different pills apart when you don’t know what they are before hand. Ought to be easy – and would convince me – but all I get is excuses. I have shown quite easily how trust can be established over the internet. It’s not hard.
And, are you calling Feynman a fool? His words appear to be very wise to me and reflect human nature – we have a tendency to believe what we wish to be true rather than what is true. We need to guard against that if we value truth. That is all science is – the relentless testing of what we think is true. Homeopaths unwillingness to objectively test their claims makes it unscientific.
The truest thing you said was this: “My observations show that people often project their internal state onto others “. Are you confident that you do not do the same when judging your own competence as a homeopath?
April 16, 2008 at 1:02 pm
ross
“I’m writing a lot because I was upset that someone writes so nastily about something they clearly don’t understand or even try to”
I am trying to understand it. It seems the people who are practising it aren’t.
OK ez I understand you are busy, but how about you devout a small fraction of the time you spend on homeopathy to having a think about ways you could test your beliefs, even if you don’t get around to carrying them out. I’m sure it would be a useful exercise and may even benefit your customers.
April 16, 2008 at 5:09 pm
Derik
Ez. Some of the best experiments can be done by a house wife with kids. I will use one to illustrate how simple good science can be and also why I expect homeopaths that are serious about helping people ought to be interested in designing experiments to test their ideas.
This experiment is most fun when done with a 5-10 year old child and, crucially, can be eaten in an egg mayonnaise sandwich afterward.
Buy a packet of cress seeds and get hold of a small plastic food tub. Put some kitchen towel at the bottom of the tub and scatter on some cress. At this point a stencil can be used to get the cress seeds to form the shape of a star or heart or the child’s initial etc but this is not essential. Find the mass of the tub, towel and seeds on the kitchen scales and note it down. Gently moisten the towel and place the tub in a sunny spot. Gently water every day. When the cress has grown a few inches high, let the towel dry out and weight the tub again. Note the mass. The mass of the container will have gone up whilst the only matter the cress has had access to is in the water and the air! So plants must get the mater they need to grow from these two things! Now eat your cress with egg mayonnaise sandwich.
Now not only do you have a tasty lunch but you also have a “model system” you can use to find further things out about plants. What happens if you do it in the dark? What happens if you change the proportions of the gasses the cress have access to in some controlled atmosphere? What happens if you genetically modify the cress? By engaging in further, endless, experiments you can work out many things about the plant, in the same way as you can work out the hidden sequence of coloured pegs in that child’s game Master Mind.
An experiment to prove homeopathy works is like the first cress growing experiment. More important than silencing sceptics like me, it would provide a jumping of point to further experiment. That would improve your understanding and permit you to heal people more effectively. So I say; if you want to be good homeopaths and heal people effectively, you need to start doing experiments.
PS. There is a deliberate mistake in the first cress experiment I described, you should be able to find it and think of a way round it, if you are good scientists.
April 16, 2008 at 10:05 pm
givescienceachance
Andy said:
What Derik said was so stupid, I will not even consider any further comments from that source.
As for experiments. How often do you test Netwon’s laws before you use them? They have already been proved, so you don’t bother as the use of that knowledge in practice constantly confirms its validity. The same is the case for homeopaths. Every person treated is a test of the laws, and every response to treatment involves a reassessment of the minutiae of those laws. Every treatment is a scientific experiment.
On the other hand every use of drugs confirms the inadequacy of the theory they are based on, since they produce side effects.
As for your claim to a genuine interest or willingness to learn, this is blatant nonsense, since:
1. You continually show yourself unable to explain anything about medicine.
2. You continually show a woeful lack of knowledge of homeopathy.
3. You ignore any information that does not suit your prejudices.
4. You refuse to acknowledge any argument which questions your statements.
As far as I can see, all you do is sink back to repeating your favourite lies and stupidities, and “against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain”.
April 16, 2008 at 10:33 pm
Derik
Every treatment is a seperate n=1 experiment, you can tell nothing from that, no matter how many times you do it.
April 16, 2008 at 10:56 pm
Derik
You can actually describe the kind of experiment you might like to do; which is other wise impossible due to lack of funds, or is really physically impossible, as a kind of thought experiment to illustrate what you think is going on.
So lets imagine I do the following:
I find a homeopath and ask them to treat their patients as normal, but if, after examining them, they chose and the patient consents, they can enrol said patient on my study.
Now when an enrolled patient goes the pharmacy they get randomly assigned to either receive the medication proscribed by the homeopath or to take a remedy free pill.
They continue to go to their homeopath at regular intervals and the homeopath is asked to tell which group the patient is in. Do we think they will be able to?
I think some of the homeopaths here would say that of course the homeopath could tell which was which because of the dramatic effect taking that the correct remedy has on patients.
I think other homeopaths would say that no; the task would be impossible because it is quantum entangling between patient, therapist and remedy that is important so that even the blank pills will have the dramatic effect.
So there you have an experiment to test a controversy between you. Science you see.
I am an idiot though.
April 17, 2008 at 4:56 am
Jeff Garrington
“givescienceachance” says(pasted from comment April 15th)
“The only legitimate conclusion one can draw from this is that the person in question has a vested interest which completely distorts their ability to reason scientifically – or even logically.”
Would you exclude yourself and all homeopaths from that statement.
April 17, 2008 at 7:03 am
givescienceachance
Jeff Garrington, don’t be absurd! You posted only part of the information, and asked if it can be applied to a large group of individuals.
April 17, 2008 at 7:45 am
Andy Lewis
GSAC said:
Again, a very able verification of you lack of scientific knowledge. Gravity continues to be tested to this day. Scientists have good reason to think that our theory of gravity is not complete and breaks down in extreme situations. Experiments to test alternatives continue to this day.
e.g. http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/LIGO_web/about/factsheet.html
Your own ‘tests’ on patients may well just serve to reinforce delusion as you have no way of telling how a patient would have progressed without treatment. Homeopaths claim all customers are individuals and yet appear to have insight into how an individual customer will react by reference to other ‘individuals’! Do you not see the irony?
We have a situation where there are two opposing and mutually exclusive descriptions of what happens to people undergoing homeopathic treatment. My description depends on plausible mechanism of the natural progression of illness, false attribution and even the placebo effect. Your description depends on implausible life forces, miasms or whatever (it is difficult to actually get you to say what you believe).
Who is right? How do we find out? Experiment? Once gain, why not give science a chance and suggest a scientific experiment to determine who is right? I can. Can you?
April 17, 2008 at 7:52 am
Andy Lewis
I would also like to answer the charge that “You continually show yourself unable to explain anything about medicine.” I have given you clear answers to your questions about the theoretical underpinnings of medicine but you do not acknowledge my answers. That is because your questions are laden with assumptions about what sort of answer I give and I have made this clear.
It is like you asking me “What sort of cheese is the moon made of?” and I answer, “The moon is made of rock”. You then jump up and down and shout “He refuses to say what sort of cheese the moon is made of!!”
April 17, 2008 at 3:01 pm
Jeff Garrington
“givescienceachance” sorry if you think I am being absurd. I am referring to you as an individual. You appear to have a vested interest in Homeopathy, is there not the chance that it distorts your ability to reason scientifically or even logically.
Your full statement at the end of your piece here. “Now I can see where some of Andy’s methods of arguing come from. What we have here is the familiar tactic:
1. Assert a piece of nonsense.
2. Claim that there is no reason why it should not be true.
3. Point out that there is no evidence for it – by reference only to RCTs and their follow-ups.
4. State a conclusion as if it were a proven fact which is only valid if you accept the absurd premise and the particular method of testing it.
The only legitimate conclusion one can draw from this is that the person in question has a vested interest which completely distorts their ability to reason scientifically – or even logically.”
Sorry if I have misunderstood, but your reply leads me to suspect that I am correct. I did ask if it would exclude you.
April 17, 2008 at 6:26 pm
givescienceachance
Andy says:
Earlier you failed to explain either the mechanism of the placebo effect or that of disease, and you rejected the idea that there is a science of medicine, so how is your description plausible?
You insist on an implausible biochemic model, despite the fact that it fails in practice in orthodox medicine and is obviously incapable of explaining homeopathy, and then claim that any alternative view is implausible.
If I make what you call “assumptions” about your answers it is because they are so incomplete or inaccurate that it is impossible to debate them with clarity.
April 17, 2008 at 7:34 pm
Andy Lewis
There is nothing to explain in homeopathy. Show me the data that needs explaining. I do not need to explain anecdote and delusion.
The placebo effect is observable and measurable. That is fact, even if there is no full description of mechanisms for it. Homeopaths are quite fond of saying just because you cannot explain something does not mean it exists. Placebo responses are highly plausible though based on known psychology and even brain-body interactions. The brain is quite capable of triggering biochemical responses in the body.
But that honeopathic data, Where is it? Where are the effects that need new explanations? Experiments please.
April 18, 2008 at 12:42 pm
givescienceachance
I have asked you to explain the principles of orthodox medicine, not homeopathy, and it is those principles you have had so much difficulty with. You seem simply ignorant of the facts and principles of homeopathy.
The placebo effect is observable and measurable. That is fact, even if there is no full description of mechanisms for it.
Well no, that is not strictly true. The placebo effect is any effect with an unknown causative process, which may include any number of unknown factors. As a result it is not measurable in any significant way, but is only the acknowledgement of our ignorance about what is actually happening. An example of this fact is the wide variation in the level of placebo response in different trials.
Are all anti-homeopaths illiterate? I will assume that you meant:
“Homeopaths are quite fond of saying just because you cannot explain something does not mean it DOES NOT EXIST” and that you did not mean that “known psychology and even brain-body interactions” were generally contra-indications of placebo responses.
If the only model needed for a living organism is the biochemic one, then I would be interested to know HOW a non-biochemical stimulus of the biochemical brain triggers a specific appropriate curative process in the biochemical body.
Furthermore, if the placebo effect is a psychological one, it should be consistent across all trials, since the proportion of people susceptible to such response should be consistent. In fact the level of ‘placebo response’ differs enormously from one trial to another, which indicates that there are multiple factors involved not just one.
April 18, 2008 at 1:05 pm
givescienceachance
You quote me as saying:
You then comment:
Yet again you insist on being not only offensive but stupid.
How many architects or builders feel it necessary to conduct experiments to verify gravity before they start work? How many athletes, dancers or circus performers? The borders of any science should be investigated, but that does not mean that everyone who makes practical use of scientific laws should be an experimental investigator of their limits.
Homeopaths use laws which have been clearly defined. As a result they can recognise the effects of complex interactions in the responses of individual patients and start to unravel the different causative factors. Sometimes this is an extremely difficult process, while at other times it may be more straightforward, but the laws governing the process provide a firm foundation for understanding what is happening, as any scientific laws should.
Investigation and systemization of the limits of these laws, whether in clinical practice or in relation to the mechanisms by which they work, is the responsibility of those who wish to dedicate their time to research, not of those who simply apply the laws in practice. The latter group have only the responsibility to make the most of any increase in our understanding. This is one of the reasons for commitments to continuing professional development for homeopaths.
April 18, 2008 at 6:26 pm
Andy Lewis
name them and provide the evidence for them. show me the science.
in your continuing professional development, would you be happy signing off this course on medical astrology provided for homeopaths?
http://www.quackometer.net/blog/2008/04/medical-astrology-forseeing-future-of.html
April 18, 2008 at 8:39 pm
givescienceachance
Andy, I thought you knew about homeopathy. Do you mean to say that you criticise it without knowing anything about the laws which govern it and the research which led to these laws being formulated?
April 19, 2008 at 8:41 am
Andy Lewis
Well, I do know of homeopathic ‘laws’. Like herrings law. But these do not fall into the scientific definition of laws. They are mere hypotheses at best unsupported by any objective evidence or descriptive framework. In fact, Herrings Law sits outside of all known mechanisms by which the body works and should have been dismissed yonks ago as part of a pre-scientific understanding of the body.
Can you point me to a summary of all the peer reviewed work that establishes Herrings Law as fact?
Homeopaths believe in Herrings Law because they are intellectually dishonest. When their subjective observations appear to fit with Herring then they are happy. When they do not, they say they must have chosen the wrong simillimum or other gobbledygook. It is essentially immune to disproof by homeopaths and so is not scientific.
April 19, 2008 at 10:57 am
givescienceachance
Herrings? I thought they were fish.
What do you class as “objective evidence” and a “descriptive framework”? And don’t say RCTs, because they were introduced as a compromise solution to deal with the absence of a scientific theory. Methodologically the more they are needed because of the extent of unknown factors the less they are capable of providing “scientific” evidence.
Hypothesis based on observation, tested through experiment until it is confirmed as being capable of accurate prediction is the scientific method, and the method used to establish the theoretical principles of homeopathy.
You really should learn more about medicine, too, before making rash pronouncements such as:
Assuming you mean Hering’s law, it can be tested by following ANY case history through its development over time. In orthodox medicine there is not even a hypothesis (let alone a theory) which can be used to identify whether the progress of a patient is towards health or greater disease.
April 20, 2008 at 11:44 am
Andy Lewis
Do you suspect that this statement may make you look a little extreme? Could you seriously defend this statement? Take for example malaria. A disease dear to the heart of hahnemann. Modern science recognises that malaria is caused by a parasite, transmitted by the mosquito. The presence of parasites in the blood is a pretty good indicator of the progress of this disease. Do you really want to defend your ideas?
And to answer your question. RCTs can provide objective evidence. They are a measurement technue that removes large swathes of potential bias. These measurements can then be used to assess the correctness of various hypotheses. That is how sience works.
April 20, 2008 at 11:45 am
Andy Lewis
Can you point me to a summary of all the peer reviewed work that establishes Herrrings Law as fact?
April 20, 2008 at 6:45 pm
givescienceachance
I am glad you mentioned malaria. Malaria is not caused by a parasite; it is caused by the presence of a parasite AND the inability of the individual to resist the parasite. As with any disease, not everyone contracts malaria. In terms of the progress towards health or disease, malaria offers a perfect example of the weakness of your argument. Those suffering sickle-cell anaemia will not have parasites in the blood, but you are surely not saying that they are healthy, or even healthier than someone with malaria?
To understand the relationship between health and both acute and chronic diseases, it is necessary to have at least a hypothetical analysis, but such a thing does not exist in orthodox medicine. In fact, orthodox medical practitioners who know what they are talking when they discuss these issues (unlike anti-homeopathic bloggers in the main) point out the worrying shift in ill-health away from “treatable” acute illnesses to ever greater numbers of “untreatable” chronic illnesses. What they find most worrying about this is the fact that the growth in these chronic illnesses is too great to be explained by increases in life-expectancy. The terrible implication is that the treatments for acute diseases are causing the chronic ones. Without even a hypothesis as to the relationship of these factors to each other, of course, they have no scientific method of establishing the truth.
Hering’s law has been peer reviewed by practising homeopaths for well over 100 years, and it has proven highly effective as a guide to what is happening in a person’s health.
As regards RCTs, they do not provide “objective evidence”; they cannot possibly provide it as they are used precisely because so many factors are unknown that the experimenters cannot control them. With an unknown quantity of unknown factors forming part of the experiment, the best result achievable is a statistical one, which is the barest approximation to objectivity. The results become objective only when all the factors are known, but their interactions are unknown – but then there is no need for the RCT methodology anymore.
“That is how science works”
April 20, 2008 at 8:33 pm
Andy Lewis
I’m sorry. Was any of that relevant? The malaria parasite is a necessary condition for the development of malaria. Whether or not it is sufficient is immaterial. How does your weird argument invalidate the idea that you can access malaria in people by the presence of the parasite?
If homeopaths have been peer reviewing herrrrings law, perhaps you could suppl references?
April 20, 2008 at 9:38 pm
givescienceachance
But sufficiency is crucial. To assert that a partial cause renders a complete cause immaterial, is to deny the basis of a scientific understanding, since it means rejecting the facts in favour of an interpretation. Science is founded on changing the theory to fit the facts, ALL the facts, not just the convenient ones.
All of what I posted was relevant, and its truth does not disappear because it comprises facts you find inconvenient.
But perhaps I should pretend to have forgotten that you keep demonstrating that you do not know anything about medicine or homeopathy … or scientific principles. Perhaps I should explain … again. I think not.
The laziness you exhibit in your writing would appear to be a reflection of the laziness of your thinking, however ironic you may wish it to appear.
April 20, 2008 at 9:39 pm
givescienceachance
By the way, what happened to the parrots?
April 20, 2008 at 9:48 pm
Andy Lewis
You heading down a weird track. This malaria thing statrted beacuse you said that real medicine had no way of identifying the progression of disease. The presence of large numbers of malaria parasites is a pretty good indicator. Remove the parasites. Remove the disease. You do not need herrrring to tell you that. All this to avoid admiting that there is not a shred of scientific evidence behind homeopathy.
Where are those references for the Red Hering Law of Cure?
April 20, 2008 at 9:57 pm
Andy Lewis
This has been going on qiute a while and no homeopath on this thread has yet pointed to one bit of scientific evidence to support their musings.
So, let’s keep it simple. Anyone. What is you best bit of scientifc data, paper, meta-analysis, anything, that would suggets homeopathy is not just a set of delusions and the pills, placebos?
What is your best shot? Anything?
April 21, 2008 at 10:30 am
givescienceachance
You are getting desperate, aren’t you?
I explained that your opinion, repeated as follows:
is simply not good enough. If you define disease on the basis of partial causation, you have a false definition, and every conclusion you draw from that definition will also be false. As someone who advocates the use of scientific methods, you should not need anyone to tell you this.
Hering’s Law was the result of observation, hypothesis, testing of the observation in practice and then formulation of the law. It has been used in practice, and so tested again and again for more than 100 years. That is the scientific method.
You need to justify your claim that the methodology of the RCT is superior to the scientific method before you can reasonably require people to value the RCT over and above the scientific method. I notice that you have not done this, though.
April 21, 2008 at 5:26 pm
Derik
I think your method is more like medieval scholasticism than science in that you think with definitions, logic and metaphysics but without empirical data. You have started from a definition of disease and arrived at homeopathy without going through a sanity check in between. It reminds me of Anselms ontological argument for the existence of god:
1. God is, by definition, a being greater than anything that can be imagined.
2. Existence both in reality and in imagination is greater than existence solely in one’s imagination.
3. Therefore, God must exist in reality; if He did not, God would not be a being greater than anything that can be imagined.
It’s cleaver, impeccably logical and utter nonsense.
I am also reminded of a quote from the hitch hikers guide to the galaxy regarding the Nutrimatic Drinks Dispenser:
When the ‘Drink’ button is pressed it makes an instant but highly detailed examination of the subject’s taste buds, a spectroscopic analysis of the subject’s metabolism, and then sends tiny experimental signals down the neural pathways to the taste centres of the subject’s brain to see what is likely to be well received. However, no-one knows quite why it does this because it then invariably delivers a cupful of liquid that is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.
You seem to have a desperately sophisticated theory of disease, you carefully determine the entire symptom state of your patients and then, having invested all that effort, you prescribe them all the same sugar pill. It really is very funny.
April 21, 2008 at 5:47 pm
givescienceachance
April 22, 2008 at 10:56 am
Derik
You are right of course; the ontological argument only appears to be logical if you aren’t aware of the slight of hand you pointed out.
April 22, 2008 at 5:35 pm
Andy Lewis
This has been going on qiute a while and no homeopath on this thread has yet pointed to one bit of scientific evidence to support their musings.
So, let’s keep it simple. Anyone. What is you best bit of scientifc data, paper, meta-analysis, anything, that would suggets homeopathy is not just a set of delusions and the pills, placebos?
What is your best shot? Anything?
April 22, 2008 at 10:51 pm
bewaiwai
Andy,
I have to reiterate but it will do no good.
If you actually would read a homeopathic supporter’s comment you would have found some wonderful scientific evidence here and superior arguments.
But then again, I doubt that you really read anything except to pick out something you can get your redundant response in- “homeopathy is unscientific”.
I’ve come to the conclusion that you are a pseudo- scientist of the worst sort- one that believes so profoundly in the status quo that he /she (like gimp) has closed off his mind to any new evidence.
Whatever the evidence for homeopathy you will find a way to keep it out of that trap of a mind of yours.
April 23, 2008 at 7:30 am
Andy Lewis
evidence… what is your best shot at showing homeopathy is not a placebo…
Does anyone have the guts to answer this simple question?
April 23, 2008 at 12:47 pm
bewaiwai
The evidence has been rolled out in front of you on numerous occasions. You have chosen to ignore it or “expel” it and then claim it isn’t there. I’ve come to the conclusion that whatever positive evidence is presented to you it will be expelled or ignored in the future as well. And every scientist that comes out in favor of homeopathy, (and there are, in spite of your protestations many, including the person who has authored this blog) will be vilified by you.
Your intention has never been a win-win. So Andy, I concede that in your tiny world you have created a win for YOURSELF. Therefore not much for me to say anymore.
Except there is a big bright world out there. There are intelligent, well-socialized, bright and positive people who are getting much benefit out of homeopathy. Millions in fact. You can vilify and keep attempting to censor them from your oddly pugnacious and heavily restrictive place. But the enthusiasm for homeopathy is growing because it works and it works profoundly!
Some great comments here- thanks laughing my socks off and all who support- you are doing a great service under difficult circumstances.
Bye for now….
Love to all, including you Andy.
April 23, 2008 at 1:39 pm
Andy Lewis
“But the enthusiasm for homeopathy is growing because it works and it works profoundly! ”
Still wondering what your best evidence for this is.
April 23, 2008 at 6:42 pm
Derik
Back up top there Givescienceachance suggests that one Dr J.T. Kent had identified 12 patient responses to homeopathic remedies. That seems a fair starting point as “best evidence”, in the absence of an actual homeopath picking something. I’ve tried googleing for him but couldn’t find anything that seemed relevant to what GSAC says. Perhaps someone could point us at the relevant book / paper so we could have a look?
April 24, 2008 at 12:01 am
ez
12 responses are listed in Lecture 35 in the Lectures on Homeopathic Philosophy by J.T.Ket, which you can find online, I just did. Give a try if you really wish.
April 24, 2008 at 12:01 am
ez
J.T.Kent, I meant, sorry for typo
April 24, 2008 at 5:50 am
Andy Lewis
Ahhh. Yes the wise man. He says in lecture 35…
“Among the commonest things that remedies do is to aggravate or ameliorate.”
No way? The patient often either gets better or worse and both are proof of homeopathic effectiveness? This is powerful medicine, dude.
I hope this is not the best evidence on offer.
April 24, 2008 at 7:38 am
ez
So you could not get beyond the 21st sentence in the chapter and try to see what he meant by this statement?
April 24, 2008 at 9:47 am
Derik
Ah cool, found it, will look properly later.
April 24, 2008 at 11:01 am
givescienceachance
Andy said:
The problem is that you have a very narrow and unscientific idea of what constitutes evidence, so you are not making it simple at all.
The RCT is not the basis of science, the scientific method is. The RCT is what scientists use when they do not have enough knowledge to be able to produce even a hypothesis about the principles of what may be happening. The hypotheses come much later, and the theory very much later. The problem with the RCTs occurs when people claim that they balance out unknown factors, but if they are unknown, how can you know that they are being balanced? The answer is that you can’t.
Homeopathy developed a theory by applying the scientific method, and the theory has to be tested not by applying a redundant and extremely blunt tool (the RCT), but by a properly focussed experiment. Each case constitutes such an experiment, and each has to be analysed by application of the theory to see whether the it explains the result or not.
One of the greatest disservices medicine has done science is to set the RCT above the scientific method in an attempt to defend its lack of scientific foundations. As a result it has made it acceptable to always produce drugs which cause side effects, even though these side effects lead to the regular withdrawal of drugs. If any proof were needed of the ineffectual science of the RCT, drug tests are that proof.
So if you want evidence, you will have to study the theory of homeopathy, learn about how it is applied, and conduct appropriate experiments to test it, just as you would have to for any other field of science.
April 24, 2008 at 11:52 am
Andy Lewis
ez said: “So you could not get beyond the 21st sentence in the chapter and try to see what he meant by this statement?”
The whole thing is hilarious. The simple question I would ask about ‘lecture 35′ is what possible outcome could not be explained by homeopathy? This is exactly what I meant earlier when I said that every outcome in homeopathy has a narrative to explain the ’success’ of homeopathy. Each of Kent’s 12 responses is a ‘just so story’ applied after the event to explain whatever happens whether the patient gets better or not. A simple test to see if Kent is sceintific or not is to ask what experiment could you devise to see if Kent is right or not? Could you? It is inherently unfalsifiable. There is no way to test if Kent is right or wrong. There is no conceivable test that would demonstrate that he is talking nonsense. Homeopaths make the mistake of only setting tests that could prove him right. And, of course, he is right everytime. It is just not science.
And as for gsac’s long and incoherent piece about RCT’s, I repeat: Anyone. What is you best bit of scientific data, paper, meta-analysis, anything, that would suggets homeopathy is not just a set of delusions and the pills, placebos?
April 24, 2008 at 6:52 pm
givescienceachance
What possible outcome of releasing something from your hand while standing at sea-level could not be explained by the theory of gravity? That is what science does – and the orthodox medicine of the drug companies does not do.
Not every example given by Kent is a ’success’ – the very first one is a statement of having done harm. Others detail the information gained about the case by the response, not the ’success’ of the remedy. The absence of a response is by definition an indication that the remedy has not had any effect. These responses are verifiable. A homeopath can identify the presence of pathology by observing the second response and recommend that the patient gets a GP to make tests, for example.
If you find the remarks about RCTs incoherent, then you obviously do not understand them. Perhaps you would like to explain their scientific foundations?
If not, perhaps you would like to explain what scientific measure we are supposed to apply to tests of the theory of homeopathy?
April 24, 2008 at 10:34 pm
Andy Lewis
Firstly, let’s examine Kent. A scientific theory should be able to make new predictions about the world – something that other ideas or theories do not make. If the data backs up the prediction then we can be confident we have uncovered new knowledge about the world. Where in Kent’s Lecture 35 does he say anything that would lead to a testable prediction? What could we conclude from Lecture 35 that we previously did not know about the world and then go out, do some sort of test, and see if it was true?
We can’t. It’s not science. It’s just babble. Meaningless words.
Now, not all of homeopathy is so theoretically impotent. The ideas about ‘provings’ make predictions about the world that are not explainable in any other way – that ultra dilute remedies can produce distinct symptom patterns in healthy people. That is something that can be tested. But, hang on, after 200 years, where is the data that shows this to be true? Surely, homeopaths would have given science a chance to show that this really is a true description of reality. This is the subject of my homeopathic challenge on my site. I want homeopaths to create some data to show that this might be true. You know that none of them are prepared to do it.
Where is this scientific data for homeopathy? You say homeopathy is scientific and yet fail to show any scientific evidence. Anything that could withstand any sort of scrutiny?
And as for RCTs – you simply do not understand them. They are just a measurement technique that is quite good at removing biases. They are no different to calibrated rulers, thermometers, x-ray photometers and scales. Just a measurement technique – a way of counting in an unbiases way. Nothing magic. But quite useful. Homeopathy rejects them because they are scared of them because they can expose wishful thinking.
But, back to that evidence. gsac said,
Can you point to any URL where such a test is properly written up for scrutiny?
April 24, 2008 at 11:39 pm
ez
Andy,
actually one can understand your doubts if one reads what Kent wrote as “plain text”, so to say, without having any clinical experience of observing patient’s reactions to various stimuli for some significant period of time. But all your discussions and questions resemble very much an attempt to distinguish an orange and tangerine without having either seen, nor tasted not one of them. I strongly doubt that any chemical tests would be able to decisively display the clear difference between the two. But I cannot say for sure, of course, and it is just an analogy to suggest to you that what a doctor with a lot of clinical experience would be able to see almost at first glance – so to all the words like “amelioration” and “aggravation” – would you expect an aggravation as a result of a placebo effect, by the way? – should actually be supplied with adjectives like PROMINENT and DECISIVE or STRIKING. Even what is written in the REPERTORY of KENT, have you seen the book and looked through the rubrics? – in order for symptom to be regarded as a symptom and not just a part of a normal day-to-day fluctuation of symptoms in a stable picture, it should be really strong. If it says “loquacity”, for example, it’s not just a chatty person, it’s someone who is almost obsessively talking ALL THE TIME, only then you can you use it as a symptom.
What possible reaction cannot be explained by homeopathy, you say, well, it should qualify for a REACTION in the first place, and this – although readily observable by an unprejudiced person, – is not easy to express numerically, if possible at all in some cases. So whatever you write just says that you have no experience in observing real people in real-life situations, and without this your doubts are not really credible to any sensible person who is observant enough.
In the same lecture Kent has said:
“It is taken for granted after a prescription has been made, and it is an accurate prescription, that it has acted,.
….
Of course, if a prescription is not related to the case, if it is a prescription that effects no changes, it does not take long to. see what to do ; much patient waiting for a foolish prescription is but loss of time, and that should be taken into account among the observations.”
Which means that if NO REACTION, that is NO DEVIATION FROM THE NORMAL DAILY OR PERIODICAL FLUCTUATIONS OF THE SYMPTOMS TYPICAL FOR THAT PATIENT has occurred, then all that he writes after that does not apply. For a properly trained and sufficiently observant doctor noticing this is very easy, that’s why many doctors after they have seen a good remedy really work recognise the difference immediately and become “homeopathy coverts…” But one can only wonder how this can actually be quantified.
April 25, 2008 at 8:13 am
Andy Lewis
ez – here is another of the great paradoxes of homeopathy.You say individualisation is so important since we are all so unique in our selves, our illnesses and the way we respond to remedies and yet you want to compare a response to ‘typical’ symptoms.
Anyway, you have not answered the question about how we could set a test to see if Kent was right. Basically, you have said, “Trust me, I am trained and senstive. You will have to take my word for it that I am right”. That is not in anyway scientific. I claim that you are just interpreting the normal course of illnesses though homeopathic narratives and are fooling yourself.
So, how can we tell who is right? What tests and data can we gather?
April 25, 2008 at 1:36 pm
ez
Andy, I did not say anything like “you have to take my word for it”, on the contrary, I said that YOU YOURSELF, with YOUR OWN EYES AND MIND (needed in order to analyse the observations) have to do all the tests and observations you feel appropriate, and compare your results to that of other people, even to what Kent wrote – he was a very experienced doctor, but he is not the only one, you could find other descriptions of possible responses to remedies if you tried to, and after you have conducted a set of observations which ever you personally like most, you can do all the inferences you feel to be correct. But you’d better collect YOUR OWN TEST RESULTS and DATA for that. You and any other sceptic out there, that is.
WHile we are at it, Derik has written somewhere above that “homeopaths start from theory etc etc” – wrong! Just as wrong as can be! Hahnemann started without any theory at all except that he saw that what he has learned first – allopathic methods of his time – did not work and he’d like to have something that works – and on the basis of this, and of all other classical literature on medicine, he started making experiments on himself, his friends and family etc., and only after he had sufficient amount of empirical data, he has started to analyse it and formulate his theories, updating them each time they did not seem to explain some new observation that he or his followers made…
I use homeopathy because I did some observations of my own way before I ever signed up to the homeopathy school and learned about the theory etc., I just observed first that the remedy worked – obviously I was lucky to have the remedy for my daughter selected correctly – then I learned just a little bit, and it worked again when I selected it well, and only then I decided to learn still more and signed up for studying. So I did my bit of experimental research, and found it compelling enough to switch to this form of medicine.
I even do not know any single person who has started by learning the theory before ever trying to use a remedy, well, maybe they exist, but I did not come across them. I do not use supplements, I am sceptical about ostheopathy – but maybe I did not see a good practitioner, I have seen acupuncture used in such a terrible way that the idea to find a good acupuncturist who knows what he is doing makes me desperate – only now I don’t need one, when I have homeopathy. You are after wrong people here, Andy, if exposing quacks is your real purpose – otherwise, I prefer not to comment on what you are trying to do.
April 25, 2008 at 2:23 pm
Andy Lewis
ez – you are missing the point. The fact is that it is impossible to devise a test that would show that Kent was right. It does not matter who does it. The fact that no one can think up a test of Kent highlights that what he is saying is gibberish and not science. If you can prove me wrong, please do. What possible test can there be of Kent’s ramblings? Do you accept that Kent’s words are untestable?
You may well feel that you have observed remedies working, but what you have actually seen is the normal course of disease and toy have falsely attributed the cause to the remedy. I write about this at length in my latest post.
http://www.quackometer.net/blog/2008/04/close-doors-button.html
Voltaire wrote “The art of medicine consists of amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.” Science has allowed us to be a little more active than that. Homeopaths stick rigidly to Voltaire’s maxim.
April 25, 2008 at 2:24 pm
Andy Lewis
ez – you are missing the point. The fact is that it is impossible to devise a test that would show that Kent was right. It does not matter who does it. The fact that no one can think up a test of Kent highlights that what he is saying is gibberish and not science. If you can prove me wrong, please do. What possible test can there be of Kent’s ramblings? Do you accept that Kent’s words are untestable?
You may well feel that you have observed remedies working, but what you have actually seen is the normal course of disease and you have falsely attributed the cause to the remedy. I write about this at length in my latest post.
http://www.quackometer.net/blog/2008/04/close-doors-button.html
Voltaire wrote “The art of medicine consists of amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.” Science has allowed us to be a little more active than that. Homeopaths stick rigidly to Voltaire’s maxim.
April 25, 2008 at 4:03 pm
givescienceachance
Andy said:
Now there are some empty words! What is this “normal course of illnesses” you are referring to? It is the observation of the development of signs and symptoms common to many patients used to define the illnesses. A circular argument with no scientific support or proof.
You also said:
Where homeopathy differs from the model you use, is that its starting point is not an arbitrary selection of defining symptoms, but the ACTUAL symptoms in toto. Furthermore, just as human beings have individuality while still being human, so they have individual symptoms at the same time as having common (or typical) symptoms. In order to treat the individual you need to take into account the individuality of the individual. Where is the scientific justification for treating everyone as identical when it is a fact that that they are not identical? And where is the justification when the evidence shows that the individual response to treatment cannot be discounted?
Kent was stating his observations of what could occur after a remedy acted. He linked these observations of the different reactions to his knowledge of pathology subsequently discovered in some cases and other changes in the state of health of the patient. These are observations, not a theory. The theory is homeopathy, and the observations are new knowledge about the progress of illness acquired through application of the theory.
One test, as I stated above, is that a homeopath can identify pathology by the reaction to the remedy, and investigations can confirm this.
Can you point me to a URL which conclusively proves you to be one person as opposed to several people?
Can you point me to an RCT in which every unknown factor has been verifiably prevented from introducing a bias into the results?
Garbage in, garbage out, as they say. Your ramblings do not show any signs of being even remotely so well founded (especially in medicine) as the conclusions of Kent, an extremely successful medical practitioner. At the same time, although his clinical observations have been exceedingly valuable to other practitioners, Kent’s attempts to explain homeopathy philosophically are deeply flawed.
April 25, 2008 at 5:39 pm
Derik
Am very tired as have been supervising a mechanical measuring device that has been running for several days. Having asked about Kent I’m not actually in a fit state to look at his lecture, sounds like comedy gold though. Will look over the weekend.
You say:
Can you point me to an RCT in which every unknown factor has been verifiably prevented from introducing a bias into the results?
Can you point me to a URL which conclusively proves you to be one person as opposed to several people?
The first point is silly. One of the key things about a well written paper is that it gives the reader enough information to think of sources of bias that even the Authors might not have thought off. They don’t always manage that mind, but that’s the idea. As Andy said not trusting RCT’s is like not trusting a rulers to measure distance. Of course some RCT’s are misleading just as some rulers are bent or warped but this is the exception rather than the rule.
The second point is also silly. Science is a communal, cultural activity. IMRAD papers are the standard way by which we communicate with one another. One might expect that if homeopathy were a living science some such communication would be going on.
Ez, when I said homeopaths start with theory I didn’t mean Hanniman in his lifetime, but you guys in your lifetimes. Most scientific theories are constantly being retested in new contexts as new science is done. For example newtonian physics is tested when we send a probe into space, if the theory were wrong, the mission would fail.
If homeopathy ever were a living science, it now appears to be a dead one.
April 25, 2008 at 7:45 pm
M Simpson
I’ve been following this discussion for a while and felt I should start chiping in, especially as this is so silly:
“In the same lecture Kent has said: “It is taken for granted after a prescription has been made, and it is an accurate prescription, that it has acted”,”
The question is: how does a homeopath determine that they have prescribed an ‘accurate prescription’? They can only claim it was an accurate prescription when they see an effect. But Kent said that you can claim there was an effect if the prescription is accurate. That’s completely circular reasoning. It is unsupported by anything else.
Just look at Kent’s statement. He’s basically saying that if somebody gets better after receiving a homeopathic remedy it can only be because it was an accurate remedy. But we all know that for lots of medical conditions people are capable of getting better by themselves, without any medical help. That’s why these things are called self-limiting conditions! And we all know that long-term conditions go through cycles of getting better then worse then better.
So ‘taking for granted’ that recovery is due to an accurate prescription shows an astounding ignorance of the body’s own ability to heal itself. People have immune systems, people get better by themselves. For homeopathy to be efficacious it has to show that people who use it get better quicker, on average, than people who don’t. That’s all. It’s a simple statistic. But homeopaths have been unable to produce anything like this in 200 years and still quote ridiculous stuff like the Bristol survey of 65,000 homeopathic patients where 70% said they felt better. That number would only have some meaning if 65,000 other people had bee tested at the same time and we knew how many of them felt better.
I also enjoyed GSAC’s fantasy of “What possible outcome of releasing something from your hand while standing at sea-level could not be explained by the theory of gravity?”
Well, let’s see. If it’s a cricket ball it drops straight down – that’s gravity. If it’s sheet of paper it flutters down. If it’s a sycamore seed it spirals down. If it’s a helium balloon it goes straight up and if it’s a dove it initially goes down and then goes up at an angle. Those four possibilities all depend on things other than gravity to overcome gravity.
If you take several helium balloons and attach them to a small toy the weight of which can be adjusted (say, something made from Lego bricks) it is possible to make something with perfect neutral buoyancy so that when you release it from you hand it stays exactly where it is – in mid-air. This is a great experiment to do with children.
And the great thing is that this experiment works every time, no matter who does it. If you can make the weight of the toy balance the upward lift of the balloons – it stays still in the air. This is the scientific method – an experiment which is repeatable every single time. Not one that requires interpretation. Show us one, just one experiment around homeopathy which could give exactly the same results every time. Please.
I thought this was interesting too: “in order for symptom to be regarded as a symptom and not just a part of a normal day-to-day fluctuation of symptoms in a stable picture, it should be really strong” Really? That’s a new one that doesn’t seem to be part of the standard homeopathic rubric. You’re saying that homeopathy can only treat really strong symptoms? That homeopaths base their choice of remedies only on really strong symptoms and ignore mild ones?
So are you saying that if I have a bit of a sore throat, homeopathy can’t help me but if I have raging laryngitis it can?
April 25, 2008 at 11:06 pm
Andy Lewis
We are not well over several hundred comments without a homeopath daring to unequivocally state where they think their best evidence is to show that homeopath is indistinguishable from a placebo.
April 25, 2008 at 11:22 pm
ez
“People have immune systems and an ability to heal.” – that’s exactly what homeopathy works to strengthen and stimulate, not to alter or intervene into any bodily processes artificially.
THere has been a survey:
“Caisse Nationale de l’Assurance Maladie des Travailleurs Salaries
January 1, 1996
1996
A study of 130,000 prescriptions confirmed the results of the 1991 French Government Report and suggest further benefit and savings to the homeopathic approach to care. This survey also noted that the number of paid sick leave days by patients under the care of homeopathic physicians were 3.5 times less (598 days/year) than patients under the care of general practitioners (2,017 days/year). Although homeopathic medicines in France represent 5% of all medicines prescribed by physicians, they represent only 1.2% of all drug reimbursements due to their lower cost per prescription. (Homeopathic medicines are reimbursable under the French health care system). ”
If you have a bit of a sore throat, most likely you’ll need your “chronic remedy” to deal with it, which will not look at the symptoms of the sore throat as such but all the rest of you including your heredity, unless you have other pronounced symptoms with your bit of sore throat, and with raging laryngitis you’ll clearly show a definite picture of some acute short-term remedy which will help you very quickly. IN such a case you will have ACUTE strong symptoms, while in the former case you’ll have to talk a bit to the homeopath so that he could understand what’s typical for you, what typical responses to external stresses you tend to have – they are not strong as in the acute case maybe, but they will be pervading, that is showing the same trend in many areas, and in this way they quite pronounced.
We always get over the flu with acute remedies in one-two days, it’s like “yesterday we had a flu”, we don’t go to the hospital for check but I have a friend who does, she goes, gets a diagnosis which says flu type A, B or whatever, then she calls me tells the symptoms and most of the time if I get the remedy right she – and all her four children – get well the next day, no fever, no pains, just a little weakness after high fever which might take one more day to clear up. Clearly homeopathic patients are very well amused by their treatment, maybe that was Voltaires’ observation as well?
Reproducible experiment? Every time you see, say, a Nux Vomica patient, give him Nux Vomica, and he’ll recover, this is a reproducible event, I already did it a number of times.
April 25, 2008 at 11:44 pm
ez
Another reproducible experiment. Every time you see a Nux Vomica patient, do not give him Nux Vomica, but something else, plain sugar pill or some other remedy – and they do not get well, until they get their Nux Vomica. I’ve done this (unintentionally) several times as well. And it’s not the case of something that gets better by itself, but when something persists without any sign of getting better by itself, which causes the person to come in the first place. Good homeopaths do not usually treat minor acutes, that’s a good way to spot a reliable homeopath too.
April 25, 2008 at 11:55 pm
M Simpson
““People have immune systems and an ability to heal.” – that’s exactly what homeopathy works to strengthen and stimulate, not to alter or intervene into any bodily processes artificially.”
If you are strengthening and stimulating the effects of the body’s own immune system, then you must be able to demonstrate that patients treated with homeopathy routinely recover quicker than patients left alone. Demonstrate that and the world will beat a path to your door. We’ve been waiting 200 years for such a demonstration – not with one patient but with two large groups of patients so we can see that it is a general effect. How much longer do we have to wait?
Homeopathy simply takes credit for effects that happen naturally anyway. It’s like a shaman chanting to make the sun rise. It’s like swearing at traffic lights to make them change. If I could show that traffic lights routinely change quicker when I swear at them than when I don’t – I would be a phenomenon. But I can’t show that because it’s not true, just like homeopaths cannot show evidence that homeopathy works.
“If you have a bit of a sore throat, most likely you’ll need your “chronic remedy” to deal with it, which will not look at the symptoms of the sore throat as such but all the rest of you including your heredity,”
Or – and this is the bit you fail to grasp – I could do nothing and my sore throat would disappear just as quickly. I had one last week. A day or two later, it was gone. If I had taken a homeopathic remedy, it would be very easy to see cause and effect where there was none.
“Reproducible experiment? Every time you see, say, a Nux Vomica patient, give him Nux Vomica, and he’ll recover, this is a reproducible event, I already did it a number of times.”
That sounds like something testable, if you can explain precisely what you mean by ‘Nux Vomica patient’. It sounds like a patient type but I thought that we were all individuals who require individual remedies.
April 26, 2008 at 4:19 am
ez
Well, you have to study a remedy picture of Nux Vomica in a number of Materia Medica’s (not the “essence” describing type, but the really good one’s like Boericke’s, Phatak’s, well, Kent’s, of course, Allen’s Keynotes), be able to differentiate it from other more or less similar remedies, like, say Bryonia in the sense of irritability, Hepar Sulph, Arsenicum, Gelsemium in the sense of chilliness and other various symptoms of course, be able to obtain a characteristic picture of a person in their sickness – and match what you have got from the person to the most similar remedy. The process of learning to do this well enough – so that you do not miss the Nux Vomica patient too often – takes at least six months of studying, I’d say, but with luck you can start with a guide like the one supplied with first-aid remedy kits and try to become well-versed in acute Nux Vomica situations (or any other of the most often used remedies) and treat persistent or strongly expressed acutes… THat is, if you are really serious about testing anything.
April 26, 2008 at 4:20 am
ez
Andy, you say “a homeopath is indistinguishable from placebo” – you betray yourself a little bit, a homeopath is a person, are you aware of this?
April 26, 2008 at 10:28 am
Andy Lewis
I do sometimes wonder
If you can prove what you have just said about Nux Vom types then you have won. You will have won my challenge and will certainly win Randi’s $1 million.
Can you think of a test to prove what you have just said, because it is clearly testable. What could you do to rigorously show that you are not deluding yourself?
For example, could you split your nux von types into two groups, give one half nux and the other, say, belladonna. But do this so that you and your patients do now know which is which? Count how many from each group improve?
What would be wrong with this test – in principle?
April 26, 2008 at 1:50 pm
ez
To Andy,
You write: “The fact is that it is impossible to devise a test that would show that Kent was right.”
What Kent wrote in that chapter, if you need to be told this, is not any prediction or theoretical things, but a summary of his own clinical observations. He has been giving people remedies, has observed various reactions to them, classified them roughly into the twelve groups, and – again on the basis of the observations – added what he observed with each group of reactions, some being favourable, some unfavourable, some requiring revision of the remedy etc. So basically he described his observations, and there is no possible way this can – or should be -refuted. You can say that his observations were incomplete or inaccurate, so maybe one way to say that he was somehow mistaken is to give a remedy to a patient – just as he did, – observe whether there is a reaction (remember that NO REACTION situations are not analysed at all, but they are basically very clearly evident almost from the start), and see if you can identify a pattern that was not described by Kent, and at the same time contradictory to the idea of the “mechanics” of the vital force reaction (primary reaction, secondary reaction in the Organon etc.). But in order to do this you need to find a remedy that the person will react to and not just something random, and observe the reaction with regular follow-ups for at least 2-3 months. It’s like a demonstration by reduction to “absurdity” in math, you start by saying “suggesting that all this process of remedy selection works”, then the person is supposed to react somehow – that’s your prediction. Then you start the test, give the remedy and see what happens – without any other ideas in mind, just forget that it is supposed or not supposed to work.
Placebo – well, when a person comes to you for backache and on a follow up visit tells you that his sleep problem has resolved – of which they did not even tell you the first time – something, which happens rather often in the homeopathic consultation room, – I personally see no way this sort of reaction could be explained by anything like placebo. And you did not tell me how “aggravation” is consistent with the placebo idea.
April 26, 2008 at 1:51 pm
ez
M Simpson – re the idea that your sore throat recovers by itself, I think I just wrote above? I repeat then: “And it’s not the case of something that gets better by itself, but when something persists without any sign of getting better by itself, which causes the person to come in the first place. Good homeopaths do not usually treat minor acutes, that’s a good way to spot a reliable homeopath too.”
April 26, 2008 at 5:55 pm
givescienceachance
To pick up on ez, M Simpson has failed to read what Kent wrote or to be aware of the context of what he wrote. His statements are based on accepting the theoretical principles of homeopathy, and according to those principles an accurate prescription will act. What is more, the changes will start immediately after the remedy is taken by the patient. The question is HOW will it act. What Kent is analysing is the variety of actions which can follow and how these relate to the condition of the patient and other factors.
Just as in M Simpson’s gravity examples (which make my point exactly) – various factors affect the nature of the reaction, which is rarely ‘the patient gets better’, but more frequently a complex combination of changes in the intensities and character of symptoms. By understanding what these variations mean the case can be better understood, and Kent is passing on the fruits of years of clinical experience and training. Homeopaths have to be acutely aware of why something is happening, and whether it can be attributed to a cause other than the remedy. The key point is that the reaction has to be studied, and is not the trite version presented and assumed to be correct by those who know nothing about homeopathy.
Unfortunately no such sophisticated analysis is available to orthodox medical practitioners, who have only the crudest of measures available to them to assess the results of treatment, which are often inaccurate in the long term.
As for the statement:
Perhaps you could explain how the RCT fits into this definition of scientific, since its results require interpretation precisely because they are not consistently repeatable?
April 26, 2008 at 6:03 pm
givescienceachance
Probably the best and simplest test you can do in the home is treating minor burns or scalds (which often occur in the kitchen or when ironing). If the skin is not broken apply Weleda ‘Combudoron’ ointment or lotion (a combination of Arnica and Urtica). Do not apply cold water or anything else. The burn/scald will disappear in seconds. Without treatment the consequences of the burn/scald will typically last two weeks or more (the remains of the blister etc.).
April 26, 2008 at 8:59 pm
M Simpson
Well that’s extraordinarily easy to test. You just need to scald yourself (or a willing volunteer) twice simultaneously. A toasting fork ought to do it. Then apply this lotion to one of the scalds.
I don’t know what the base substance for a homeopathic lotion is – presumably it’s not water or lactose – but whatever it is, you put just that on the other scald. At the same time. (That’s the thing: you must compare homeopathic lotion with non-homeopathic lotion. Comparing homeopathic lotion with no treatment just indicates an effect from whatever the lotion base is made from.)
If this ointment is actually homeopathic and contains no molecular traces of the original substance but it can produce a startlingly different effect to a lotion which is in all other respects identical – then bang, you’ve won. The entire sceptical community will change its mind overnight. You don’t even need RCTs or anything. Just burn your arm twice simultaneously, apply two lotions simutaneously which are identical except that one is homeopathic and demonstrate a profoundly different result.
You might need to do it two or three times on different people, just to prove it’s not some fluke but there would be no need for large scale testing. It sounds like an easily repeatable experiment that absolutely anyone could do at home (if they don’t mind a bit of pain).
I mean, if we’re talking seconds then you could video this and stick it on YouTube. Surely somebody must have done that.
Except – wait. I thought we were all individuals and that homeopathic remedies had to be individualised. So how can you say that this treatment is universally (or even generally) applicable? And where does this treatment for ‘minor burns and scalds’ sit with EZ’s statement that most homeopaths don’t treat minor symptoms?
April 27, 2008 at 1:03 am
ez
Burns and scalds – it is not necessary to treat minor symptoms, but this is also possible, of course, and in a case of a housewife (like me) who is spending half of the day in the kitchen a minor burn like this is extremely annoying and hurts a lot every time it is getting wet, which is – all the time. I used to treat my minor burns by heat – like the French chefs sem to do, as is described in various sites over the net, when I got burned, I’d approach the burned part to something hot – it’s easy to do in the kitchen, at the distance when it’s just about tolerable. At first the burning sensation from the burn increases, but the very quickly, within a minute or 2 it subsides, and I forget all about it in 10 minutes. I write “I USED TO DO THIS” because as a bonus – now the similar exposure to heat DOES NOT produce minor burns any more. I’ve read that this happens but wondered if I will be able to achieve this myself, well, I did – long live homeopathy! With homeopathy you get stronger every time you get a treatment for something, and after some time you stop getting it in the first place…
But that is beyond the point now.
Andy constantly says “YOU COULD DO THE TESTS” – what I actually wanted to say is that I, for example, or I’m sure other proponents of homeopathy, at least, those who write here, have ALREADY done THEMSELVES, and most likely with their FRIENDS, ALL THE TESTS that M Simpson and Andy and others propose, have seen the results and stick with homeopathy. So now it’s your turn to JUST DO IT, don’t you think so? One can fake anything and post it on You-TUbe, would you really trust if you saw something there? The consclusion is that YOU HAVE TO DO IT YOURSELF.
THe test of giving out remedies at random to the two groups is not quite ethical – if you have a person with a Belladona fever, all scared and suffering acutely I would consider it most mean to try to give them something like Nux Vomica, for example, because it’s likely to reinforce the picture of Belladonna – get yourself a Materia Medica and read it well! – and make the person suffer more (I speak this from experience), so I do not think any homeopath will really agree to participate in such a test – make a suffering person a gunie pig in order just to prove something to you – and how on earth one would pass on the results of this test to you? No, the only possible solution is for you to either recruit the patients – it’s very unlikely you’ll collect enough number of patients needing the remedy at the same time in the same place, at that, – or just sit in with a popular practicing homeopath who does acute prescribing, not many really do, as I’ve said above, or maybe do the test with burns – in this case it is a sort of an epidemic – there is a notion of Genus Eidemicus – I suggest you read up on this, this again is based on empirical observations of practicing homeopaths, and continues to be confrimed in practice.
April 27, 2008 at 1:56 am
ez
Oh, Andy, I think I have realised what’s the main problem – “how do you know that it’s not my delusion”.
Well, for this you need to find an impartial observer near yourself, that’s all. I can fully trust what I feel and observe, but I can imagine (after studying homeopathic types!) that this might not always be the case, so how can you assure that what you’ve witnessed is not just being imagined by you according to your beliefs. In my case I had a chance to do this at the very start – my daughter had an otitis – earache with fever, – and I went to otolarigologist for that – for 2 months! On various antibiotics there was no progress at all, she continued to have fever every second day, could not sleep for pain, I was in despair what I can do when a friend told me that now there’s a homeopathic person practicing not far from where we lived. So what I did I had the doctor examine my daughter for the n-th time, went to the homeopath, got the remedy, gave her this remedy and duly went to the appointment 2 days later to the same otolaringologist. Not to say that the fever went down – and stayed there – on the very day of first taking the remedy, 2 days later there was such obvious progress found by the DOCTOR ON VISUAL EXAMINATION and HEARING TEST done with the machine, that the doctor was so happy that his new antibiotic – he gave us a new one on the last visit – had worked so well! You’d have seen the doctor! I was very sorry to deceive him – obviously, he was a very nice doctor, but I did not tell him that we did not use his antibiotic and used something else instead, so I think that I obviously had no delusions as to the improvement that my daughter has made with the remedy – and she never had a recurrence!
My friend, who has a lot of children whom I treat when she asks, regularly does that because she feels she has to report to school the exact medical diagnosis of the children when they have to be absent to school. She goes for the diagnosis, gets the medicine from the doctor, then calls me for the remedy, gives the remedy, and then goes to the doctor for the follow-up examination to make sure all got well. THus she uses the remedies, but also has the medicines just in case I got the remedy wrong and the case went really acute and dangerous – you never know with children. But she did not have to use the medicine from the doctor for the past 3 years not once…
So, you see, it’s easy, if you – or your friend or relative – has something acute that they want treated, you go to the doctor, who confirms that something’s wrong and just what it is in terms of diagnosis, then you try to find a homeopathic remedy, and if you get a good match, then you’ll see how amazed the doctor is at the speed of improvement, it’s very simple, isn’t it? And you do not have to “fool” the suffering patient, but just not tell unnecessary things to the doctor, who does not suffer, both from your using the remedy or from not knowing the truth about it, although I’d feel much more comfortable if I could tell the doctor and have him react open-mindedly and sincerely to what he witnesses, so I basically do not go to doctors at all, and do not intend to unless I fail to find the right remedy in a really urgent situation.
April 27, 2008 at 8:34 am
M Simpson
“I can fully trust what I feel and observe,”
This is amazing hubris. You can fully trust what you feel and observe? So if you observe a stage magician sawing a woman in half, you can fully trust that? So if you witnessed a traffic accident and gave a statement to the police a few hours later, everything you said would be completely accurate?
You’re NEVER mistaken? Your ‘feelings’ are NEVER wrong? Do you think everyone else can fully trust their feelings and observations? If not, how are you able to do this? Is there some special technique? Is it a natural talent? Surely if you’re infallible then you could put this amazing perfect talent to some use, perhaps by backing your ‘feeling’ about which horse will win a race?
In any case, you’re not just claiming to trust what you feel and observe. You’re claiming to fully trust what you deduce from your observations. In the case of your daughter, you gave her a range of standard treatments, then one homeopathic treatment and, because she started recovering after the homeopathic treatment, you deduced that this treatment was effective and all the others weren’t. But that is not necessarily so.
You’re assuming cause and effect and you’re trusting your assumptions, not your observations.
I don’t mean to be rude but isn’t it a bit arrogant (and silly) to claim that everything you see and ‘feel’ is true? Have you never spotted someone you know but when you approached them realised it was a stranger? Have you never had a feeling that something was just a couple of streets away but found that in fact it was much further? Have you never, ever been wrong? Because that’s what “I can fully trust what I feel and observe” means.
It is precisely because rational people do NOT fully trust their own senses that we conduct experiments. We test things, not just in science, to find out whether what we ‘feel’ or observe is actually true. People can be very, very easily fooled, especially when it’s about something that they want to be true (but not you, apparently). People can very, very easily fool themselves, especially when it’s about something that they want to be true (but not you, apparently).
If your best argument is that you’ve witnessed something and you know that everything you see is true and genuine because you’re incapable of being fooled or fooling yourself, then you’ve got no argument at all.
April 27, 2008 at 8:44 am
openmind
So a checklist of 12 possible outcomes is a more sophisticated and accurate way of measuring the results of treatment than, say, monitoring the effectiveness of a course of radiotherapy by using MRI scans to see whether or not a tumour has shrunk?
April 27, 2008 at 8:53 am
M Simpson
“what I actually wanted to say is that I, for example, or I’m sure other proponents of homeopathy, at least, those who write here, have ALREADY done THEMSELVES, and most likely with their FRIENDS, ALL THE TESTS that M Simpson and Andy and others propose, have seen the results and stick with homeopathy.”
Can you just confirm this so we’re clear? You have deliberately burned yourself in two places simultaneously and applied two lotions to the burns, one of which was prepared homeopathically and one of which was not (but was otherwise identical) and the burns reacted differently? You personally have actually done this and seen the completely different results? That’s what you’re saying when you say: “I, for example … have ALREADY done … ALL THE TESTS that M Simpson and Andy and others propose”
Would you like a million dollars? Because James Randi has a million bucks just waiting to be given to anyone who can do something like this.
I must say that this next bit is really, really weird:
“Burns and scalds – it is not necessary to treat minor symptoms, but this is also possible, of course, and in a case of a housewife (like me) who is spending half of the day in the kitchen a minor burn like this is extremely annoying and hurts a lot every time it is getting wet, which is – all the time. I used to treat my minor burns by heat – like the French chefs sem to do, as is described in various sites over the net, when I got burned, I’d approach the burned part to something hot – it’s easy to do in the kitchen, at the distance when it’s just about tolerable. At first the burning sensation from the burn increases, but the very quickly, within a minute or 2 it subsides, and I forget all about it in 10 minutes. I write “I USED TO DO THIS” because as a bonus – now the similar exposure to heat DOES NOT produce minor burns any more. I’ve read that this happens but wondered if I will be able to achieve this myself, well, I did – long live homeopathy! With homeopathy you get stronger every time you get a treatment for something, and after some time you stop getting it in the first place…”
I have never heard of French chefs, or indeed anyone, treating a minor burn by holding the burn near something hot. I’ve tried googling all sorts of combinations of phrases that might relate to this and come up with nothing anywhere on the web apart from one solitary forum post claiming that this is the homeopathic ‘like cures like’ principal. I would love to find out more – can you provide any link to any site that describes this ‘hold it near heat’ technique? It sounds like it’s quite well-known.
Here is the British Medical Journal’s page on treatments for burns and scalds: http://besttreatments.bmj.com/btuk/conditions/1000404670.html – no mention of the French chef technique and they specifically say “Don’t put any cream or ointment on your burn.”
Basically you’re saying here that you use homeopathy instead of a really, really bizarre technique that would have no obvious benefit apart from maybe spreading the pain over wider area. That’s a bit like using homeopathy for a headache instead of slapping your forehead repeatedly.
I think you’ll find that, with most minor kitchen burns – brief touch of hot kettle, that sort of thing – the pain disappears in a minute or two anyway. That’s why they’re minor: they don’t require any treatment. So once again we see homeopathy being credited with causing something which happens naturally anyway.
April 27, 2008 at 10:21 am
ez
M Simpson, so funny to see your rage! Of course, I don’t ever think that everything I see with my eyes is the sole and only truth, I also use my head, intuition, experience and what I’ve already learned from personal experience and other people’s experience to judge what I have seen before coming to any conclusions about anything, and assuming that I can always make an error, I usually read and research everything quite seriously. It’s amazing how you take everything so literally! HOwever, I can be sure whether I feel pain at a given moment or do not, although again, the reason why I feel or do not feel pain in any given situation (where such idea is relevant, of course) is an object of further research, what’d you think!
You write: “I think you’ll find that, with most minor kitchen burns – brief touch of hot kettle, that sort of thing – the pain disappears in a minute or two anyway.” Well, I’m sorry to inform you that what you think is not what I have found throughout my life, but treatment of burns with heat, well, some people say that putting the burnt part under warm water is a more mild way to do this, has worked so well that no amount of your ranting is not going to change anything.
April 27, 2008 at 11:05 am
Andy Lewis
ez – it is quite difficult to see why you have given an anecdote to try to show that homeopathy is not a delusion. Anecdotes are to delusions and data is to science.
Hippocrates said, “Science is the father of knowledge, but opinion breeds ignorance”. We are still looking for the scientific data that supports homeopathy. All we get is people opinions about their experiences – anecdotes.
As asked ez for their opinion in principle of why the above simple test of the nux vom personality could not be done. The response was that not enough people could be found or that it might be unethical. But in principle, if you could find enough willing volunteers, what would be wrong with the test?
April 27, 2008 at 11:19 am
ez
Actually, I’ve brought up this theme of personal experiences to try to get you “unstuck” so to say, from your focus on “theoretical” side of the discussion, not to teach you the ways to learn to find truths in life or hear to say what you say, because every time I’m amazed at how another skeptic repeats almost word for word what I have read already many times on other forums recently and awhile ago, so it makes one wonder whether it’s the same person presenting under different personas or you all have learned by heart what someone has chosen to teach you, or your way of “understanding” something consists of remembering it by heart? I’m trying to test your creativity in expressing doubts, at least, but instead I see that you find it more interesting to comment on personal features of other people, so this is becoming counterproductive – that is my conclusion for now, and I’ll have to think of a better way to approach you and your beliefs. So, best for now, hope you carry on well, M Simpson.