Sugar pills are the future …

March 3, 2008 in Homeopathy, Scepticism | Tags: anti-depressants, Ben Goldacre, Clive Cookson, depression, evidence, Guardian, homeopaths, Homeopathy, Irving Kirsch, placebo, placebo effect, Prozac, Seroxat, SSRI, sugar pills

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In commenting on the recently-published meta-analysis of both published and unpublished trials of SSRIs led by Irving Kirsch at the University of Hull, which follows his more limited analysis of published studies in 2002, Cookson writes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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843 comments

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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

“But homeopathy is far more than placebo.”

We await the evidence for this statement with much anticipation.

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

The problem is that there is no explanation of the mechanism of how this actually happens.

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 the placebo effect can be explained by homeopathy rather than the other way around?

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

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.

Evans’ view is a very restricted idea of the sum total of non-specific effects active in treatment. And if you think

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.

I suggest you check out a dictionary.

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.

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.

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?

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!

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?

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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?

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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 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?

And as for my problems with my ISP, do you really want to defend Joseph Obi?

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.

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.

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:

there is nothing speculative about saying that homeopathy cannot work given what we know about how matter is constructed. It is rock solid science.

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

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

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

As for the science homeopathy is based on, there is homeostasis for a start.

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

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

Well, if we are discussing things with people who derive their knowledge from wikipedia articles…

What I said was:

Let’s assume we’ve all read the wiki entry on homeostasis and have agreed that this provides a reasonable explanation.

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

LMSO, I beg to disagree. Science is the fusion of rationalism and empiricism, the attempt to harness different approaches to achieve a single end.

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 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.

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

When will you actually say what science homeopathy is based on?

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

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.

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

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

“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

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

There must be a lot on the internet about homeostasis…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.

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.

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?

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

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.

What proposition of modern science does the notion of life force contradict under this definition?

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.

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?

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

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

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

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:

“R. Barker Bausell, Ph.D., who served for five years as research director of the University of Maryland’s NIH-funded Complementary Medicine Program (now called the Center for Integrated Medicine), has bared the absurdities and lack of research support for “complementary and alternative” methods. After stating why “CAM” research should be regarded skeptically, he dissects the published evidence and concludes:

“No CAM therapy has a scientifically plausible biochemical mechanism of action over and above those proposed for the placebo effect. Of course, just because there is no rational explanation for why something should benefit a medical condition or reduce a medical symptom doesn’t mean that this something can’t do so. Unfortunately, the results from high-quality, randomized, placebo-controlled trials and systematic reviews have demonstrated that CAM therapies don’t do so, which regretfully leads me to conclude that CAM therapies are nothing more than cleverly packaged placebos. And that is almost all there is to say about the science of CAM.”

April 13, 2008 at 12:28 am

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

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

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

LMSO, could you please define what you mean by science and then explain how homeopathy is scientific.

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:

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.

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

Any theory of homeopathy should be consilient with other areas of science. That is the nature of science.

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.

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.

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.

Gravity has a full scientific framework around it. Mathematical descriptions that make extremely accurate predictions about how the universe behaves. Experiment confirms these predictions.

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.

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. … No homeopath is prepared to step up to the mark though. “Too busy healing”.

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.

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?

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

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.

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

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’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 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”.

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.

Why should I read ‘consciousness’ for ‘life force’? Are these things equivalent? Do I lose my ‘life force’ when I am asleep?

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.

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.

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.

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?

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,

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.

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

As I said,

what test?

The test of verifying your hypothesis in a clinical setting on actual individual cases treated with homeopathy.

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?

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

Have you ever read Sokal?

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

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

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?

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.

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?

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.

Can you think of a test that would determine if you were right?

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

That is my point. You do not have the courage of your convictions to tell them they are killing people.

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:

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”.

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:

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.

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:

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

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:

R. Barker Bausell, Ph.D., who served for five years as research director of the University of Maryland’s NIH-funded Complementary Medicine Program (now called the Center for Integrated Medicine)

Who says:

“No CAM therapy has a scientifically plausible biochemical mechanism of action over and above those proposed for the placebo effect.”

When did homeopathy ever pretend it did?

The quote goes on:

“Of course, just because there is no rational explanation for why something should benefit a medical condition or reduce a medical symptom doesn’t mean that this something can’t do so. Unfortunately, the results from high-quality, randomized, placebo-controlled trials and systematic reviews have demonstrated that CAM therapies don’t do so, which regretfully leads me to conclude that CAM therapies are nothing more than cleverly packaged placebos. And that is almost all there is to say about the science of CAM.”

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

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.

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

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

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,

“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that.”

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

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:

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.

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:

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.

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:

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).

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

There is nothing to explain in homeopathy. Show me the data that needs explaining. I do not need to explain anecdote and delusion.

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.

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.

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:

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.

You then comment:

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.

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

Homeopaths use laws which have been clearly defined.

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:

n 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.

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

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.

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

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?

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

The malaria parasite is a necessary condition for the development of malaria. Whether or not it is sufficient is immaterial.

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:

The presence of large numbers of malaria parasites is a pretty good indicator. Remove the parasites. Remove the disease.

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

It’s cleaver, impeccably logical and utter nonsense.</blockquote.
Actually it is just utter nonsense and depends on variations in the meaning of “greater” at different points in the argument.

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

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

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

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:

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?

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

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.

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,

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.

Can you point to any URL where such a test is properly written up for scrutiny?

April 24, 2008 at 11:39 pm

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

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

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

April 25, 2008 at 4:03 pm

givescienceachance

Andy said:

I claim that you are just interpreting the normal course of illnesses though homeopathic narratives and are fooling yourself.

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:

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.

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 to any URL where such a test is properly written up for scrutiny?

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

“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

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

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

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

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

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:

This is the scientific method – an experiment which is repeatable every single time. Not one that requires interpretation.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

April 27, 2008 at 11:21 am

Just one last point,

M Simpson writes:
“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.” What’s your take on this then?

April 27, 2008 at 1:00 pm

givescienceachance

M Simpson said:

Comparing homeopathic lotion with no treatment just indicates an effect from whatever the lotion base is made from.

What terribly bad science this is! A test on a lotion containing anything in addition to its base substance cannot possibly yield information only about the base substance.

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.

Homeopathic treatment is based on the relationship between the symptoms of the patient and the symptoms the remedy causes. Potentisation is development in the mechanism of delivery which increases safety and effectiveness. This ointment/lotion actually contains material quantities of the substances, which is why it should not be applied when the skin is broken.

The entire sceptical community will change its mind overnight. you don’t even need RCTs or anything.

I doubt it.

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).

The difference is so profound, that just testing it on yourself will be enough to convince you – if you are open minded … and honest.

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?

Why do you discuss homeopathy without doing even basic research on the subject?
Material substances do not depend on the patient’s sensitivity to the remedy in the same way as potentised remedies do. With superficial illnesses (such as accidents) material doses can be effective, and will be effective generally, because the reactions in such cases (burns, scalds, cuts, bruises, splinters) are universal, and not dependent on individual characteristics.

In some cases this is not true, but those would be treated differently. In more severe injuries, expert knowledge is required as deeper injury affects people differently, and the specific remedy is essential.

And where does this treatment for ‘minor burns and scalds’ sit with EZ’s statement that most homeopaths don’t treat minor symptoms?

“Minor” is a relative term. A minor burn is an important injury which may still be visible weeks after the incident. Minor symptoms are something totally different.

April 27, 2008 at 2:02 pm

M Simpson

EZ, I’m not sure how you interpret rage or ranting from a post with no exclamation marks and only three words in capitals for emphasis (as opposed to your own propensity for capitals and exclamation marks throughout your posts).

I had to emphasise ‘not’ and ‘never’ to check whether you actually meant what you wrote – and of course you didn’t. This may be the most frustrating thing about trying to debate things with homeopaths: they often make an absolute statement – ‘always this’ or ‘never that’ – and then shortly afterwards contradict themselves. So how are we supposed to know what you mean?

I think it must be that, when your worldview is dependent on assumptions and blind faith, on extravagant claims without any evidence, it’s natural to simply say whatever pops into your head rather than building up a cohesive argument. If homeopaths had any debating skills, they wouldn’t be homeopaths because you need to think about things rationally in order to debate articulately and consistently.

So you’re perfectly happy saying “I can fully trust what I observe” and then only a few hours later saying “Of course, I don’t ever think that everything I see with my eyes is the sole and only truth”. You live in a world where things can be black and white at the same time so you probably don’t see the inherent contradiction there.

So when you insist, with absolute certainty and a bundle of capitals: “I, for example … have ALREADY done … ALL THE TESTS that M Simpson and Andy and others propose”, should we take that to mean that you have already done the tests that Andy and I propose or should we realise that when you say that you have definitely done these tests, you haven’t actually done these tests? That’s why I’m querying your statements; to ascertain whether you have in fact done these tests.

Next: “This ointment/lotion actually contains material quantities of the substances, which is why it should not be applied when the skin is broken.”

So, er, why is this being discussed in a debate on homeopathy if it contains active ingredients and is therefore nothing to do with homeopathy? You proclaimed this to be “Probably the best and simplest test you can do in the home” so I assumed you meant a test to prove the efficacy of homeopathy. What is this a test for, and why did you mention it?

Finally, you ask:

““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.” What’s your take on this then?”

My take is that it is far more likely that one of the earlier treatments, the ones that are known to have an effect on this condition, caused your daughter’s recovery. Treatments rarely have an immediate effect, except in the fairy-tale world of homeopathy. If you ate a three-course meal and subsequently developed food poisoning, would you assume that the cause must have been the dessert because that was the last thing you consumed?

April 27, 2008 at 2:03 pm

Andy Lewis

gsac chance said:

What terribly bad science this is! A test on a lotion containing anything in addition to its base substance cannot possibly yield information only about the base substance.

This is such a fundamental misunderstanding that gsac must either be utterly clueless or deliberately misleading. We are not trying to find out about the base substance, but the homeopathic content. The test simply removes any possibility that we are looking at effects of the base substance.

The next point is equally clueless,

The difference is so profound, that just testing it on yourself will be enough to convince you

The difference with what? No wonder you get so deluded with homeopathy. You are continuously comparing what happens to your patients with what you think should happen. A recipe full utter self-deception. Science is all about removing such foolishness. Did you read my quote from Hippocrates?

To repeat:

Science is the father of knowledge, but opinion breeds ignorance

Now could someone explain what in principle is wrong with the test proposed about ez’s sure thing regarding nux vom patients?

April 27, 2008 at 3:28 pm

To M Simpson, when substances are used in material quantities, they act according to the “like cure like” principle, if by “homeopathic” you only mean “potentised”, then just check that “homeopathic” only means “of similar sickness” in ancient Greek, and potentising is a slightly different story.

I guess I have used the word “observe” in a different meaning that I should have, I apologise for that. But I think you should have noticed by now that debating anything over the internet is just bound to cause a wide range of discrepancies as to what the person writes and what they mean. In my case – it’s just I find spare minutes to write, maybe I should not do this (write) after all, because I do not have time to edit and even reread what I’ve written, because you display no desire and patience to try to understand what I mean, but focus your effort to find discrepancies in what I write and state that they are universal and should be generalised to every other homeopath and all the rest. I understand that I should learn to be so clear in my expression and usage of words as LMSO, but I also realise that this is not going to do anything to change your attitude, so here we are.
“If you ate a three-course meal and subsequently developed food poisoning, would you assume that the cause must have been the dessert because that was the last thing you consumed?” No, but I thought you would be more creative with your take on my daughter’s situation, yet if you seem to disagree with the doctor who has tried to change the treatment because his judgement was that it was ineffective – well, that be it.

Andy,
Nothing is wrong in principle with the test you suggested (if I understood it correctly. I’ll think more of it and if I notice something, I’ll write here again) provided you keep the record who received what (and include only acute cases, of course, where one sees results relatively quickly and no deep disturbance is involved) so that the results could be interpreted with certainity, but I really see no way how you could conduct it in reality?

April 27, 2008 at 4:05 pm

M Simpson

“To M Simpson, when substances are used in material quantities, they act according to the “like cure like” principle, if by “homeopathic” you only mean “potentised”, then just check that “homeopathic” only means “of similar sickness” in ancient Greek, and potentising is a slightly different story.”

So why does every definition of homeopathy that I have ever read, including all the ones written by homeopaths, say that ultra-dilution is as much a part of homeopathy as ‘like cures like’? In what sense is this magical cream a homeopathic remedy? We all know that ‘like cures like’ in practice means ‘is vaguely similar in some way’ (for example, there was a case I read a while back about treating vertigo with homeopathic dilution of falcon’s blood, because falcons swoop down – as if that’s some sort of connection).

So, please describe what is in this lotion (in English, rather than Latin, if possible). Then please explain why this is not the standard treatment for minor burns throughout the world if it is so effective. In fact most medical authorities (such as the BMJ site I linked to above) strongly discourage the use of ANY lotions or ointments on burns. Why would this be?

Even if this lotion does work as miraculously as you describe and even if it can be shoehorned into the concept of ‘like cures like’, that’s not a test for homeopathy. There are plenty of regular treatments where there is some vague similarity or connection between condition and cure (a sore throat feels like something hard and glassy is scratching the back of my throat but it can be relieved by a cough sweet which is… hard and glassy!) and many, many more where there is no discernable similarity.

‘Potentisation’ is intrinsic to homeopathy so showing that something which is not potentised works does not validate homeopathy, even if you want to call that thing ‘homeopathic’. And this is all assuming that this magical lotion works which may be true but seems unlikely. I’m not prepared to deliberately scald myself to try it because, if it does work, other people must have tried that and published the results.

“I think you should have noticed by now that debating anything over the internet is just bound to cause a wide range of discrepancies as to what the person writes and what they mean.”

In the case of homeopaths and their supporters, apparently so. I don’t see this from anyone else discussing anything else on any of the other forums and blogs I frequent. On any subject.

“you display no desire and patience to try to understand what I mean”

Do you live in the Mirror Universe? This is all that I and Andy are trying to do. We’re trying to understand what you mean. But because you don’t actually know what you mean, you’re unable to present a coherent or consistent argument and we’re left querying what you’re trying to say.

Try making your points clearly and simple so there is as little room as possible for ambiguity. Don’t say ‘always’ if you mean ’sometimes or ‘usually’. Don’t say ‘completely’ if you mean ‘partially’ or ‘mostly’. If you say that you’ve done something that would clearly prove a point that we’re arguing, expect us to check that you do actually mean you’ve done that thing. I’m still waiting for confirmation that you personally have done the ’simultaneous double scald’ test I described above, which suggests to me that your specific claim to have personally done all the tests that Andy and I have suggested may not have been completely true. It may have been one of these ‘discrepancies’ that you think are an unavoidable and acceptable part of any internet discussion.

Regarding the Nux Vomica, you said:

“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.”

Now you’re saying “Nothing is wrong in principle with the test you suggested … but I really see no way how you could conduct it in reality”. If something is a ‘reproducible event’ which happens ‘every time’, it’s easy to test. It really doesn’t matter what a ‘Nux Vomica patient’ is, all you have to do is find one and show that if you give him Nux Vomica he always recovers but if you give him something else, or nothing at all, he only sometimes recovers.

You claim that something is a reproducible event but then cast doubt on whether this is in fact reproducible.

April 27, 2008 at 11:37 pm

Re Nux Vomica patients – I recall you seemed to understand that the remedy has to be individualised, the same person might need different remedies when he has different problems, each time you have to check the symptoms first… THe process of which I have described but you fail to make notice of. I cast doubt if it is possible to get such persons needing the same remedy all together at the same time in considerable numbers, but if you do not mind stretching the experiment in time, then you can right now go to a homeopath, a real person, ask him for all the Nux Vomica patients he had ever treated, a careful person would note of the symptoms he used to arrive at the remedy, you could check them to see that the person really needed Nux Vomica and not someting else, and then you could either check the homeopath’s notes on what happened to these people, or track them down yourself to find out how they improved.

I do not doubt the reproducibility, but physical feasibility of the test, first make sure you understand what the person is saying, and then start drawing your conclusions. Or if you feel you can freely interchange such words as “feasibility”, “reproducibility”, “possibility” etc I just cannot comment on anything.

April 28, 2008 at 8:37 am

Andy Lewis

ez, let me remind you what you said,

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.

Are you backtracking from that position?

The experiment you describe though is not blinded, it is possible that the homeopaths belief that the patient was a Nux Vom patient might influence subconsciously how they interpret the case. Blinding both patient and practitioner is the only way out.

Yes, the experiment could be done over time and I see no ethical problem in asking people if they would like to take part in a trial in order to better understand homeopathy.

Now, yes experiments can take some effort. But understanding the world does not come or free. Homeopaths have spent two hundred years avoiding such tests and so are no closer to understanding their ‘art’ than they were in Hahnemann’s time. Meanwhile the rest of the world can safely write off homeopathy as a placebo treatment with practitioners who are pretty confused about the whole thing.

April 28, 2008 at 8:58 am

givescienceachance

I think I have asked this before, but it obviously needs asking again:
Are all anti-homeopathic bloggers illiterate?

M Simpsond said:

Comparing homeopathic lotion with no treatment just indicates an effect from whatever the lotion base is made from.

I replied:

What terribly bad science this is! A test on a lotion containing anything in addition to its base substance cannot possibly yield information only about the base substance.

Andy Lewis then said:

This is such a fundamental misunderstanding that gsac must either be utterly clueless or deliberately misleading.

M Simpson betrayed the fact that his prejudice outweighed his belief in science. There was no misunderstanding, it is a fundamental error.

Homeopathy does not mean potentising, homeopathy means treating like with like – potentising is simply a delivery system developed as a result of the need to apply this principle safely. It is fundamental to the practice of homeopathy for chronic conditions, but is not always necessary, as in the example given. To test the theory of homeopathy involves testing the principle of like curing like (of which orthodox medicine has an abundance of examples); to test the theory of potentisation involves testing whether potentised substances act on healthy people (provings, in other words).

The names Arnica (montana) and Urtica (urens) are in the botanical Latin form because these are international standard terms, avoiding confusion with local and colloquial terms. Would you prefer me to refer to cubits when giving measurements? Of course not.

I will also express another sentiment again: Nobody looks stupider than a person criticising something they obviously have not been bothered to learn about. Ignorance can be forgiven, but the willful refusal to learn is something to be despised.

April 28, 2008 at 9:03 am

Andy, if you are worried that “it is possible that the homeopaths belief that the patient was a Nux Vom patient might influence subconsciously how they interpret the case,”- the results , you mean? – then you should begin the sequence (in time) of collecting Nux Vomica patients (or Arsenic, or maybe Arnica or Hypericum patients, if you choose someone who specialises in injuries as the prescriber, unless you try to learn something about the remedies yourself) anew and check yourself just how they have improved, yourself – or have them checked by whomever you choose to be an impartial observer.

Some cases need several repeats of the remedy, for example, in order to avoid unnecessary aggravations (well, that’s how I usually do it) a comparatively low dilution is given, and later if the person reacts well (check the reponses described by Kent) then the same remedy is repeated (plussed in water) until complete recovery, but if the response is not good, then the remedy needs to be changed. How do you suggest to deal with this situation? If you have given someone a placebo instead of the remedy and the prescriber has remarked that there was no curative response, they’ll think that they might have missed something in the patient’s picture of symptoms, and will reassess the case to try to find a better fit. How you plan to go on in this case?

By the way, what made you think that I backtrack from saying that a Nux Vomica patient is going to improve from taking the Nux Vomica remedy? I still think so, of course, but do you think you can find someone who is going to publish this sort of study, and who’s going to organise this? Also I thought that as I’m not a native English speaker I might have been using the wrong expressions that might indeed have confused you as to what I really mean, so I will pay special attention from now on.

April 28, 2008 at 9:11 am

Mmm, indeed, M Simpson writes: “‘Potentisation’ is intrinsic to homeopathy so showing that something which is not potentised works does not validate homeopathy, even if you want to call that thing ‘homeopathic’. ” It seems they have invented their own homeopathy, maybe they should open a new school of “orthodox homeopathy”?

April 28, 2008 at 10:12 am

Andy Lewis

ez asks…

If you have given someone a placebo instead of the remedy and the prescriber has remarked that there was no curative response, they’ll think that they might have missed something in the patient’s picture of symptoms, and will reassess the case to try to find a better fit. How you plan to go on in this case?

I think a telling aspect of homeopaths is that they never try to solve their own problems they see in testing their beliefs. They see a problem and then stop. A real scientist would propose solutions.

In this case the answer is fairly straighforward. You have another person in the trial – the dispenser – who is responsible for dispensing remedies that the homeopath prescribes. They have access to a code that says whether they should give a real remedy or a placebo for each patient – who is only known to them as a code. You can then easily maintain each patient in either the remedy group or the placebo group.

Now, if the placebo group are not responding, they should seek many more consultations as their prescription is changed. Once thr trial is over, the codes can be broken and it should be obvious is the placebo group needed more consultations than the remedy group. That, in itself, should be very powerful evidence for homeopathy.

I think this puts to bed the old canards that you cannot test individualised remedies. Indeed you can, and the tests should actually be more sensitive and show homeopathy to be brilliant – if it worked.

Why no results? What can you see wrong with this proposal?

April 28, 2008 at 11:34 am

Andy,

I asked you about what you would do because, in the first place, I thought you might not wish to accept what others have proposed, so I was wondering what would be acceptable to you.

Another aspect is that you really seem to think that homeopaths are scientists – they are people who try to treat people, do you think that every medical doctor is a scientist?

I’ll think about your proposal – so far I do not see any major problem with it, but please give me some time to think better. OK?

April 28, 2008 at 12:02 pm

By the way, Andy, I recall reading in the book of Elizabeth Wright Hubbard “A Brief Study Course in Homeopathy” about the use of placebo when you don’t want to dose the patient too often. I could not find the text of the book online and I just cannot find my own book right now, but I recall that she wrote about one patient whom she could not see often because she lived quite far away, so what she did is she made a case of remedies with numbers, no names on the vials, so that some vials contained remedies and some vials just plain sugar pills, sac lac, and when the patient called her but sounded but she did not need the remedy yet, she was telling her to take one pill from vial Number something. BUt as the patient always quickly found out what vial – the vial under which number – contained the pills that really made her feel better (versus placebo), Mrs. Hubbard had to change the box and reshuffle the vials rather often so that the patient could not take the remedy too often and overdose herself.

April 28, 2008 at 12:31 pm

Andy Lewis

ez – I know you are not a scientist, but that does not stop people thinking like scientists. GSAC makes big claims that homeopathy is scientific. I see very little evidence of this.

As for your anecdote about the lady guessing which was a placebo – great – if anyone can repeat that trick in a controlled manner then you have won. James Randi’s millions too. My simple test is very similar. It is so strange that so many homeopaths are so confident about the extraordinary effects of these pills, but no one will put their money where there mouth is. My test would only cost as much as a few vials of pills.

Please do think about the proposed test. So many homeopaths claim that this sort of test – a DBRCT – cannot be done. But I have never seen a good reason why. I would be interested to know what you thought.

April 28, 2008 at 12:47 pm

MJ Simpson

“a Nux Vomica patient is going to improve from taking the Nux Vomica remedy”

“but if the response is not good, then the remedy needs to be changed.”

Do you consider these two contradictary statements to both be true? Once again we see the classic homeopathic doublethink: this stuff works every time except when it doesn’t.

A regards your definition of homeopathy (which seems to be at odds with every other homeopath and homeopathic institution), if ‘potentisation’ isn’t intrinsic to homeopathy, why is it something that is found only in homeopathy and nowhere else in the world? Why do homeopaths bleat constantly about the memory of water yada yada yada if it’s irrelevant? What defines something as homeopathic? Is my cough sweet example above a homeopathic treatment because of the similarity between condition and remedy? There’s as much ‘like’ there as there is between vertigo and falcon’s blood.

“Mrs. Hubbard had to change the box and reshuffle the vials rather often so that the patient could not take the remedy too often and overdose herself.”

Oh please – this is hilarious! Can you offer one example, anywhere, any time, of somebody OD-ing on a homeopathic remedy? Just one.

April 28, 2008 at 1:01 pm

openmind

To test the theory of homeopathy involves testing the principle of like curing like (of which orthodox medicine has an abundance of examples)

Care to give some examples of EBM applying the ‘law’ of similars? I can’t recall at any point being told by my doctor that he was prescribing me a particular medicine to cure my symptoms because it produced the same symptoms in a healthy person.

April 28, 2008 at 1:20 pm

Andy,
“My test would only cost as much as a few vials of pills.” – And just how much to add to have it published anywhere where people like you would read it?

April 28, 2008 at 1:21 pm

Sorry, I still have not considered whether there may be problems with your simple test, I’ll be back with this hopefully soon.

April 28, 2008 at 1:24 pm

To open mind -
In homeopathic Materia Medica – in clinical rubrics, – Platina is listed to have caused (as poisoning) ovarian cysts, and there is a medicament Cisplatin which contains Platinum and is used to treat this condition in conventional medicine. Of course, no rationale is given in conventional medicine as to why exactly this preparation is effective, but it is known to work- so it is used.

April 28, 2008 at 3:17 pm

MJ Simpson

You haven’t answered openmind’s question because he/she is asking for an example of ‘like cures like’ that is not part of homeopathic lore. If this is, as homeopaths claims, a law (and not just lore!) then there should be plenty of other examples beyond your Materia Medica.

In any case, you say that platinum causes ovarian cysts and that something which contains platinum is used to treat them. Glossing over the first part of that equation, how do you explain that every other compound containing platinum, including all the ones that contain more platinum than Cisplatin, are not used to treat this condition? Why does one ‘like’ cure this when things that are *more* ‘like’ don’t?

It’s not really much of a law, is it?

April 28, 2008 at 5:01 pm

givescienceachance

For your interest, the following is a list of a few medicines (homeopathic name in parentheses) which could be prescribed by an orthodox practitioner for symptoms the substance can cause. On occasions a homeopath might even prescribe the same remedy in the same case, though in a potentised form:
Digitalis (Digitalis)
Nitroglycerine (Glonoine)
Gold (Aurum metallicum)
Ephedrine (Ephedra vulgaris)
Silver nitrate (Argentum nitricum)
Quinine (China)
Adrenalin (Adrenalinum)
The list is not a complete one, by any means.

April 28, 2008 at 5:43 pm

openmind

GSAC, you said that orthodox medicine has an abundance of examples of the principle of ‘like curing like’. I asked if you would care to give some examples of EBM applying the ‘law’ of similars.

One of your examples was digitalis. Do you think this is used in EBM because of the ‘law’ of similars? Because it produces certain symptoms in a healthy person and should therefore cure the symptoms in an ill person?

Or do you think it is more likely that it is used by EBM because it has been shown to control cardiac arrhythmia, not due to the workings of some all encompassing ‘law’ (that has not been held up to the rigour of scientific scrutiny but is merely assumed to be true by a small number of believers without good evidence) but due to the fact that it is an active compound and has a pharmacological effect.

As long as there is an active compound involved there is no need for this ‘law’, it’s all down to the interaction of chemicals. As soon as you dilute away the active compound you need to build a framework of fancy around the placebo effect.

April 28, 2008 at 7:13 pm

Andy Lewis

ez said – “And just how much to add to have it published anywhere where people like you would read it?”

No need to go to any expense for this sort of test. Just announce what you are going to do on a blog or wiki, get some sceptics in to help frame the test. Do the test with a third party holding the ‘code’ and then announce your results.

If you pass you can count on me to help get the test published and help get Randi’s millions too.

April 28, 2008 at 10:07 pm

givescienceachance

Openmind, EBM is a belief system which does not survive the rigour of scientific scrutiny. I prefer to go with the science of homeopathy rather then the questionable speculations as to the mechanisms of action of individual drugs.

As for the following statement:

As long as there is an active compound involved there is no need for this ‘law’, it’s all down to the interaction of chemicals.

it shows exactly how unscientific your views of medicine are.

Perhaps you can explain why a homeopath and an orthodox practitioner might prescribe exactly the same medicine to the same person (though in different dosages), especially as the former is using a relationship to the condition based on a consistent principle and the latter an ad hoc justification?

April 28, 2008 at 10:20 pm

M Simpson

“Openmind, EBM is a belief system which does not survive the rigour of scientific scrutiny. I prefer to go with the science of homeopathy rather then the questionable speculations as to the mechanisms of action of individual drugs.”

That’s the very essence of CAM in all its forms (well, apart from the bit about EBM not being scientific which you know is nonsense and are just saying to provoke a response). But the latter part of your statement sums up CAM perfectly. It’s a naive belief in a universal panacea rather than an appreciation of the beautiful complexity of biological systems. You want a one-size-fits-all medicine and you’re prepared to do and say anything, absolutely anything, to maintain the illusion that it’s true because otherwise you might have to start accepting the reality of the world around you.

Does the world frighten you? Does it confuse you? I’m genuinely intrigued why a grown adult would feel the need to deny reality and construct an imaginary fairyland to live in?

April 28, 2008 at 11:02 pm

Well, nice to hear that you are ready to help someone, but I personally won’t be able to do this, at least, not right now – I’m still a student, I’m running like mad most of the day with my two small children, and all I dream of right now is just get enough sleep to keep me up the next day, and I write here just to have my mind switched from these daily chores otherwise it’s too tough psychologically. And as I said, I doubt I can recruit a sufficient amount of patients to make the test meaningful… You need someone with an established practice and some experience in prescribing to do this. Sorry to disappoint you here.

Still I wonder if I personally would accept something done from a distant location and posted on a blog – one can write and claim whatever they wish, I think it should be done with actual face-to-face contact of all the parties involved to be acceptable.

April 28, 2008 at 11:48 pm

M SImpson says:
““a Nux Vomica patient is going to improve from taking the Nux Vomica remedy”

“but if the response is not good, then the remedy needs to be changed.”

Do you consider these two contradictary statements to both be true? Once again we see the classic homeopathic doublethink: this stuff works every time except when it doesn’t.”

I know it’s silly to argue with you personally, but I’ll write for someone who maybe reading this blog for educative purposes.
THat’s why GSAC said that every time it’s a test. You have a patient who comes, you gather their symptoms from them and you CONJECTURE based on what you know about the remedies and the techniques of case-taking that you’ve learnt that this patient is likely to improve from the remedy called Nux Vomica. But, obviously, you can be mistaken just because you failed to observe attentively enough, or did not ask enough questions, or did not study your Materia Medica well enough, or do not have enough experience with case-taking, so you always keep in mind that you can be wrong, and this is why the feedback from the patient is necessary to see if one’s CONJECTURE was correct in the first place. WHat you thought was a Nux Vomica patient was in fact a Tarentula patient! Why have I not seen this from the start? – Is a question, I think, every homeopath has asked themselves at least once in their career. And if you knew just how much energy a good homeopath spends in trying to find a remedy for a complicated chronic case, you would forget all your statements about “one cure for all”, prescribing – reasonably well, that is, – is a much harder work than anything else I know.

Even “simple” acutes can be quite tricky and need changing of the remedies on the way, which actually brings me to the point of what may be wrong with Andy’s setting for the test – some acutes do need several remedies on the way, and no matter if you gave placebo or Nux Vomica in the beginning, by the time you make the assessment they may have moved to the next remedy they need by themselves – you’ll agree that there are other factors than remedies that also affect the patient, you can never know. Or you will continue giving them placebo from beginning to end – in your conception of the code? THen it probably does not matter.

There are plenty examples of overdosing in many books on Materia Medica, but as you think that people who wrote them were either deluded or liars, then I see no point in suggesting you any more examples – of which I have witnessed several myself – not after my own prescribing though, because these examples have caused me to try to find out what a safer and milder way of prescribing the remedies actually is.

April 29, 2008 at 3:16 am

To M Simpson – biodiversity – well, and what do you think individualisation and increasing number of remedies used is for? Some pharmacies already have up to 4000 remedies in stock.

Falcon’s blood used to treat Vertigo because the falcon flies high – where did you get that from? Especially the “because” part seems suspicious? You really should open a new homeopathy school because your description of homeopathy is significantly different from what most people learn at homeopathy schools – have you ever heard about Totality of symptoms?

If you ever come across a person who prescribes homeopathic remedies on olny one symptom, you’d better start looking for a new prescriber for yourself immediately, although some prescribers can be good due to their intuition which they fail – or have not yet – brought to the conscious level themselves, so what might seem like “using only one symptom” to find a remedy actually is only a tip of the while iceberg of what else they observe and percieve about the patient without putting it into precise words and rubrics of the Repertory. I think that is the case of many “modern” prescribers like Sankaran and Massimo Mangiavalore, they can rely on their “tips” because of the more than solid grounding they have “beneath the water”, but those other students who do not have any such stock will find themselves on rather shaky ground, or rather a “piece of ice” floating on the surface, to continue the analogy, if they only rely on the visible “tips”. Well, that’s how I see it.

April 29, 2008 at 5:29 am

Jeff Garrington

For ez. I believe the Devon School of Homeopathy is responsible.
You couldn’t make it up, could you. Leave it to the Homeopath’s.
Falco Peregrinus Disciplinatus (Trained Peregrine Falcon)
Prepared from the blood and feather of a Peregrine Tiercel that had been bred in captivity and is used as a stud bird.
Conducted by Misha Norland at the School of Homeopathy in 1997.

Positronium (Antimatter)
Prepared from the radiation arising from the spontaneous annihilation of Positronium. Positronium is a configuration resembling hydrogen but comprises of an electron and an anti-electron in mutual orbit. It was produced in 1997 at University of San Diego.
Conducted by Misha Norland at the School of Homeopathy in 1998.

Dreaming Potency
Prepared from a medicine given to Janet Snowdon by Sangomas in South Africa.
Conducted by Janet Snowdon in Bath in 1996.

Agathis Australis (Kauri Tree)
Prepared from the sap and resin of a magnificent 2000 year old giant Kauri tree of native New Zealand bush. These ‘lords of the forest’ were almost logged to extinction.
Conducted by Misha Norland at the School of Homeopathy.

Arizona (Lava)
Prepared from ‘ha-ha’ basaltic lava from Sunset Crater, Flagstaff, Arizona, U.S.A.
Conducted by Misha Norland at the School of Homeopathy 1994.

Salix Fragilis (Crack Willow)
Conducted by Penny Stirling in Bristol in 1998.

North Wales Slate
Conducted by Misha Norland in Czechoslovakia and by Andy Brachi and Jenny Hill in North Wales in Summer 1996.

Knopper Oak Gall
Prepared from a gall on Quercus Pendunculata caused by a wasp Cynips Calicis laying her eggs.
Conducted by Misha Norland in Moravia in 1998.

LSD-25
Prepared from D-Lysergic Acid Diethylamide.
Conducted by Misha Norland at the School of Homeopathy in 1999.

Diamorphine (Heroin)
Conducted by Janet Snowdon in 1999 and 2000.

Cladonia Rangiferina (Reindeer Moss)
This moss is an example of fungus and a unicellular algae in symbiosis. It is the primary winter sustenance of Reindeer.
Conducted by Misha Norland at the School of Homeopathy in 2000.

Cygnus Bewickii (Bewick Swan)
Conducted by Penny Stirling in Bristol in 2002

Amphisbaena alba (South American slow-worm)
Conducted by Misha Norland at the School of Homeopathy in 2001.

Latex vulcani (Condom)
Prepared from vulcanized rubber of a natural latex condom.
Conducted by Misha Norland and Peter Fraser at the School of Homeopathy in 2001.

Carbon fullerenum (Buckyballs or Carbon 60)
Conducted by Misha Norland and Peter Fraser at the School of Homeopathy in 2002.

Galium aparine (Cleavers or Goosegrass)
Conducted by Misha Norland and Peter Fraser at the School of Homeopathy in 2003.

Passer domesticus (House Sparrow)
Conducted by Misha Norland and Peter Fraser at the School of Homeopathy in 2004

April 29, 2008 at 5:53 am

Geff, I have browsed this site, the Proving of Falco Peregrinum before writing, but the wording that M Simpson seems to have so much against did not cross my eye. There is plenty of other information mentioned there and pick out just one sentence – I admit I might have overlooked it – out of context and say that because of this sentence everything is wrong and nonsense, is not logical no matter how you look at it.

My daughter is currently on Salix Fragilis (which seems to work very well), the proving of which is on this site, and the homeopath used the entire Repertory section to arrive at this prescription, of course, one has to be trained to know what to match with what, as I’ve said somewhere above.

April 29, 2008 at 6:52 am

M Simpson

“THat’s why GSAC said that every time it’s a test. You have a patient who comes, you gather their symptoms from them and you CONJECTURE based on what you know about the remedies and the techniques of case-taking that you’ve learnt that this patient is likely to improve from the remedy called Nux Vomica. But, obviously, you can be mistaken just because you failed to observe attentively enough, or did not ask enough questions, or did not study your Materia Medica well enough, or do not have enough experience with case-taking, so you always keep in mind that you can be wrong, and this is why the feedback from the patient is necessary to see if one’s CONJECTURE was correct in the first place. WHat you thought was a Nux Vomica patient was in fact a Tarentula patient! Why have I not seen this from the start? – Is a question, I think, every homeopath has asked themselves at least once in their career. And if you knew just how much energy a good homeopath spends in trying to find a remedy for a complicated chronic case, you would forget all your statements about “one cure for all”, prescribing – reasonably well, that is, – is a much harder work than anything else I know.”

This is not a test for homeopathy though, is it? This is a test for a particular homeopathic remedy *based on the a priori assumption that homeopathy in general works* which is not something that is relevant in any way to those of us who consider the whole idea to be bunkum. This is ‘test’ which homeopathy very obviously cannot fail because you just keep trying different remedies until the patient improves, at which point you claim that the last remedy worked nd all the others were wrong. It gives homeopathy a near enough 100 per cent success rate but I could do the same thing with Smarties.

Nux Vomica: it really doesn’t matter what a Nux Vomica patient is or how many wrong guesses you have to make before you hit the jackpot and correctly identify them as a Nux Vomica patient. The claim was: “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.” So once a Nux Vomica patient has been identified, it should be very simple to show that, every time he gets ill, he’ll recover with Nux Vomica. Every time. This is a reproducible event. You have already done it a number of times so why not do it again while someone is watching?

This is a perfect chance to demonstrate that you’re right and the rest of the world is wrong. Fame and riches can be yours for simply repeating something you say you can do every time. So why the shyness? If I said I could fly like Superman but refused to do it when anyone was watching, how much credibility would that give my story?

By the way, here’s a materia medica for peregrine falcon which includes six specific references to vertigo: http://www.homoeopathie-online.com/materia_medica_homoeopathica/falcmm.htm

How does the ‘law of similars’ apply here? What aspect of a falcon, other than the whole ‘flying very high’ thing, is the ‘like cures like’ here?

April 29, 2008 at 7:35 am

openmind

Openmind, EBM is a belief system which does not survive the rigour of scientific scrutiny. I prefer to go with the science of homeopathy rather then the questionable speculations as to the mechanisms of action of individual drugs

Ladies and gentlemen, we are now through the looking glass.

GSAC, I’m genuinely intrigued by this statement. Not by the point you are making (the good thing about these kind of opinions is that because they are wrong we can safely ignore them) but by the kind of person it reveals you to be. This is such a spectacularly nonsensical thing to say that I can’t help but think that, like an alien abductee or a perpetual motion crank, it is useless to try and engage with you using reason or logic because you have long since consigned these concepts to your mental ‘recycle bin’.

You are obviously articulate, and no doubt intelligent, which is why I find it so sad that your faith in the power of homeopathy has backed you into an intellectual corner where it is impossible for you to use your critical thinking skills or accept that what you have been told may be wrong.

I’m sorry to be the one to have to say it, and I’m only saying it for your own good, but you are not a valiant crusader fighting against the hegemony of anti-scientific big pharma with a radical new scientific paradigm of a safe, effective and cheap system of medicine. What you do is exactly the opposite of science. Until you submit what you do to the same level of proof that you you would expect from EBM and are willing to accept the outcome, you are just playing pretend.

April 29, 2008 at 7:54 am

M Simpson, I’m very sorry to repeat that I cannot possibly engage in any prescribing tests right now, and for another 3 years, I think, until my children grow up a bit and I learn more about remedies. I do not care if someone watches me, but I would like to be able to properly concentrate on case taking when I’m doing a prescription and not doing this running from the kitchen to the bathroom to help the children and back again to do the dishes. What kind of prescribing can that be? THat’s pretty irresponsible towards anyone, I don’t want to do that.

Next, A Nux Vomica patient is a generic term to identify a patient who needs Nux Vomica at a particular moment in time, when the same person gets sick next time – we’re speaking about acutes here, – he might need a different remedy, Lycopodium, maybe, which should be given to them. Nux Vomica is not a name of a disease in the conventional sense, are you sure you realise this?

WHen you start asking WHY a remedy produces such and such symptoms is actually the beginning of theorising as I see it. And theorising, interpretations can be true or not true, the only truth of which one can be sure here is that the remedy produces these symptoms more or less often in some provers, so these can be relied upon, and not your theorietical constructions as to why exactly is this so etc. Well, I personally prefer to be conservative in this sense, although I must admit that sometimes the metaphors like the one you seem to dislike so much are indeed strangely relevant and analogies are applicable, but I would not really base my prescriptions on these things alone. If you see what I mean. And you seem to try to delve into the Doctrine of Signatures head on? Very strange with your negative attitude, I’d say. Are you sure you know what are you trying to discuss? The law of similars simply says that if you have a person with vertigo – and a lot of other symptoms which are covered well by the symptoms caused by the remedy Falco Peregrinum taken all together and analysed properly, – then the remedy should be given and one can expect that the person’s state of health will improve, which will include the vertigo, of course.

April 29, 2008 at 8:09 am

openmind

Perhaps you can explain why a homeopath and an orthodox practitioner might prescribe exactly the same medicine to the same person (though in different dosages), especially as the former is using a relationship to the condition based on a consistent principle and the latter an ad hoc justification?

Disregarding your last sentence (because it is ‘through the looking glass’) my best guess is coincidence.

GSAC, why do you use the phrase ‘consistent principle’ instead of ‘law’?

April 29, 2008 at 8:10 am

openmind

That should have been a ‘close brackets’ not a winky smiley.

April 29, 2008 at 8:22 am

Openmind,
“accept that what you have been told may be wrong.” If this is supported by everyday practice why should one try to reject it all the same? I guess you really have not been into medical practice and have never witnessed a typical response to any treatment, and of course, not seen just how much difference administration of a proper homeopathic remedy makes… It’s not what one is told but what one sees which makes the difference, and if you think someone can be intelligent in general and stuck in some particular point, well, you are kind of wrong. People are whole. They are not like cars where one detail can get broken and other parts remain good.

April 29, 2008 at 8:42 am

givescienceachance

0penmind and M Simpson, when you can produce the scientific principles or laws underlying medicine based on EBM, then you can talk about ‘looking glass’ worlds.

As for “one size fits all”, that is precisely the approach of orthodox drugs. and just like shoes, one size does not fit all – individualisation is essential for successful treatment of individuals. Homeopathy applies the same approach in every case in order to find the specific requirement for each case. Just because feet are measured in the same way to determine the shoe size does not mean that only one size of shoe is then supplied. On the other hand if you fail to measure the feet and issue shoes statistically shown to fit most people, a lot of people will have side effects – that is problems from the failure of the shoes to fit.

I used the term consistent principle because orthodox drugs do not even work on that basis, let alone on the basis of a law.

In 200 years what scientific laws of medicine have the drug companies produced? That is, in 200 years and umpteen billions of pounds of research?

Good science investigates coincidences, because the odd is often the key to learning. It was how homeopathy started, how the study of left and right handed molecules started, and so on. When you brush aside unusual facts you are rejecting the truth in favour of prejudice and belief – not being scientific.

April 29, 2008 at 8:47 am

givescienceachance

PS Openmind should learn what a sentence is. It looks bad when you don’t know basic things like that while claiming to know really complex things.

April 29, 2008 at 9:41 am

MJ Simpson

“A Nux Vomica patient is a generic term to identify a patient who needs Nux Vomica at a particular moment in time, when the same person gets sick next time – we’re speaking about acutes here, – he might need a different remedy”

Ah, so in fact there is no such thing as ‘a Nux Vomica patient’ per se, just a Nux Vomica *case*. You can see how we could misunderstand this:

“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.”

What you’re saying there is that there is a type of person who is ‘a Nux Vomica patient’ and that this person will recover, given Nux Vomica, every time you see him. Now you’re saying that a Nux Vomica case will always recover when given Nux Vomica … but the only way you know it’s a Nux Vomica case is after the fact, when the patient has recovered. So they recovered because you gave them NV but you only know that they needed NV because they recovered. Circular reasoning.

A homeopath can only be sure of his diagnosis *after* the patient recovers and then conveniently ignores all the ‘wrong’ diagnoses made previously. Precisely how does this differ from guesswork?

April 29, 2008 at 9:56 am

Andy Lewis

gsac – you errors have been explained to you. Why do you keep repeating them? You say,

when you can produce the scientific principles or laws underlying medicine based on EBM, then you can talk about ‘looking glass’ worlds.

EBM is based on the principles of testing what treatments work by conducting trials that seek to remove sources of bias from observations. It is that simple.

You keep wanting EBM to come up with grand laws. But such things exist only in your simplistic worldview. The human body is the most complex system that we know exists in the universe and yet you want to boil down its functioning into childish simulacra of physics like laws. But underpinning EBM is the totality of science – particularly biology and chemistry – and the commitment to rigourous measurement techniques.

Homeopaths cling to their comforting laws because it allows them into a make believe world where they can control illness through magic like ritual and incantations. Meanwhile, as we have established here, there is no good evidence for any of it. I have asked enough and no one puts forward their best evidence.

All we have is anecdote – the stuff of delusions. Do any homeopaths ever step back and wonder if they are acting in a fantasy play? Do you ever have glimmers of doubt that you have constructed a castle in the air? Are all homeopaths so self centred that they never feel the need to test their fundamental assumptions about the world?

My guess is that it is much easier to believe there is a big conspiracy against homeopathy.

April 29, 2008 at 10:03 am

Andy Lewis

MJ Simpson said

A homeopath can only be sure of his diagnosis *after* the patient recovers and then conveniently ignores all the ‘wrong’ diagnoses made previously. Precisely how does this differ from guesswork?

If you get a straight answer to this I will be amazed. Homeopathy is the very definition of the post hoc fallacy. Their reasoning happens in reverse. That is why they do not want to be tested. It breaks the chain of their thinking and stops them coming to the ‘correct’ diagnosis after the patient has got better.

April 29, 2008 at 4:54 pm

openmind

PS Openmind should learn what a sentence is. It looks bad when you don’t know basic things like that while claiming to know really complex things.

Bah, you got me there. Apart from the bit about me claiming to know ‘really complex things’. I don’t think I’ve ever claimed that. What I profess to know about science and the scientific method isn’t really very complex at all. It does just happen to be right though.

One more time then, just for you:

Perhaps you can explain why a homeopath and an orthodox practitioner might prescribe exactly the same medicine to the same person (though in different dosages), especially as the former is using a relationship to the condition based on a consistent principle and the latter an ad hoc justification?

Disregarding the part of your sentence that reads ‘especially as the former is using a relationship to the condition based on a consistent principle and the latter an ad hoc justification’ (because it is ‘through the looking glass) my best guess is coincidence.

GSAC, I asked you why you use the phrase ‘consistent principle’ instead of ‘law’. I’m not sure I understand your answer:

I used the term consistent principle because orthodox drugs do not even work on that basis, let alone on the basis of a law.

Is there a law of similars or not? If so, how do you define law? What evidence do you have for this law?

April 29, 2008 at 5:17 pm

openmind

In 200 years what scientific laws of medicine have the drug companies produced? That is, in 200 years and umpteen billions of pounds of research?

Why on earth are you insistent on having scientific laws of medicine? It’s almost as if you think that medicine is nothing to do with biology, chemistry or physics.

Here are the American Heart Association’s Top 10 advances in heart disease and stroke research from 2007 alone. Any one of which has added something more useful to the sum of human understanding than the whole history of homeopathy.

1. Genome-wide association study of 14,000 cases of seven common diseases and 3,000 shared controls

It identified genes which may cause specific diseases and represent a powerful approach in identifying genes involved in common human diseases. This large-scale genome-wide association (GWA) study found consistent and replicable genetic markers of several complex diseases of adulthood, including atherosclerotic heart disease.

Source: Nature, June 7, 2007

2. Genomewide association analysis of coronary artery disease

This study included a joint analysis of two genomewide association studies of coronary artery disease. Results identified several genetic loci that, individually and in aggregate, significantly affect the risk of developing coronary artery disease.

Source: New England Journal of Medicine, Aug. 2, 2007

3. Cardiopulmonary resuscitation by bystanders with chest compression only (SOS-Kanto): an observational study

Results of this work indicated chest compression-only resuscitation by bystanders may be the preferable approach to resuscitation for adult patients with witnessed out-of-hospital cardiac arrest, especially those with apnea, shockable rhythm or short periods of untreated arrest.

Source: The Lancet, March 17, 2007

4. Implementation of a statewide system for coronary reperfusion

This study discovered that a statewide program focused on regional systems for quickly treating ST-elevation myocardial infarctions (STEMI – heart attacks in which the coronary artery is completely blocked) can significantly improve quality of care.

Source: Journal of the American Medical Association, Nov. 28, 2007; JAMA 2007. This study was also presented at the American Heart Association Scientific Sessions 2007.

5. Long term effects of dietary sodium reduction on cardiovascular disease outcomes: observational follow-up of the trials of hypertension prevention (TOHP)

This is the first major trial to document that a reduced sodium intake lowers the risk of clinical cardiovascular disease outcomes, not just blood pressure.

Sources: British Medical Journal, April 20, 2007

6. Optimal medical therapy with or without PCI for stable coronary artery disease (COURAGE)

This study compared the initial management strategy of percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) with intensive pharmacologic therapy and lifestyle intervention (optimal medical therapy) vs. optimal medical therapy alone in reducing the risk of cardiovascular events. It was concluded that, as an initial management strategy in patients with stable coronary artery disease, PCI did not reduce the risk of death, myocardial infarction or other major cardiovascular events when added to optimal medical therapy.

Source: New England Journal of Medicine, April 12, 2007

7. Generation of functional cardiomyocytes from adult mouse spermatogonial stem cells

This study analyzed the complex functional properties of cardiomyocytes (heart muscle cells) derived from maGSCs in vitro and the behavior of undifferentiated maGSCs in normal hearts of mice in vivo after transplantation. It was concluded that maGSCs provide a new source of distinct types of cardiomyocytes for basic research/potential therapeutic application.

Source: Circulation Research, June 8, 2007

8. HORIZONS: Harmonizing Outcomes with RevascularIZatiON and Stents

This large study examined the safety and effectiveness of anticoagulation medications and drug-eluting stents in patients experiencing a STEMI heart attack, in which the coronary artery is completely blocked, without significantly increasing the rate of death or recurrent heart attacks among these patients.

Source: Late-breaking trial at the Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics

9. Effectiveness and safety of drug-el uting stents in Ontario

This large Canadian study found that drug-eluting stents are effective in reducing the need for target-vessel coronary artery bypass in patients at the highest risk for re-narrowing of previously blocked arteries, without a significantly increased rate of death or heart attack.

Source: New England Journal of Medicine, Oct. 7, 2007

10. Underdiagnosis of Hypertension in Children and Adolescents

This study of more than 14,000 children found that hypertension and prehypertension were often undiagnosed in the pediatric population. Patient age, height, obesity-related diagnoses, and magnitude and frequency of abnormal blood pressure readings all increased the odds of hypertension.

Sources: Journal of the American Medical Association, Aug. 22, 2007

Source-ANI
LIN/P

April 30, 2008 at 4:11 am

MJ Simpson writes:

“A homeopath can only be sure of his diagnosis *after* the patient recovers and then conveniently ignores all the ‘wrong’ diagnoses made previously. Precisely how does this differ from guesswork?”

Well, in fact, yes, a homeopathic prescription can be described an educated guess on a remedy, however, if you are trying to suggest that there exists a field of human knowledge which does not involve at least some measure of guesswork, I’d be inclined to think that it’s you who are living in the magic fairyland where there are almighty gods who know all the answers to all questions.

Another aspect is that when you can improve the quality of your guessing with time and training suggests that there is substance in the subject, that the “final goal” so-to say is knowable, there is a principle behind it which can be approached to – although the humans should humbly admit that at best they can be approaching the limit of knowledge but not quite getting there ever (still it is possible to live quite happily with this though) – we live surrounded by approximations! CAn you measure something exactly? Up to a certain number after the comma, yes, and you can improve on this, but never get there. Still it is basically measurable and usable. So the conclusion will be that there is some principle which determines the response of a patient to a homeopathic remedy, some single principle, which can be formulated as a “law”, the law of similars in particular.

However, there are things unknowable as well, that is if you take the coin tossing, no matter how many times you toss the coin, although you might even know the probability of each of the sides to appear, you cannot predict with absolute certainty that head or tail is going to appear, and no training will improve your predictive ability. This means that the law that that governs this event is not knowable TO US at least.

Well, when you sit in your chair and think about things purely theorically everything seems futile and “circular logic” and whatever. However it would be unwise to impose your conclusions thus obtained to people who work with things on-hand.

GSAC – what a wonderful analogy about measuring feet with the same measure and making shoes according to the measurements – or statistically! It grasps the essence so well, thank you very much! I really enjoyed this!

And to open-mind – well, the worst products need the most abundant and loud marketing, while good things usually spread by word of mouth. Keep this in mind.

April 30, 2008 at 8:40 am

Derik

So, hypothetically, (I’m not suggesting we actually do this);

If we took a group of inexperienced homeopaths straight out of training and a group of experienced homeopaths, had them interview patients and have a single shot at proscribing the correct remedy you would expect the patients treated by the experienced homeopaths to do better, on average, then the inexperienced homeopaths owing to their better guesses?

It’s interesting that you think that getting the remedy correct is important; some homeopaths suggest the important thing is some kind of quantum entanglement [sic] between patient practitioner and pill so that the name on the pill bottle is irrelevant.

April 30, 2008 at 2:10 pm

givescienceachance

Openmind, such confidence here in the results. I quote:

1: “may cause”
2: “significantly affect the risk of developing”
3: “may be the preferable approach”
4: “can significantly improve”
5: “lowers the risk”
6: “did not reduce the risk”
7: Not a clinical study
8: No results mentioned
9: “without a significantly increased rate of death or heart attack”
10: ” all increased the odds”

This is the exactly the problem with EBM, it is experiment without theory, and therefore not scientific. The conclusions are all based on probability, not on known causation.

It is worth remembering (and Andy and M Simpson should remember this too) that if a result is only statistically true then there is at least one other significant factor in addition to that being tested affecting the result. In other words the factors which can bias the result HAVE NOT been cancelled out, the relationship of this factor or factors to what is being tested HAS NOT been determined, and so the whole rationale for the test collapses.

The tests upon which EBM depends are not scientific tests but attempts to discover information in the absence of any scientific theory. They precede a science … and by quite a long time. Senior researchers know that the RCT is not perfect, but only “the best we’ve got”.

Quite simply this paragraph from Andy is complete nonsense:

You keep wanting EBM to come up with grand laws. But such things exist only in your simplistic worldview. The human body is the most complex system that we know exists in the universe and yet you want to boil down its functioning into childish simulacra of physics like laws. But underpinning EBM is the totality of science – particularly biology and chemistry – and the commitment to rigourous measurement techniques.

How can you have a “rigorous measurement” of something unknown?
How can “rigorous measurement” be an accurate description of a conclusion which is only probable?
How can you have science without theory?
How complex does something have to be before the scientific method ceases to be applicable?

I say it again, you are talking nonsense. Mathematics and physics have already had to face the problems of complex systems, and have arrived at scientific solutions. You try to defend medicine as scientific while repudiating everything necessary to make it scientific. After 200 years and billions of pounds I would expect at least some theoretical framework to have been established for medicine, but there is none. Instead there is a patchwork of supposition, probability and blind empiricism.

April 30, 2008 at 2:24 pm

givescienceachance

MJ Simpson said “You can see how we could misunderstand this”

If you expect a four year course in homeopathy delivered in a few dozen comments on a weblog, then you are bound to find that you misunderstand things. ez has also only claimed to be a student, so you should expect to have a less than thorough explanation. If you had any respect for your own intelligence and ability, you would want to study the basic texts yourself, not accept being spoon-fed by a student just so that you can snipe at attempts to simplify it to your level.

Personally I think it is very brave of ez to put up with the offensive rubbish anti-homeopaths call reasoning. But then I suppose it is right to be tolerant and patient with stupid people in the hope that they will gradually learn.

April 30, 2008 at 2:36 pm

Andy Lewis

gsac – e.g. take a look at this…

http://www.expasy.ch/cgi-bin/show_thumbnails.pl

It shows what we know about metabolic pathways in cells. This is just a smidgen of the science we know supporting medicine. It really is incredible you take this tack.

If you think an RCT does not work, please be specific and give examples about the test we were discussing with ez about nux vom. What specifically would invalidate the test. Please do not talk generally as you are not being clear when you do. Concrete examples please.

April 30, 2008 at 3:10 pm

MJ Simpson

There’s a weird irony in GSAC’s belief that the world is full of certainties and things which can’t be measured, whereas in fact the world is full of probabilities and things which can be measured. It’s the Mirror Universe!

If you jump out of an aeroplane without a parachute you will probably be killed. But it’s not a certainty – there are documented cases of people falling into forests or deep snow drifts. On the other hand, there are cases of parachutists who have landed badly and died, So not wearing a parachute when you jump out of a plane greatly increases your risk of breaking your neck. The same principle applies to the whole of medicine.

Nothing – nothing – in medicine is definite. You know why? Because people are all individuals and you have to take lots of things into account, like lifestyle and diet and fitness and genetic inheritance. Doctors take these things into account when prescribing medicine or recommending treatment. It is only in the homeopaths Mirror Universe where things are definite and ridiculous claims of near-total efficacy are made.

Like this one: “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.” Not even the most junior medical student would make a claim that a certain type of patient will always recover when given a certain treatment. Every time.

Of course, homeopaths ask about lifestyle and diet and fitness (and irrelevant stuff like dreams and what have you) and then pick a remedy at random – not that it matters, because they’re all the same anyway.

GSAC, your rants about the whole of science being unscientific are becoming increasingly absurd and risible. Are you familiar with the episode of Blackadder where Tom Baker plays a seaship captain who tells Blackadder: “There’s two opinions on whether a ship needs a crew. I say it doesn’t, and all the other captains say it does.” That, my dear fellow, is you.

April 30, 2008 at 3:53 pm

openmind

GSAC, do you really think that medicine is completely divorced from the underlying scientific disciplines of biology, chemistry, physics and psychology?

April 30, 2008 at 4:18 pm

givescienceachance Said:
April 28, 2008 at 5:01 pm

For your interest, the following is a list of a few medicines (homeopathic name in parentheses) which could be prescribed by an orthodox practitioner for symptoms the substance can cause. On occasions a homeopath might even prescribe the same remedy in the same case, though in a potentised form:
Digitalis (Digitalis)
Nitroglycerine (Glonoine)
Gold (Aurum metallicum)
Ephedrine (Ephedra vulgaris)
Silver nitrate (Argentum nitricum)
Quinine (China)
Adrenalin (Adrenalinum)

This list fascinates me. None of these substances “could be prescribed by an orthodox practitioner for symptoms the substance can cause”.

I would appreciate some detail being filled in here if that’s not too much trouble. This is a totally erroneous presumption on your part and in no way proof of any “like causes like” hypothesis.

Let’s take Digitalis. Firstly, it is not given pharmaceutically in this form, but as digoxin, but that is by the by. It’s primary effect in heart disease is through it’s negative chronotropism – it slows heart rates by blocking conduction of impulses in the atrioventricular node. It is therefore useful to slow the heart rate in cases of atrial fibrillation where the rate is too fast. It can help with mild heart failure because reducing frequency of heart beats will improve efficiency of ventricular contraction.

Too much digoxin will slow conduction so much that the “pacemaker” impulses may be inhibited completely, a condition known as heart block. According to you, an orthodox practitioner could “prescribe” digoxin for “symptoms” of heart block. Well I guess they might, but they should be prepared to be struck off the medical register/sued for negligence, as this is a clear contraindication for digoxin use.

Similar wonky thinking applies to all the other drugs on your list too, so do you care to explain what you mean?

April 30, 2008 at 5:39 pm

givescienceachance

MJ Simpson:

Nothing – nothing – in medicine is definite.

Where is your evidence for this?

You know why? Because people are all individuals and you have to take lots of things into account, like lifestyle and diet and fitness and genetic inheritance.

So why does orthodox drug testing have no mechanism for systematically taking these factors into account? All it does is try (unsuccessfully) to generalise them out of the picture, leading to side effects. In homeopathy the principles are clear, and the application of them enables all the individual aspects of any case to be seen in a consistent context – that is, scientifically – and taken properly into account.

your rants about the whole of science being unscientific are becoming increasingly absurd and risible

Were I to make any such claim, it would be both absurd and risible. I have only claimed that the basis of EBM, the RCT, does not have solid scientific foundations and orthodox medical researchers would agree. If I am wrong, it would be easy for you to demonstrate the fact, but you will not do so for two reasons:
1) Because you cannot be bothered to work that hard
2) Because you do not know how to.

April 30, 2008 at 5:42 pm

givescienceachance

DT,

I would appreciate some detail being filled in here if that’s not too much trouble. “

It is too much trouble, not least because every fact will be challenged ad nauseam. Why not make it a project to investigate these substances yourself?

April 30, 2008 at 6:05 pm

Andy Lewis

It is too much trouble, not least because every fact will be challenged ad nauseam. Why not make it a project to investigate these substances yourself?

Translate from homeospeak: “I was clearly wrong, but I am not going to admit it.”

Right. The RCT is a measurement technique. It has as much need of theory as a ruler or stopwatch does. Gather the facts first.

In homeopathy the principles are clear, and the application of them enables all the individual aspects of any case to be seen in a consistent context – that is, scientifically – and taken properly into account.

You may well clear principles, but they are meaningless if they bear no correspondence with reality. You may be perfect at applying your principles consistently, but this is a futile exercise if it does not work.

Where is your best evidence that your principles, applied consistently, do anything more than a plain sugar pill? Now, that is a scientific question.

April 30, 2008 at 8:26 pm

givescienceachance Says:
April 30, 2008 at 5:42 pm

It is too much trouble, not least because every fact will be challenged ad nauseam. Why not make it a project to investigate these substances yourself?

As Andy Lewis says – homeowaffle. Why is it that everything is “too much trouble” for you guys? Can’t provide evidence, can’t do your own studies, can’t test your own remedies, can’t say what scientific basis underlies homeopathy, can’t define homeostasis, can’t think and chew gum at the same time… (no, scotch that… can’t think, period)

If you are unable to provide evidence for any of your claims, why do you even bother to make them?

I do not need to investigate the effects of these drugs – they have been well established by clinicopharmacologic research over many decades. In addition, over 25 years of clinical practice I have investigated them for myself, and have found absolutely no evidence for anything you say regarding any of these drugs.

April 30, 2008 at 8:49 pm

givescienceachance

Right. The RCT is a measurement technique. It has as much need of theory as a ruler or stopwatch does. Gather the facts first.

So what units does it measure in?
How are these units defined?
In fact, what is it actually measuring?

April 30, 2008 at 9:03 pm

givescienceachance

I do not need to investigate the effects of these drugs – they have been well established by clinicopharmacologic research over many decades. In addition, over 25 years of clinical practice I have investigated them for myself, and have found absolutely no evidence for anything you say regarding any of these drugs.

So you say.
But then if I were to say that I knew of examples where the same thing was given to the same patient by an orthodox doctor and a homeopath, the demand would be made for certified evidence.

If you have made these investigations you will have available to you the toxicological reports, the conclusions of clinical trials, the theoretical claims for specific interactions and the homeopathic provings. Without all that you would be making an unsupported claim that there is “absolutely no evidence”. Instead the evidence for my claim can be easily found by simply comparing the conditions these medicines would be used for by homeopaths and orthodox prescribers.

April 30, 2008 at 9:10 pm

givescienceachance

PS
Is it really so hard to come up with the science that you have resort to terms like “waffle”, “looking glass”, “rant” and so on.

I am making very specific points, and they can be answered specifically. For example, there is a case where the RCT can be defended as part of the scientific method. So far, however, no anti-homeopath has been able to produce it, because they are all determined to claim that it is universally scientific. Look at the facts and think about them, and you will find real answers available. Pretend that it is not necessary and you deny the validity of your own arguments.

April 30, 2008 at 9:43 pm

spinaltrap

Where is your best evidence that your principles, applied consistently, do anything more than a plain sugar pill?

April 30, 2008 at 10:01 pm

lecanardnoir

So what units does it measure in?
How are these units defined?
In fact, what is it actually measuring?

RCTs are good when:
1) People taking part in the trial have expectations of a particular outcome
2) People taking part in the trial have invested beliefs in a particular outcome.
3) Measurements involve some subjective elements.

RCTs are not designed just testing drugs but can be used when such conditions apply e.g. wine tasting, hi-fi devices, homeopath.

If you have paid a lot for a bottle of wine you may subconsciously find reasons for rating if higher than a cheap bottle of plonk. Blinding removes this possibility.

If you have paid thousands for a hi-fi component you may be reluctant to admit it sounds no better than a cheap model. Blinding stops you from cheating.

Homeopaths spend years on their correspondence courses and then years defending their beliefs. Subjectively interpreting customers health issues may result in large biases.

RCTs can measure whatever you like. The point is that they measure without the possibility of subjective biases influencing results. Homeopaths do not like RCTs because homeopath is purely about subjective post hoc reasoning.

Science is about remove the subjective and seeing what can objectively be said to be true. That is why RCTs are such a good tool. And it is why homeopathy fails them, because it is not true.

April 30, 2008 at 10:44 pm

givescienceachance Says:
April 30, 2008 at 9:03 pm

Instead the evidence for my claim can be easily found by simply comparing the conditions these medicines would be used for by homeopaths and orthodox prescribers.

I must remind you that your claim was that there are conventional medicines “which could be prescribed by an orthodox practitioner for symptoms the substance can cause.”

This was a miserable and unsuccessful attempt to justify the “like causes like” hypothesis, and is the claim you cannot be bothered to provide evidence for, and no wonder, because there is none. If you know of any, please feel free to enlighten us with a pertinent therapeutic example.

May 1, 2008 at 7:17 am

givescienceachance

misleading the public (pardon my English) states:

RCTs can measure whatever you like.

Andy Lewis stated:

The RCT is a measurement technique. It has as much need of theory as a ruler or stopwatch does.

Forgive me for being obtuse, but neither a stopwatch nor a ruler will measure whatever you like; they will only measure particular types of quantity (i.e. time and distance respectively). I know of no measuring device which is equally applicable to any form of quantity.

Also the accuracy of these devices is vastly superior to that of RCTs, and does not require statistical analysis to achieve a measurement.

Allowing for the odd grammatical mistake, I agree that

Science is about remove the subjective and seeing what can objectively be said to be true.

What you have failed to explain is how exactly the RCT manages this. The examples you have given imply that what a person thinks is good and what is actually good may differ. This requires that you have an objective measure of what is good, and in the case of medicine, where so much information is subjective, it is particularly important that the objective measure has scientifically validity. May be you should start by providing the objective scientific measure of what is good in measuring health.

May 1, 2008 at 8:37 am

Derik

Try measuring the same piece of string several times with a ruler and see if you get the same answer every time!

May 1, 2008 at 9:04 am

What you have failed to explain is how exactly the RCT manages this. The examples you have given imply that what a person thinks is good and what is actually good may differ. This requires that you have an objective measure of what is good, and in the case of medicine, where so much information is subjective, it is particularly important that the objective measure has scientifically validity. May be you should start by providing the objective scientific measure of what is good in measuring health.

You are absolutely right, givescience. Of course objective orthodox measures of health such as blood pressure in hypertensives, glucose in diabetics, lung function parameters in chronic bronchitics, immunological parameters in those on HIV therapy, survival rates after cardiac interventions or leukemia therapies, microbiological cure rates for infections, etc. are entirley subjective and invalid constructs.

So much better to use the objective scientific measures that homeopaths use to “measure health”. Remind us again, what were those? Asking people “Do you feel a bit better?”

May 1, 2008 at 9:14 am

Derik

You are right about the difficulty in finding a useful thing to measure in RCT’s, but even a stopped clock tells the right time twice a day. There are several problems, ranging from the applicability of an objective measurement, which may be a surrogate measurement like cholesterol for heart disease, to the relation of the measurement to the wellbeing of an actual patient. Do you want to live an extra two months in pain or “die with dignity”? Might your decision be different if that extra two months meant you survived to see your first grandchild? The correct response to these difficulties is to think hard about the nature of the problems, not to retreat into a comforting delusion like homeopathy.

There are two components to an RCT; the randomisation and the double blinding. Each deals with a separate issue.

We recognise that whatever we study, whether its patient’s beetles or plots of land, each individual will differ from the average in some respects. If we were to inadvertently grouped individuals who differed in the same way in some experimentally important respect from the average then we would introduce a bias into our results. It’s very hard to prevent this from happening by consciously allocating individuals to groups because you can not know a-priori whether a particular factor is important of not. To get round this problem you use some truly random method, such as tossing a coin, picking numbers from a hat, random number generation etc, to allocate individuals to the groups that will receive separate treatment. If the groups are large enough, all the differences in individuals will average out and you will be able to detect those effects caused by your intervention.

We know that patients are subject to the placebo effect and that researchers are prone to read into results what they expect to see. This last is a serious serious problem! IMHO more serious than the placebo effect. Being objective is truly hard when you have a preconceived notion of what will occur; when you’ve invested huge quantities of intellectual and financial capitol objectivity is niegh on impossible. The double blinding prevents the patients and analysts expectations from interfering in the analysis prior to the blind being removed.

RCT’s depend on the statistical techniques of hypothesis testing which compare two sets of data to find the probability that they come from the same population. Further explanation of this would take to long. Perhaps I should start a blog.

Some RCT’s aren’t very well conceived of and get the subtleties of the above wrong. Lots and lots of non-medical biological experiments omit randomisation to their detriment. This doesn’t mean that the concept of RCT’s is flawed but that if poorly applied they don’t work.

May 1, 2008 at 9:21 am

Derik

If you can find a copy of “The design of experiments” by RA Fisher it’s well worth a read. It’s very hard to find outside a university library collection but Fisher is the guy who came up with the idea of randomisation and it’s a lucidly written book which is rare for books on statistics.

His discussion of an imaginary experiment to test a woman’s claim to be able to taste whether the milk is put into a tea cup before or after the tea is wonderful.

May 1, 2008 at 9:22 am

Andy Lewis

Andy Lewis stated:

The RCT is a measurement technique. It has as much need of theory as a ruler or stopwatch does.

Forgive me for being obtuse, but neither a stopwatch nor a ruler will measure whatever you like; they will only measure particular types of quantity (i.e. time and distance respectively). I know of no measuring device which is equally applicable to any form of quantity.

I never made the claim about a ruler or a stopwatch – only RCTs. But all are tools for measuring things. Are you being deliberately obtuse? As Derik says, even if you are using a ruler and feel that you may be influencing the result due to a bias or preference for an outcome, you may wish to find a way of blinding yourself to the actual measurement.

Are you really saying that you do not understand how blinding yourself during a measurement can remove subjective elements? When you do not know what you are measuring you cannot consciously or unconsciously systematically skew a result.

What I find fascinating is how people like gsac try so hard not to understand RCTs. It is like their subconscious is wrestling them away from understanding what is, after all, a very simple concept in fear that their castle-in-the-air of homeopathy will suddenly come crashing down.

As the sum of knowledge from RCTs shows us that there is no significant difference between homeopathic pills and plain sugar pills, it absolutely must be the RCT that is wrong – in the homeopath’s head. But as all RCTs are is a particular way of counting and measuring – nothing special – then it must take huge mental contortions to think that RCTs are fundamentally flawed. And that is fascinating to watch.

May 1, 2008 at 10:03 am

MJ Simpson

At heart, all an RCT does is separate out one factor so that it can be tested. It doesn’t remove the other factors, it just ensures that they are roughly the same in each of the comparitive groups.

It’s not a diffcult concept to grasp. Anyone who is intelligent enough to use a computer keyboard is intelligent enough to understand RCTs which is why, as Andy observes, there is a sort of denial or blindness among homeopaths. The whole of homeopathy is based on just accepting what someone tells you, without any sort of testing whatsoever. This is why homeopaths never disagree with one another. If ever two homeopaths argued over whether remedy X or remedy Y was best for curing condition Z, they could only do so by a controlled test – and that would show that neither worked. So they simply hug each other and agree that X and Y are both effective at treating Z.

By the way, I’m not sure that I could tell the difference between milk-in-first and milk-in-last by taste alone but there is a clear chemical difference because the milk-tea reaction occurs at a radically different temperature. So I’m sure someone with a highly attuned pallette could do it.

May 1, 2008 at 11:49 am

Derik

With the tea thing; Fisher isn’t so concerned whether its possible to tell the teas apart, he just uses it as an example from daily life and works through the combinational maths to determine how many cups of tea are required to for a statistically significant result to be possible (power) the number she would have to get right for the result to be statistically significant (the 95% confidence interval) and how to blind the tea cups in the kitchen so she doesn’t see! Good science, in the home – all you need is an enquiring open mind and to be able to count.

Sorry for momentary derail.

May 1, 2008 at 8:51 pm

givescienceachance

MJ Simpson indicates the core problem:

At heart, all an RCT does is separate out one factor so that it can be tested. It doesn’t remove the other factors, it just ensures that they are roughly the same in each of the comparitive groups.

The primary problem is that the RCT has to separate out a single factor, or else it is testing an interaction of factors. Roughly balancing them is not sufficient since the interactions may be highly significant in some circumstances, but insignificant in others. Furthermore, if relevant factors are unknown, they cannot be balanced other than by accident.

The proof that all the factors other than the one being tested are truly balanced is that the two arms of the trial produce unanimous results. Any variation indicates the presence of at least one significant factor influencing the result, and the scale of this influence is necessarily undeterminable by that RCT, since the factors are being identified as a complex not individually.

In medicine RCTs almost never achieve the level of precision capable of yielding evidence about a single factor, and so the conclusions are constantly couched in terms of possibility and probability rather than in terms of actuality.

When it comes to testing homeopathy, you have to be absolutely clear about what factor is being tested in an RCT. In the main they do not even attempt to test a single factor but a complex of factors, and furthermore using an inappropriate protocol. As a result the conclusions are contradictory, uncertain and subject to argument.insignificant in others.

May 2, 2008 at 5:54 am

givescienceachance

Apologies for the 3 extraneous words at the end of the last comment.

May 2, 2008 at 10:08 am

Derik

“They cannot be balanced other than by accident.”

That is the point of randomisation. I know it’s a really hard concept to grasp. I didn’t even begin to get it till I saw data, from identical experiments, one with randomisation, and one without. Randomisation is a totaly counter intuitive idea to the human mind.

“Any variation indicates the presence of at least one significant factor influencing the result.”

In properly randomised studies, this significant factor should be the intervention. You are right that sometimes the samples have oddities in them that distort the analysis. There are statistical tools for identifying and dealing with such problems.

What exactly would a study have to achieve to provide you with information you would consider trustworthy? Don’t worry about weather such an experiment is possible, just tell us what it would have to achieve.

May 2, 2008 at 10:35 am

Andy Lewis

gsac – can you explain your dislike of RCTs in terms of the experiment proposed for nux vom above. What precisely would invalidate the results?

And yes, please answer Derik’s question. How would you show a convincing trial of homeopathy that ruled out all the possible alternatives?

May 2, 2008 at 5:39 pm

givescienceachance

Derik, I’m sorry that you find randomisation to be a really hard concept to grasp. Personally I have no problem with it. What I have a problem with is the fact that people expect it to deliver what it cannot. It is valid as part of testing a single factor IF only single factor is actually being tested. If an unknown interaction is being tested, the information obtained is virtually useless. The test for whether an interaction or a single factor is being tested is unanimity of response in each arm of the trial. Anything short of unanimity indicates an interaction.

May 2, 2008 at 6:04 pm

M Simpson

“It is valid as part of testing a single factor IF only single factor is actually being tested”

But only a single factor is being tested: the difference between the effect of those pills and the effect of these pills.

I don’t understand your point about unanimity. You want identical results from both groups? That’s what randomisation does, if you use large enough groups. Suppose you think height might be a contributing factor. If you take a large enough group of adult males their average height will be the same as that of the adult male population in general. Take another large group of adult males – their average height will be the same.

Of course, even with large groups, you may occasionally get statistical anomalies. Drawing names out of a hat might, by chance, put more tall people in one group than the other. That’s why reproducability is important. If the experiment is repeated with different groups and the results are different, there’s an anomaly in one of the trials and you need to a few more to see which trial was anomalous and should therefore be ignored.

May 3, 2008 at 10:57 am

Annemieke

Still following this thread with much interest, and it looks like many good points are made here on both sides. That got me thinking if it would be possible to take it further in some structured way (a forum or something so that different threads can exist at the same time) not to come to some conclusion but an exchange to find out how to develop tests that are acceptable for both sides.
A forum where the exchange is more important then the goal, so that all aspects are taken in consideration.
Very curious how others think about that.

May 3, 2008 at 11:05 am

givescienceachance

M Simpson, I’m afraid you have totally missed the point. I realise that it is easy to get confused, and that is why I try to choose my words carefully.

Getting average height is about checking a single STATIC feature across a number of people and calculating the average. It does not matter that none of the people may be of that height unless you use the average as a basis for providing clothes or some other height-related product to these people, since the information is inappropriate in such a case.

An RCT is completely different in that it is attempting to find the CHANGE produced by an action. If change is produced in some cases, but not in others, or if the change is variable in extent then there must by some factor influencing the process in addition to the action being tested. Furthermore the practical application of the action in the future depends on it working on specific subjects, not on a theoretical average. As a result a statistical result is useless as a guide to subsequent action, though it may provide raw material for later investigations.

May 3, 2008 at 11:19 am

givescienceachance

Andy said:

gsac – can you explain your dislike of RCTs in terms of the experiment proposed for nux vom above. What precisely would invalidate the results?

I do not dislike RCTs, I simply believe that they should be used correctly.

As regards your proposed experiment, it is normal practice in education that students learn to correct themselves rather than rely on teachers to mark their work. You say that you understand RCTs and you imply that you are well enough educated to analyse experiments and draw reasoned conclusions. I do not see why, therefore, you need me to answer this question. If you were submitting your proposal for funding, you would have to show that you understood the process you were testing and had taken into account all the relevant factors. All you need to do is show that this is what you have done.

May 3, 2008 at 11:26 am

Derik

This:

“If an unknown interaction is being tested, the information obtained is virtually useless.”

Is just plain wrong. Consider an imaginary example.

Suppose we were to measure the size of leeks entered into vegetable show competitions in two English villages. We would be able find the average size for each village. We would also be able to tell how likely it was that that averages for each village DID NOT came from identical distributions of leak sizes i.e.; distributions with the identical properties such as population mean, standard deviation etc. We could find statistically different differences between the village’s leaks without knowing anything about why the leeks might be growing differently. The possible reasons behind such a phenomena are almost limitless.

Like the leeks in the village; if patients were given consultations with a homeopath and then randomly allocated to receive either the remedy proscribed by the homeopath or a blank pill and their health could be measured on some arbitrary scale then we could test the hypothesis that the health of both groups was identical. We would not need to know anything about the mechanism of the pills action for this to be possible. Unlike the villages, however, the randomization of the patients would mean that all characteristics apart from the type of pill received balanced out so that we could be reasonable shore that the pills were responsible for any significant differences between the groups.

May 3, 2008 at 11:34 am

Derik

“If change is produced in some cases, but not in others, or if the change is variable in extent then there must by some factor influencing the process in addition to the action being tested.”

Why does it matter? You would predict VARIABLE response in those receiving genuine homeopathic remedies and NO response in those receiving blank pills. That variable response would be detectable, unless it was much smaller than would be clinically useful, at which point homeopathy looks a bit pointless even if true.

Further doesn’t that variability make you wish for detailed research so you can understand the system more fully, make the response less variable and so more consistently help your patients?

May 3, 2008 at 12:54 pm

”NO response in those receiving blank pills.” – And what about the famous placebo?

May 3, 2008 at 12:56 pm

Sorry, failed to put this into one post -
“We could find statistically different differences between the village’s leaks without knowing anything about why the leeks might be growing differently. The possible reasons behind such a phenomena are almost limitless.” – Absolutely, so you cannot rule out the placebo – or any other effect, and it would mean you would have proved nothing either way.

May 3, 2008 at 5:24 pm

Andy Lewis

I do not dislike RCTs, I simply believe that they should be used correctly.

I think you are desperate to be pinned down and will do anything to not answer a simple quesiton. I think the test is fair. I want to understand if you thin so too.

If you think it is fair, then you obviously support RCTs. If you think it is not fair, then you should say why. All we have had so far is rather vague generalisations with long words that really do not make any sense. That is why I am asking you to be specificrather than general.

Do you object to such a test, and can you be specific about why it would fail? Or gsac, are you just going to bluster again?

May 3, 2008 at 6:38 pm

givescienceachance

Andy, which long words do you mean? If you seriously have a problem with any words I have used, then this could explain a great deal.

May 3, 2008 at 6:45 pm

givescienceachance

Derik, you said that:

“If an unknown interaction is being tested, the information obtained is virtually useless.”

“Is just plain wrong.”
You then said:

We could find statistically different differences between the village’s leaks without knowing anything about why the leeks might be growing differently. The possible reasons behind such a phenomena are almost limitless.

This looks remarkably as though you have contradicted yourself, since the last statement is in perfect agreement with what I said.

May 3, 2008 at 7:06 pm

givescienceachance

Andy, I believe that your test was as follows:

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?

Points you need to consider include:
What effect exactly are you expecting to test with this?
Is this a reasonable test of that effect?
Within what theoretical framework is this effect defined?
How many factors do you think are involved in the effect being tested?
Are there ways of limiting the number of factors?
Are there ways of minimizing interactions which might confuse the outcome?
How will you define improvement?
Is this an appropriate definition?
Within which theoretical framework is this appropriate?
Is it the same framework as is used to define the effect?
What ethical issues do you think need addressing?

As stated, your test does not give any guidance on these issues, so it cannot produce a useful result. Instead it is a generalisation open to huge differences in interpretation as a result of different assumptions as to what is meant.

It can take literally months to develop the protocol for a good RCT, and even then something may be overlooked. Simplistic proposals such as this bring the whole process into disrepute by delivering questionable results which then fuel unnecessary arguments.

May 3, 2008 at 7:19 pm

Derik

On the first point Ez sorry poor communication there. I meant no response above placebo, or no biologically effect from the pill itself, how could there be, that was the blank pill!

On the second point. Hmm. My example tried to do two things at once and may have failed at both. The first paragraph tries to cover a situation in which the underlying causes of the differences in results are unknown, which seemed to me to be one of GSAC objections to RCT’s. The second paragraph tried to explain how randomisation reduced the possible candidates for a difference between samples to the pill.

Are we are talking about why RCT’s can’t pick up the effect of homeopathic remidies or why the differences between groups in RCT’s can’t be attributed to allopathic medicine, in your view? I think they issues are separate and we will get confused if we conflate the two.

May 3, 2008 at 7:23 pm

Derik

GSAC

I have long suspected that we all agree up to some point or other, whereupon we turn ninety degrees and end up back to back.

I would be grateful if you could restate the point on which you think we agree because I think I might be confused by your original post on the matter.

May 3, 2008 at 7:55 pm

givescienceachance

Derik, your survey of leeks can reveal facts about leek size and variations by place, but it cannot reveal anything about the causes of these levels of growth. As such the information is no help in determining what affects this growth. As you say there are many potential factors.

In my terms, we agree that the size information is useless for providing information about the unknown interactions causing the differences.

You said to ez:

My example tried to do two things at once

This is a very easy mistake to make, and it takes a lot of careful thought and knowledge of what exactly it is you are testing if you are to avoid such mistakes. Many RCTs of homeopathy are based on a model used for drugs, and so their results are frequently confusing,

May 3, 2008 at 10:15 pm

Andy Lewis

You error is continious gsac – you believe RCTs are about discovered causes. They are not. They are there to see if there is an effect at all. Without an effect, there is no need to consider causes.

To answer your questions…

What effect exactly are you expecting to test with this?
- the effect of the homeopathic pill

Is this a reasonable test of that effect?
- I believe so.

Within what theoretical framework is this effect defined?
- there is no need to define such a framework – we are just seeing if there is any difference between a ‘real’ homeopathic pill and a plain pill.

How many factors do you think are involved in the effect being tested?
Who knows? it is immaterial. we want to see if there are any factors at all.

Are there ways of limiting the number of factors?
There is no need to. If the pill does anything, we will see an effect.

Are there ways of minimizing interactions which might confuse the outcome?
By blinding and randomising we have done so.

How will you define improvement?
=- Up to you. How would you define it? How do homeopaths define improvement? That is what we should measure.

Is this an appropriate definition?
- of what?

Within which theoretical framework is this appropriate?
- are you repeating yourself?

Is it the same framework as is used to define the effect?
- immaterial.

What ethical issues do you think need addressing?
- consent, principally.

May 3, 2008 at 10:22 pm

Andy Lewis

Many RCTs of homeopathy are based on a model used for drugs, and so their results are frequently confusing,

You keep saying this, but refuse to say why. What is the difference between an allopathic pill and a homeopathic pill? We have established above that RCTs can be indiviualised and so there must be something intrinsic in the pill?

What is it?

May 4, 2008 at 12:31 am

Thank you again, gsac, for trying to explain what it would mean to make a really scientific examination which would produce meaningful results – that’s exactly what I had in mind saying that good science is time and effort-consuming. It seems our friends believe that all this effort this could be skipped, I start to suspect that they are not quite interested in serious research after all.

Andy says,
“How will you define improvement?
=- Up to you. How would you define it? How do homeopaths define improvement? That is what we should measure.”

To avoid this sort of misinterpretation after the test both parties – the pro- and contra- people should agree on what can be reasonably acceptable to both parties, and be rigourously defined at the same time – the last condition – rigourous definition, – is not being addressed by not one of your answers, Andy, maybe you just try to be more specific here and try once again? Have homeopaths define everything, do the tests and say after that that “we do not agree to your definitions in the first place” is a very mean thing to do, so it’s best to avoid this, don’t you think?

May 4, 2008 at 8:27 am

Andy Lewis

ez – that is just being silly.

A key part of any test of homeopathy would be test what homeopaths actually claim. it would be daft to tests what I think you do. So what is it that you claim to do?

We could follow patients over six months and see how many days off work they took.

We could ask them to keep diaries and report on a scale of 1 – 10 how much pain they felt, strength of allergy attacks, sense of ‘wellbeing’, etc.

We could do bloodtests for somthing.

The RCT does not care.

Say what you can claim to do and let’s see if an RCT can verify your claim. If homeopathy works, we should see a difference between groups.

So once again, why would this not work?

May 4, 2008 at 8:28 am

One more point – Andy says, “You error is continious gsac – you believe RCTs are about discovered causes. They are not. They are there to see if there is an effect at all. Without an effect, there is no need to consider causes.” – You mean that’s how conventional drugs are tested before they are sold and prescribed to people? Just any effect? And I’d think short-term effect at that… But that’s beyond the point right now, really.

More important here now is that you keep saying how homeopathy is a scam and then ask (after all we are trying to explain to you): “You keep saying this, but refuse to say why. What is the difference between an allopathic pill and a homeopathic pill?” – Are you really saying that you have not noticed the difference – at least, what you may call it, a “purported” difference – between the approaches used in conventional medicine and homeopathy?

May 4, 2008 at 10:01 am

Andy Lewis

ez – whether the workings of a drug are fully understood or not – or at lease we believe we know how they might work – this knowledge is useless unless we can show they do work. RCTs show us if there is an effect – it says nothing about the mechanisms of action.

One of the oft repeated sayings of homeopathy is “just because science says homeopathy cannot work, then they believe it does not work”. This is a canard. Science believes homeopathy is nonsense because there is no good set of data to show it does work. Its implausibility then makes it easy to dismiss.

I ask the question about the difference between a conventional medical pill and a homeopathic one because gsac says RCTs are not the right mechanism to test them. no one says why not.

Can you distill into one paragraph why RCTs are not a good test of homeopathy?

May 4, 2008 at 12:13 pm

Derik

GSAC

That was exactly the point of my little leek story. You can tell WHETHER two samples belong to the same population without knowing WHY those two populations differ. Only if they do differ is it worth going out to find out how or why.

But I agree with Andy, we would be testing your thing, lets do it all in your paradigm, with your measure of patient improvement etc. All an RCT requires is random allocation of subjects to treatment or control groups, proper blinding and a good control.

The actually protocol to run such an experiment does take serious effort to devise of course. If you were sensible you would even do a pilot to try the protocol out and make sure people behaved as you hoped and patients couldn’t work out which arm of the study they were in. You would also need to get some pilot data using the measurement system you had devised and study its distribution and decide on the most appropriate statistical treatment before you started for real.

That is not the point right now. We would like to hear some clear claim about what you are capable of illustrated by a description of the comparison that an RCT would have to make to demonstrate that claim.

May 4, 2008 at 1:55 pm

Andy, I’m sorry I cannot write more right now, but for example to your suggestion
“We could follow patients over six months and see how many days off work they took.”

I can say that I beleive I just pasted somewhere not far above a copy from the French regularly made study which says that people who use homeopathy take 3 something times LESS days off from work that those who use conventional treatments – did you read this? Do you want me to paste this again? I read this on an internet site after I actually read it several years ago in the French NOUVEL OBSEVATEUR, of which I unfortunately do not have the copy, but it did say the same thing, so this is a piece of objective data… Your comment?

May 4, 2008 at 2:06 pm

John R

EZ: From a quick scan of the page I can’t see the link you mention, but if the study you mention is a workplace survey of homeopathy users and non-homeopathy users then that shows nothing. Given that homeopathy is generally used for less serious conditions and most homeopathy users have the sense to seek conventional treatment when diagnosed with a serious disease, such as cancer, the results would be skewed in favor of homeopathy.

May 4, 2008 at 2:06 pm

I found an interesting summary:

“Of the 105 trials with interpretable results, 81 trials indicated positive results. Most studies showed results in favour of homeopathy even among those randomized controlled trials that received high-quality ratings for randomization, blinding, sample size, and other methodological criteria. They came to the following conclusion: “The amount of positive evidence even among the best studies came as a surprise to us. Based on this evidence we would readily accept that homeopathy can be efficacious, if only the mechanism of action were more plausible. The evidence presented in this review would probably be sufficient for establishing homeopathy as a regular treatment for certain indications”.

Kleijnen J, Knipschild P, Ter Riet G. Clinical trials of homoeopathy. British Medical Journal. 1991b;302:316-23. ”

How should the sentence: “Based on this evidence we would readily accept that homeopathy can be efficacious, if only the mechanism of action were more plausible” – be understood? So which is it? DOes it have to be efficacious or does it have to have a plausible mechanism of action?

May 4, 2008 at 2:09 pm

JOhn R – well you may be right in this one. Unfortunately there are no details as to how exactly this data was obtained, I agree.

May 4, 2008 at 5:41 pm

Andy Lewis

ez said “people who use homeopathy take 3 something times LESS days off from work that those who use conventional treatments -”

good. Now do it under randomised and blinded condititions and I will atke this sort of information seriously. Do you not see that without these conditions, this information is useless?

Please answer the questions and lets stick to the topic.

May 4, 2008 at 5:55 pm

Andy Lewis

And let us remind ourselves about how K, K and R concluded their 1991 review,

CONCLUSIONS–At the moment the evidence of clinical trials is positive but not sufficient to draw definitive conclusions because most trials are of low methodological quality and because of the unknown role of publication bias. This indicates that there is a legitimate case for further evaluation of homoeopathy, but only by means of well performed trials.

Now, that was 16 years ago. Subsequent well performed trials tend to show no effecy. By quoting this, you are horribly guilty of selective quotation and cherry picking.

May 4, 2008 at 5:55 pm

Andy Lewis

I meant efficacy, of course.

May 5, 2008 at 12:50 am

I did not quote it for any evidence of efficacy or anything, but to point out the way such people think. “Well, the trials haven’t shown anything decisive, but even if they did there is still that implausible method of action, so we cannot accept the results of any such trial anyway”. THat was my point if you failed to note this. As long as this attitude persists – there is no point in conducting any trials at all… If you see what I mean.

May 5, 2008 at 9:37 am

Andy Lewis

ez – you are absolutely right that any RCT of homeopathy has a near insurmountably of plausibility to overcome. However, we are looking at whether RCTs are in principle not a good way of assessing the claims of homeopathy.

I have written by own views on the sorts of trials that homeopathy needs to do in order to convince sceptics – here.

Why is it the homeopaths here will not either say that the design of the trial discussed above would work or state what the problem is with it. Instead we see silence or equivocation.

I think this boils down to the one question that homeopaths (in my experience) can never ever answer: “What experiment, fairly conducted, designed to show a result one way or another, would suggest to you that homeopathy did not work”?

I can describe the sorts of experiment that would make me change my mind – my challenge does that – can any homeopath do the same?

The fact that they cannot demonstrates that they do not give science a chance.

May 5, 2008 at 10:34 am

They do not give science a chance – to do what?

By the way, I did not say a single word about RCT yet you substitute my words for this surrogate – vous trichez, monsieur, I’d say in French.
I meant something else, but you seem unable to grasp it?

May 5, 2008 at 6:51 pm

Andy Lewis

“They do not give science a chance – to do what?”

To assess whether the claims of homeopaths are real or delusions.

Can you answer the ‘golden’ question ez? What experiment would change your mind?

May 5, 2008 at 9:19 pm

laughingmysocksoff

Why is it the homeopaths here will not either say that the design of the trial discussed above would work or state what the problem is with it. Instead we see silence or equivocation.

Why is it that you have such a short and/or selective memory?

Problems with trials, including your own experiment, have been discussed at great length here and elsewhere on this blog where, as it happens, silence and equivocation are just as evident in sceptic responses to criticisms of DBRCTs.

I think this boils down to the one question that homeopaths (in my experience) can never ever answer: “What experiment, fairly conducted, designed to show a result one way or another, would suggest to you that homeopathy did not work”?

The following experiment, fairly conducted, would, if no statistically significant difference were found between the two groups, provide me with good evidence for a lack of effect for homeopathy.

Select a chronic complaint with a reasonably constant and continuous symptom expression. Recruit sufferers whose condition is of at least 2 years duration and has failed to respond to conventional treatment. Recruit enough sufferers to give the study sufficient power. Randomise participants to one of two groups. First group receives full homeopathic consultation and individualised verum treatment, with follow-up, over a period of 6 months. Second group receives dummy homeopathic consultation (conducted by actors) and unmedicated sugar pills, with dummy follow-up, etc, over a period of 6 months.

May 5, 2008 at 9:29 pm

Andy Lewis

How would you ensure participants did not guess they were being treated by actors? This test would make it very difficult to blind. Why not give real consultations and just randomise the pills?

May 5, 2008 at 9:39 pm

Andy Lewis

I ask this because the possibility of patients guessing which arm they are in makes this an unfait test. It makes it unlikely we would see a negative result. Do you think actors can be as good and convincing as a fully trained homeopath in an hours consultation? As far as I can see, the need for actors is unnecessary. Do you agree?

May 6, 2008 at 2:13 am

Andy,

If you want my personal answer to this question – I prepare myself to your usual reaction typically triggered by such statements, – would be that no experiment would ever persuade me either in efficacy or inefficacy of anything at all. For me the only valid test is repeated occurrence of certain events in real life situations. If I see that homeopathy consistently works for me in real life situations – and in good accordance with what someone I have never seen or met or someone who has lived more than 100 years ago has described as what might happen – then I accept it as a good working hypothesis, and I personally (I stress this again) consider all “in vitro” (so-to-say, not applied to real-life situations, that is) tests simply superflous and given the urgency of a lot of other things in our life at the moment just an unforgivable luxury – this refers to tests in the area of medicine or more broadly – things related to life, health on a macro level, of course, not fundamental physics etc. Well, if someone sees them really necessary I will certainly not go out into the streets demonstrating and shouting mottos to prevent these people from doing their tests – like you sceptics do, although I’ll voice my opinion when I’ll judge that it’ll be heard or when I’m asked explicitly for my opinion.

MJ Simpson, I think, and other sceptics like to invoke the magician’s show where a person is being cut in two and “if one believes only their perception they would necessarily fall into the trap that illusionist is setting here and beleive that such thing is possible.” Well, this obviously is complete nonsense as far as I am concerned, however if repeatedly in real life situations – where I can assess the actual results directly – myself and at close quarters – I will see that persons can be cut in two and stay alive or restored to unity after such act and any “premeditation” (staging) of such act is excluded – only then I will consider whether this means that there is something fundamental involved here that I do not know of and I should reconsider my world-view.

May 6, 2008 at 3:52 am

By the way, Andy, I think you betray yourself again – you claim that homeopathy is just another scam and homeopaths are delusional fraudsters who give remedies at random anyway (well, that was voiced by MJ Simpson), why do you object to actors in the test that Laughing MSO has proposed? Actors are also fraudsters in a way, people who are good at pretending to be someone they are not, so why should the patients suspect anything? In what way real homeopaths wil be different?

(We’d risk to have some actors ending up being converted to homeopathy, though, if they’d be allowed to watch the real homeopathic consultation of a good homeopath to get to learn what they should be performing…)

May 6, 2008 at 6:40 am

Derik

Andy; I think it’s possible, given that LMSO believes in homeopathy, that in LMSO’s mind properly blinding the study requires actors to be used. If real homeopaths were used then they would realise who was in the verum and who in the dummy group because only those in verum would respond positively to treatment.

Obviously we don’t think that’s possible, so the actors seem superfluous to us, and worse might unblind the study in some other way. Also LMSO didn’t actually suggest what we measure to see if the groups behave differently. I suggest a modification to the design, that gets around the actor/homeopath problem and provides something to measure at the same time:

Suppose we do what LMSO suggests, except we use real homeopaths for each group, then we ask the homeopaths to identify who is in the verum and who in the dummy group.

There are two advantages to this. Firstly it places the experiment entirely in the homeopaths paradigm, their sensitivity to patient improvement, their ideas about what health might be, their knowledge of disease progression under homeopathic treatment etc. Secondly the statistical test would involve a simple binomial distribution and would be very easy to understand.

May 6, 2008 at 6:46 am

Derik

Oh I’ve just thought, my experiment is also a way of agregating a load of Ez’s n=1 experiments into one easy to analyse package.

May 6, 2008 at 8:31 am

Derik,
I’m just the most stupid of the posters as I cannot resist telling you my anecdotes, I guess everybody else has much more on their record. What do you mean by “one package”?

May 6, 2008 at 8:31 am

Andy Lewis

First of all ez, I do not think that taking the time to demonstrate objectively that your claims to heal are an ‘unforgivable luxury’, but rather a moral necessity. If you are deluding yourself, as I strongly suspect, then your capacity for harm is great. Secondly, I have not called all homeopaths frauds – on the contrary – I believe most homeopaths to be sincere in their beliefs – but sincerely deluded. There are some that are frauds and there are many who are dishonest when defending what they believe – but most are not frauds, i.e. knowingly and consciously misleading their customers.

It is interesting that you will not consider any objective evidence over your own experience. That is my experience with most homeopaths – and is a recipe for great delusion. This is my central criticism of homeopathy – that it practices witout regard to evidence or reason, but clings to subjective wishful thinking. If you stuck to treating mild self-limiting conditions, then all would be fine. But when homeopaths attempt to take responsibility for more serious illnesses and undermine their customers relationship with their doctors, then a simple delusion becomes a capacity for harm. The lack of due diligence on homeopaths parts to test their claims makes them culpable.

It is also interesting that lmso does put forward a test of their beliefs – but that test is interesting on two counts:
1) it is not a fair test – the weakness in blinding, by using actors, sways heavily in favour of a positive outcome for homeopathy.
2) it is quite a compoex test and so lmso is unlikely to do this test themselves.

Far simpler and cheaper tests might be possible – Derik has one example. A simple private test would show real willingness on behalf of the homeopath to test their claim – e.g. a simple blinded proving on themselves. Spend a month or two taking a pill every week, but get a friend to blind whether the homeopath was taking a real pill or a dummy. Keep a diary. Guess which week was real and which was not. See if you do better than chance. Have you ever heard of a homeopathic school that really tries hard to get its students to do honest tests of this sort?

It is also interesting to note that, although fatally flawed, lmso’s test is a RCT. I though homeopaths did not believe in such things? We saw earlier that such tests could not be conducted on homeopathy? No one can say why. My guess is that this is a stock excuse to refuse to listen to the results of such tests.

May 6, 2008 at 8:39 am

One more – you write: “their sensitivity to patient improvement, their ideas about what health might be” – this begs a question about what’s your idea about health and patient improvement? To be able to persuade someone who has basically no clear idea of what this is – or maybe, determined in terms of “objective” tests such as blood pressure, blood tests etc. – the improvement should have some bearing in these terms as well. Some more of my anecdotes – I have had 3 homeopathic patients who were able to stop thyroid hormone supplements (one did not use them at all) and slowly (in 6 months) return to normal thyroid function solely on homeopathic treatment with confirmed normal thyroid tests after treatment was started with the history of 3-5 years of dysfunction. Of these 3 people I’d say 2 have really moved to improved health, and one – I lost track of her – possibly had the decision suppressed, but I hope to hear how she’s doing sooner or later – it takes years to know what really happened in some cases.

May 6, 2008 at 8:41 am

Had the condition suppressed, I mean, in the above. Sorry for the typos!

May 6, 2008 at 9:35 am

Derik

I just meant it allows you to define everything as you wish. Some homeopaths talk in terms of spiritual renewal. Your colleague bewaiwai was talking on another blog about something called the “Human Becoming Theory of Nursing”. I tried to read something about it and couldn’t understand a word. I am not, however, an expert in either postmodern nursing theory or spirituality and I wouldn’t want to constrain an experiment by my ignorance. Hence my desire to have you do whatever you will between the randomisation and the call of verum or dummy.

My own view of health is a rather pragmatic combination of happiness, absence from pain, capacity to pursue those things that the individual thinks make life worth living. Sorry, no grand theory here.

It’s great that two of your patients no longer need thyroid hormone supplements, how do you know they wouldn’t have got better without your treatment?

May 6, 2008 at 9:46 am

Derik

As for the thing about your n=1 experiment bundled up together.

My experiment gets you, the homeopath, to look at the progression of a patient, and from your past experience of homeopath and reading of historical texts, determine if this is the kind of progression you get from homeopathic treatment or not. This is the kind of thing you say you find compelling in your personal experience, and presumably therefore think you are capable off. If you get lots more than half right, and I can give you the exact number you’d have to get right if I know how many subjects you’ll try it on, that would suggest something real is going on.

So this is a big bundle of your kind of assessment of efficacy with a statistical test thrown in on top. Considered this way the control group is only there to provide the possibility of incorrect identification of homeopathic phenomena.

May 6, 2008 at 1:07 pm

“how do you know they wouldn’t have got better without your treatment?”

THis is the always pertinent question which refers to any treatment, not only homeopathic, but the conventional treatment as well, one can never know the answer, because it is not possible to reverse time and see what would have happened to the same individuals under different circumstances. Would not you agree? The conventional prognosis for all three, however, was that they should take the supplement for life (hypothyroidosis) so one may assume that the chances that they would recover if left alone are not quite large. I am not an epidemiologist, though, so I am not aware of the actual statistics related to this condition. And I only had 3 such patients (none of them needed nux vomica, though) and all of them recovered in the conventional sense, but I should stress again that I suspect that one of them had the condition suppressed, and chose not to continue beyond the point when the tests got normal (they stayed normal 5 years later when I saw her last time) although my assessment was that she has a number of emotional issues left unresolved.

As for your test, well, it’s kind of you to consider this, but I’m bad at keeping records, I make only major notes, your test would require more information, and in much greater numbers than I have available, so I’d suggest you find a practicing homeopath nearby, with more than 5 years in practice and ask them for their records for analysis, I do not think they will refuse you flat out, I personally would not mind such an experiment at all.

I’m not quite sure how you will create the control group, though. Could you, please, elaborate on this?

CAn you please, provide a link to bewaiwai’s blog that you’ve mentioned? (If Bewaiwai would not mind having this information posted, of course?) THanks!

May 6, 2008 at 1:15 pm

To Andy, well, the school where I take my distance learning course encourages the on-site students to take part in the provings and try to do the provings themselves – obviously one should not force anyone to do this, though, and not everyone has the time and energy to do this. But this is strongly recommended, of course. Many old books contain an advice to try to prove the remedies themselves, to be sure of what you will be able to cure with the remedies. If all everyday experience were to be labeled “subjective wishful thinking” – how could we live? Have you ever thought about this? Are you sure you put enough salt in your soup or salad, or is it just your wishful thinking and you just delude yourself? I find your reasoning very strange, to tell you the truth.

May 6, 2008 at 1:57 pm

Derik

I think you’re confused. I’m not asking YOU to do such a test, I’m suggesting that believing in homeopathy without such tests having been done is a little silly. That if Homeopaths as a community were serious about doing the best they could for patients they would be demanding such experiments be done. That the homeopathic community should be demanding money for such research out of the vast profits made by homeopathic remedy manufactures. Finally I suggest that not pursuing any of these things indicates a lack of intellectual integrity.

Also, not taking appropriate notes is dreadful practice for a car mechanic, for someone who aspires to be a health care professional it’s serious professional misconduct.

Why don’t you try to organise a blinded proving at your distance learning school? The maths is quite simple, I’d happily send you details of how to make it work.

May 6, 2008 at 3:09 pm

M Simpson

Most scientific disciplines involve students replicating experiments from the past. At school, college and university, students are shown how to perform experiments which, when first performed, established or demonstrated important scientific ideas.

These students who “try to do the provings themselves” – are they told what they’re taking and what results to expect or are they given unlabelled remedies and asked to come up with a ‘proving’ for whatever is inside the bottle?

If students can reasonably consistently ‘prove’ unidentified remedies in a way consistent with established homeopathic lore, that would be pretty convincing evidence for the efficacy of homeopathy. But if this is the case, it raises the question of why such convincing evidence is not offered when people query the efficacy of homeopathy. If this sort of evidence is being gathered in an educational setting it should be fairly easy to provide convincing, reliable documentation of such tests.

May 6, 2008 at 3:29 pm

Andy Lewis

ez said

the school where I take my distance learning course encourages the on-site students to take part in the provings and try to do the provings themselves

Yes, but I better my bottom dollar that in doing a proving the test is not designed to see if a student can tell what they are taking under fully blinded conditions. Homeopaths claim that remedies cause reproducible and distinct symptom patterns in healthy people. This has never ever been proven under controlled blinded conditions.

you also said,

If all everyday experience were to be labeled “subjective wishful thinking” – how could we live?

Well, exactly. From personal experience, a great many people live in bubble worlds of wishful thinking, whether that be about health, religion, politics, work and friendships.

That is not to say that subjective experience is not a valuable human experience. How much salt I have on my food is a subjective experience without consequence. When my beliefs though are concerning direct claims of truth about the world, I have a little more responsibility to ensure that my beliefs are real and not deluded.

Did Iraq have WMD? Is global warming real? Are GM foods bad for the environment and for us? Is homeopathy a nonsense? You might have beliefs about all these things, but there is only one truth. What is the best way we know of to discover the truth and avoid delusion and wishful thinking?

May 6, 2008 at 6:19 pm

laughingmysocksoff

Haven’t had time to read right through the posts yet, so this is just a quick one Andy before I have to go out.

How would you ensure participants did not guess they were being treated by actors? This test would make it very difficult to blind. Why not give real consultations and just randomise the pills?

I ask this because the possibility of patients guessing which arm they are in makes this an unfait test. It makes it unlikely we would see a negative result. Do you think actors can be as good and convincing as a fully trained homeopath in an hours consultation? As far as I can see, the need for actors is unnecessary. Do you agree?

No I don’t agree. I’ve been through this before elsewhere on this blog (localist vs entanglement hypotheses), but to reiterate, the trial evidence thus far suggests that a localist hypothesis is untenable, ie. any experiment presuming the entire homeopathic effect resides in the remedy alone is barking up the wrong tree. Consequently you need to devise a test that tests the therapy as a whole against a simulacrum of it.

The reason you can’t use a real homeopath to conduct the dummy consultation is that it’s very difficult to stop a real homeopath from doing what a real homeopath does — match symptoms to remedies. Since my personal suspicions about homeopathy’s mode of action involves a correlation in consciousness between patient, practitioner and remedy as the dominant mechanism, the control group in this test can have no possibility of any such correlation being made.

May 6, 2008 at 11:34 pm

laughingmysocksoff

Andy wrote:

This is my central criticism of homeopathy – that it practices witout regard to evidence or reason, but clings to subjective wishful thinking.

This strikes me as little more than a view of your own reflection, Andy. The “homeopathy” you rail against seems to exist to a larger extent in your own imagination than it does in the real world.

This is also true of M J Simpson’s notions. I quote …

The whole of homeopathy is based on just accepting what someone tells you, without any sort of testing whatsoever. This is why homeopaths never disagree with one another.

ROFLMSO!!! Well you might just have achieved the impossible here and united homeopaths long enough to get them to all laugh at the same joke. But seriously, where on earth do you pluck such insane ideas?!! Given the difficulty invariably encountered in getting any group of homeopaths to agree with each other about anything, your statement is utterly risible and betrays the imaginary basis of your vision of homeopathy far more clearly than anything I could ever say.

But back to Andy …

Undoubtedly some of your criticisms are valid in certain instances and are acknowledged as being so, but it’s a far cry from this to the picture you paint of an entire profession based purely on self-deception and fraud.

Anecdotal evidence may have questionable validity on an individual case-by-case basis, but when anecdote after anecdote attests to similar reactions to prescriptions based on similar symptoms, and the data remains consistent through a period of 200 years, then you are looking at a body of evidence of much greater strength. Consistency and replicability are key, and the anecdotal evidence base of homeopathy demonstrates this.

There are arguments in previous posts that put forward the view that the therapy is based purely on post hoc rationalisation. Not so. There is a consistent and demonstrable logic in treatment choices that are indistinguishable in essence from the logic employed in refining conventional prescriptions to the optimum regimen for any individual with any condition.

There is plenty of reason in homeopathy. Just because you personally don’t “get it”, doesn’t mean it’s in any way inherently unreasonable. Sure it’s got its fair share of circular logic, but this is true (and essential) in the construction of any belief system, “science” included, so the pot calling the kettle black doesn’t advance your case one centimetre.

As I keep saying Andy, it’s high time you and such as you put your theories to the test. Until you subject them to verification in a clinical setting and observe for yourself whether or not real world reactions to homeopathic treatment can be validly attributed to regression to mean, placebo, deception and all the other explainaways you favour, you’re essentially arguing with your own imagination. Not very scientific. If you really want to understand homeopathy, then perhaps you should listen a lot more carefully and with a more open mind to what homeopaths and homeopathic patients are trying to tell you. Homeopathy employs mechanisms that are clearly outwith your present conception of the way the world works. You’re never going to understand it by stamping your feet and insisting it should shoehorn itself into these narrow parameters.

And contrary to your frequent assertions, accepting the validity of homeopathy in no way invalidates the present knowledge base. It merely shows it to be contingent and dependent on certain initial assumptions, much as Newtonian physics remains contingently valid within the context of quantum theory.

May 7, 2008 at 12:00 am

M Simpson

PLease point me to any homeopathy discussion forum or blog, anywhere on the net, where homeopaths are disagreeing about some aspect of homeopathy. Maybe they’re out there, maybe the homeopathy forums I’ve seen have been atypically conciliatory. So just one link please to a forum where a homeopath says that a homeopathic remedy is this or does that and another homeopath says no, you’re wrong, it’s not this or it doesn’t do that. Just one homeopathic debate, just one of you lot trying to prove that another of you lot is mistaken – shouldn’t be too hard to find.

“Consistency and replicability are key, and the anecdotal evidence base of homeopathy demonstrates this.”

So why can’t this consistency and replicability be demonstrated? It is easy to have ‘consistent, replicable’ evidence if everything is post hoc anecdotes. You really don’t grasp it, do you, despite this being possibly the most basic logical concept it is possible to formulate: if something is consistent and replicable then you should be able to say in advance ‘if X happens, Y will follow’. And then every time you, or anyone else, does X, Y follows. That is what ‘consistency and replicability’ means.

So all you have to do to convince us sceptics is to demonstrate this consistency and replicability. Yet in 200 years, no-one has done this and suggestions of how this might be done from sceptics are met with obfuscation and bluster by homeopaths.

Crikey, if I could do something amazing and lots of people doubted me I would do my utmost to prove it. I wouldn’t bluster, I wouldn’t offer half-baked pseudo-evidence (I certainly wouldn’t offer it again and again, even after it has been pointed out to me how half-baked it is). I would show people very clearly, in a way that made it obvious there was no trickery, deception or self-deception, this amazing thing.

Unless of course I was earning my living at pretending to do this amazing thing, in which case I would bluster and obfuscate because there was no way I could demonstrate the ability without somebody pointing out that it wasn’t real.

“There is a consistent and demonstrable logic in treatment choices”

So demonstrate it already!

May 7, 2008 at 10:08 am

Andy Lewis

lmso said

Since my personal suspicions about homeopathy’s mode of action involves a correlation in consciousness between patient, practitioner and remedy as the dominant mechanism, the control group in this test can have no possibility of any such correlation being made.

Well, the test you describe is fatally flawed as it would be easy to determine if you were dealing with a real, trained homeopath or an actor – especially over an hours consultation. I am not sure if lmso’s ideas are fully thought through, but a simple RCT with placebo remedies would at least show that the pill was important. I do not see how this cannot be a good test of homeopath, even if ‘intention’ and ‘consciousness’ are vital. It would at least show if the pill played any part. If the trial showed success then we can Say that homeopathy works and the pill is important. If the trial fails then we can say that either homeopathy does not work or it is just purely the ‘intention’ that is vital. That would be a huge breakthrough in itself. We could ban the sale of retail homeopathic pills in Boots immediately as there is no ‘intention’.

But clearly lmso does not want to test this. I would also be interested to see if lmso can actually think of a test for his beliefs that intention is important that does not involve actors and hence ‘unblinding’.

May 7, 2008 at 10:20 am

Andy Lewis

lmso also said,

As I keep saying Andy, it’s high time you and such as you put your theories to the test. Until you subject them to verification in a clinical setting and observe for yourself whether or not real world reactions to homeopathic treatment can be validly attributed to regression to mean, placebo, deception and all the other explain aways you favour, you’re essentially arguing with your own imagination. Not very scientific.

This is a total inversion of moral responsibility. I am making no claims that need to be tested. I a merely saying that homeopathy is totally implausible given the thoroughly tested science of atomic physics and chemistry.

You are making the wild claims that this is not true. You are treating patients on the basis of fanciful thinking. If you are wrong then you may well be doing harm. The imperative is on to do the due diligence and demonstrate your claims to the high standard that they deserve. The fact that you brush this off and pretend that the sceptics need to prove their case suggests to me that you do not take your responsibilities at all seriously.

If you really want to understand homeopathy, then perhaps you should listen a lot more carefully and with a more open mind to what homeopaths and homeopathic patients are trying to tell you.

Believe me, I listen. Am all I hear is unsubstantiated and garbled nonsense. Look through this thread and count the times I have asked for evidence of the claims made here. Count the number of coherent replies.

And contrary to your frequent assertions, accepting the validity of homeopathy in no way invalidates the present knowledge base. It merely shows it to be contingent and dependent on certain initial assumptions, much as Newtonian physics remains contingently valid within the context of quantum theory.

This is typical of the nonsense that is difficult to wade though to understand homeopathy. Homeopathy absolutely does not fall in our current knowledge base of science. There are no reasonable assumptions that allow it to creep in. Demonstrate you have understood what you have written bu explicitly saying how homeopathy is consistent with our present understanding of physics.

In your answer you must explain how a solution that is beyond the avogadro limit can have a physical and biological effect. Please give references to support your evidence.

May 7, 2008 at 12:28 pm

M Simpson

“This is a total inversion of moral responsibility. I am making no claims that need to be tested. I a merely saying that homeopathy is totally implausible given the thoroughly tested science of atomic physics and chemistry.”

Andy’s absolutely right. If I say that I have fairies at the bottom of my garden and expect people to believe me, it’s up to me to prove that I’m telling the truth. If I refuse to furnish that proof – or demand that the onus is on other people to prove my garden is fairy-free – then I shouldn’t complain if people call me deluded.

May 7, 2008 at 10:32 pm

givescienceachance

Sorry about the delay getting back.

Andy said:

It is interesting that you will not consider any objective evidence over your own experience. That is my experience with most homeopaths – and is a recipe for great delusion. This is my central criticism of homeopathy – that it practices witout regard to evidence or reason, but clings to subjective wishful thinking. If you stuck to treating mild self-limiting conditions, then all would be fine. But when homeopaths attempt to take responsibility for more serious illnesses and undermine their customers relationship with their doctors, then a simple delusion becomes a capacity for harm.

The issue here is that you regard only one form of evidence as objective: the RCT. But, as LMSO has said:

Anecdotal evidence may have questionable validity on an individual case-by-case basis, but when anecdote after anecdote attests to similar reactions to prescriptions based on similar symptoms, and the data remains consistent through a period of 200 years, then you are looking at a body of evidence of much greater strength. Consistency and replicability are key, and the anecdotal evidence base of homeopathy demonstrates this.

When it comes to tests, you have to be clear what you are testing, and that is a problem you will not face. For example, you ask for a simple test, but it is not possible to simultaneously test the significance of the patient-practitioner relationship, the effects of potentising the remedy AND the theory of the remedy-symptom relationship at the same time without a coherent theoretical framework. It is as though you were to attempt to justify the theory of gravitational attraction without being clear about the effects of the wind and the significance of various starting velocities and angles. No amount of RCTs would yield useful information about gravity in these circumstances.

The interaction of multiple factors can only be understood by removing as many influences as possible until you get an absolutely clear answer in every case every time. In the case of gravity this involves dropping objects in a vacuum in order to establish that they fall at the same rate. It does not even remotely involve RCTs.

So how did Hahnemann approach the problem?

Having been given an explanation for quinine’s effectiveness in treating malaria which did not make sense, he investigated what the effects of quinine are on a healthy human being. His observation was that it produced almost identical symptoms to those experienced by malaria sufferers. This generated a hypothesis that this similarity could be the basis for effectiveness of medicines in treating illness. He then did two things. Firstly he investigated the records both of diseases interacting with each other and of accidental cures, and he discovered that this principle of similarity was observed repeatedly in such cases, where disimilarity had no effect. Secondly he got volunteers to test other substances for their effects on healthy people, combining this information with toxicological reports to provide himself with a body of knowledge so that he could test the principle for himself.

These tests not only confirmed the hypothesis, but also revealed the fact that there were other factors needing to be taken into account, just as testing a known principle of gravitational attraction in the real world reveals the measurable significance of other factors.

Whether you like it or not, Andy, this is science, it is reason, it is diligence, and it is certainly not belief in fanciful ideas.

From your desire for a meaningless simplicity you go on to describe a test:

Far simpler and cheaper tests might be possible – Derik has one example. A simple private test would show real willingness on behalf of the homeopath to test their claim – e.g. a simple blinded proving on themselves. Spend a month or two taking a pill every week, but get a friend to blind whether the homeopath was taking a real pill or a dummy. Keep a diary. Guess which week was real and which was not. See if you do better than chance. Have you ever heard of a homeopathic school that really tries hard to get its students to do honest tests of this sort?

The answer is “Of course not!” The test is ludicrous and only demonstrates a profound ignorance of the principles of homeopathy and of how to conduct provings in particular. Someone with an interest in scientific investigations would at least make themselves familiar with what they are studying.

Added to this you repeatedly come out with wild generalisations, such as:

I thought homeopaths did not believe in such things? We saw earlier that such tests could not be conducted on homeopathy? No one can say why. My guess is that this is a stock excuse to refuse to listen to the results of such tests.

Homeopaths vary in their views on RCTs. Such tests can be applied to homeopathy, but they need to be very well designed if they are to test a single factor rather than a mishmash of unknown effects. “No one” is at least one person (making 0=1 in your perception of the world). Finally your conclusion is a judgement unfounded in any evidence and actively contradicted by numerous comments above.

May 7, 2008 at 10:32 pm

givescienceachance

Derik said:

I’m suggesting that believing in homeopathy without such tests having been done is a little silly. That if Homeopaths as a community were serious about doing the best they could for patients they would be demanding such experiments be done. That the homeopathic community should be demanding money for such research out of the vast profits made by homeopathic remedy manufactures. Finally I suggest that not pursuing any of these things indicates a lack of intellectual integrity.

I am used to Andy getting his maths wrong, but this beggars belief! Which manufacturer of homeopathic remedies is even in the top fifty UK companies? Helios? Nelsons? Ainsworths? On the other hand GlaxoSmithKline is number 8!

He went on:

Also, not taking appropriate notes is dreadful practice for a car mechanic, for someone who aspires to be a health care professional it’s serious professional misconduct.

Perhaps Derik does not know that a GP does no more than ez claims, and in fact probably does less, since homeopathy requires a much higher standard of information-gathering, so just the major points is a significant body of information.
As for:

how do you know they wouldn’t have got better without your treatment?

The only response needed is to ask “What theoretical framework have you for making any assessment of cause and effect in medicine?” You might as well ask “How do you know the car would not have moved without you starting the engine?” If you have no understanding of the principles involved, you can always deny the correlation of events and claim it is a coincidence.

May 8, 2008 at 7:14 am

Derik

Your problem is, if you don’t have a theoretical framework that suggests an experiment to test your claims, you don’t have a theoretical framework that permits you to treat patients.

May 8, 2008 at 7:34 am

Derik

Interesting point about the car though. Am I allowed to know about gravity?

May 8, 2008 at 8:36 am

givescienceachance

Your problem is, if you don’t have a theoretical framework that suggests an experiment to test your claims, you don’t have a theoretical framework that permits you to treat patients.

But that is precisely what homeopaths do have. It is orthodox medicine which does not. Hence the introduction of RCTs.

By the way they were introduced not to prove effectiveness or efficacy, but to show that new drugs were safe. It is a shame that subsequent events have shown them to fail on all counts.

May 8, 2008 at 8:45 am

givescienceachance

Interesting point about the car though. Am I allowed to know about gravity?

You are allowed to know anything as far as I am concerned, though whether you actually do is something else.

As a point of interest, since it is a primary part of his mechanics, when exactly did Newton explain why F=ma? And if he didn’t, who did? And when?

After all if you want an explanation of why homeopathy works, it is reasonable to apply the same criterion to other sciences.

May 8, 2008 at 11:38 am

Andy Lewis

As a point of interest, since it is a primary part of his mechanics, when exactly did Newton explain why F=ma? And if he didn’t, who did? And when?

Einstein showed that you can unify the gravitation field with acceleration according to the principle of equivalence. Forces can be shown to be consequences of the dynamical nature of space-time in the presence of mass.

May 8, 2008 at 11:58 am

Andy Lewis

The issue here is that you regard only one form of evidence as objective: the RCT.

That is not true. RCTs show the least amount of subjective influence when considering tests of interventions like homeopathy. Of course there are other types of evidence, but all suffer increasing levels of subjectivity.

Whether you like it or not, Andy, this is science, it is reason, it is diligence, and it is certainly not belief in fanciful ideas.

Well, I am afraid it is totally fanciful. There have been no rigorous tests to show that provings do what they say they can do – document reproducible symptom sets in healthy volunteers in response to a homeopathically prepared substance. Nothing. Nada. It is not science. Prove me wrong.

Indeed, academic homeopath George Lewith has gone on record as saying that,

Homeopathic pathogenetic trials (or provings) provide the foundations for the clinical practice of homeopathy. The most recent review of proving studies indicated that provings are generally of poor methodological quality. Methods to improve the quality and scientific rigour are needed to critically assess the clinical basis of homeopathy.

Forsch Komplementärmed Klass Naturheilkd 2005;12:152-158

Peter Fisher, another academic homeopath, concludes the following,

The HPTs were generally of low methodological quality. There is a high incidence of pathogenetic effects in publications and volunteers but this could be attributable to design flaws. Homeopathic medicines, tested in HPTs, appear safe. The central question of whether homeopathic medicines in high dilutions can provoke effects in healthy volunteers has not yet been definitively answered, because of methodological weaknesses of the reports. Improvement of the method and reporting of results of HPTs are required.

That was in A systematic review of the quality of homeopathic pathogenetic trials published from 1945 to 1995.Homeopathy. 2007 Jan;96(1):4-16.

So, it amazes me how there is such a deep rot at the heart of homeopathy and nothing is being done about it. The whole of homeopathy is predicated on deeply flawed methodology – as brave homeopaths themselves admit. Homeopaths cling to their wishful thinking that indeed provings are scientific and that Hahnemann could not be wrong when actually they are utterly deluding themselves.

May 8, 2008 at 12:23 pm

Derik

Your point about the car is interesting “But that is precisely what homeopaths do have.”

Great give me a dichotomy, Say “If I do A then X will occur and if I do B then Y will occur”

Then say: “The following experiment will show that after repeating the action A X generally occurs and after repeating B then Y usually occurs.”

I think your grand overarching theory bares no relation to the real world at all .I want you to explain how it would be possible for you to show that infact the real world behaves as you predict.

Here is an example using your car:

Statement:

I predict that if a car is placed on a horizontal level surface (so that when the hand break is taken off it does not move of its own accord) then if I turn the engine on, put the car in gear and press the gas peddle the car will move. I also predict that if I leave the engine off, put the car into gear and press the gas peddle the car will not move.

Experiment:

I will take a car to a piece of level ground. I will begin each trial with the engine off. My mate Fred will then toss a coin, heads: I turn the engine on, put it in gear etc, tails: I will leave the engine off, put it in gear etc. After each trial Fred will note whether the car moved or not. We will repeat this process 100 times. If on more than 57 occasion the car moves when predicted and remains stationary when predicted we can be 95 % certain that the movement of the car was not due to a random 50:50 chance.

Why can’t you do this for Homeopathy?

May 8, 2008 at 12:26 pm

Derik

Sorry about first line; copy paste failure

May 8, 2008 at 4:52 pm

givescienceachance

Derik, you are simply reproducing the vacuum experiment for gravity. By removing all variables but one you can make a prediction, and I have no problem with that. What I have a problem with is the fact that you DO NOT follow the same methodology when planning tests of homeopathy (or drugs for that matter). If you did there would be no question about the results.

May 8, 2008 at 5:15 pm

givescienceachance

Andy, why do have to be quite so stupid. George Lewith conducted a proving trial with highly suspect methodology (see earlier comments on this thread), and even he had doubts about its conclusions. So you want to take his word on the quality of provings?

As regards Dr Peter Fisher, he was looking at a very specific period of time, when the drug companies were on the ascendency, homeopaths were few and so funding and people were not available and the “drug” approach dominated. Since that time the standard and number of provings has risen enormously.

Why are you so fixated on defending your ignorance in the name of scientific truth? Why don’t you spend some time learning?

I am seriously wondering who is doing your thinking for you, since you keep demonstrating a total incapacity for doing it yourself. You keep trotting out generalisations, quotations without a proper context, and wholly inaccurate statements about science and medicine. You would be a joke in any serious debate.

May 8, 2008 at 5:37 pm

Andy Lewis

gsac – forgive me, but there is no polite way of responding. What you have just said is horseshit.

The Fisher paper does not mention drug companies. Let me repeat its main conclusion:

The central question of whether homeopathic medicines in high dilutions can provoke effects in healthy volunteers has not yet been definitively answered, because of methodological weaknesses of the reports.

Yes. No one has shown that provings work. And no one has since. It is a canker at the heart of homeopathy. If you can show me where Fishers request to improve provings has been done and shown to work then please do.

That paper was published last year. It is the current and latest assessment of the status of homeopathic proving methodology. And the answer is they do not work. Your attempts to attack me for being ’stupid’ do not distract from this rather glaring and inconvenient truth for homeopaths.

May 8, 2008 at 5:46 pm

Andy Lewis

Here is the result of the largest systematic proving ever done. 253 healthy volunteers took Belladonna 30C for four weeks and kept diaries. They were randomised into two groups with identical pills, one Bell 30C and the other blank.

The result:

If ultramolecular dilutions have clinical effects, an increased proving response should be observed in the Belladonna 30C group, as suggested by the pilot [28]. No group differences in proving rates were identified (and this was additionally borne out using alternative definitions of proving) which confirms that there is no support for any clinical effect of ultramolecular homeopathy within this model.

The authors raised the spectre:

Proving studies form the basis for homeopathic prescribing, yet these data have not provided evidence for the existence of a homeopathic effect using a commonly prescribed remedy. It could therefore be suggested that the central tenets that underlie homeopathy are not valid, i.e. the concepts of provings and ultradilutions, which has considerable implications in terms of homeopathic practice.

Who has taken any notice of the largest proving ever undertaken?

http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/full/10.1046/j.1365-2125.2003.01900.x

May 9, 2008 at 2:57 am

Andy,
Well, following the paragraph that you cite (the second one) the authors also add that “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. ” – So selective quoting again? But I will leave it to someone knowledgeable to comment, although the “definition of proving” given in this article seems quite strange to me.

THanks for the link!

May 9, 2008 at 6:26 am

On subsequent reading, the paragraph
“If ultramolecular dilutions have clinical effects, an increased proving response should be observed in the Belladonna 30C group, as suggested by the pilot [28]. No group differences in proving rates were identified (and this was additionally borne out using alternative definitions of proving) which confirms that there is no support for any clinical effect of ultramolecular homeopathy within this model. The baseline data showed that the two treatment groups were balanced. We identified total proving rates of 14%, similar to those found in traditional proving studies (e.g. [33, 34]), which suggests that the PQ appears to be sensitive enough to detect proving, and we confirmed that the data were completed reliably.”

suggests that both groups have indeed had enough of symptoms to call this a proving, although they do not detail (almost) what other symptoms beside those that they used for the Proving Questionnaire have the provers displayed. So it seems to me that this result somehow resemble what was referenced in the beginning of this thread – that the antidepressants were effective, but so were the sugar pills, and the reason for this might lie in those factors that LMSO suggests to eliminate by using actors instead of real homeopaths in the test. The placebo receivers still proved the remedy at the same rate – it would be interesting to know why, rather than discard this as nonsense, don’t you think?

May 9, 2008 at 8:50 am

Andy Lewis

Yes it would be interesting to know why this result was obtained, but I think we already know it – but homeopaths do not want to swallow this pill.

If ultramolecular dilutions have no effect on people, then this is exactly the result we would predict – a small percentage from from both the belladonna and the placebo will experience the expected symptoms, but there will be no significant differences between the groups – exactly as was observed.

In order to explain this away, homeopaths will have to load in lots of extraneous postulations, probably involving the words ‘conscious’ or ‘quantum’ but without any specific reasons why the above test should fail. The fact that homeopathy does not work is by far the most parsimonious explanation of the lack of results in properly conducted provings.

It is indeed true that the authors in the meta-analysis postulate that they may have flawed methodology – but it is telling that they do not detail what those flaws may be. It is a shallow attempt at a having a get-out-of-gaol card.They say that homeopathy must be individualised, but that applies to treatments – the provings are done on a representative sample of healthy people and when tested, provings are shown to produce spurious results.

Now, of course. Not all homeopathic remedies depend on provings – many nosodes for example. These remedies are used in blind faith of the correctness of the general principle of ‘like-cure-like’. (Another speculation without a shred of evidence to suggest it is a general principle).

The honest homeopath would say “this is how I practice my art. I recognise that provings are flawed methodologically and have been shown not to work”. But we do not get that intellectual integrity in the community, do we?

May 9, 2008 at 9:46 am

Derik

GSAC at the risk of trading insults, I think you truly and deeply do not understand probability and that you are presently incapable of probabilistic reasoning.

When you say things like RCT’s can’t do what is claimed for them or that there is no way to know if this or that treatment will be good for a particular patient it’s because in your mind randomisation or probabilistic reasoning are truly insane concepts. That’s why you demand we learn something, so we can see what is obvious to you, unfortunately what is obvious to you is incorrect.

I wonder whether, if you share this deficite with your collegues, this is why QM is so attractive to homeopaths. QM draws massively on probability and statistics. Perhaps, paradoxicly, without a probabilistic thinking module in your mind, it seems like a kind of magic that somehow matches up with homeopathy.

Oh and I have never heard of the “vacuum experiment for gravity” and can’t find it on google or wikipedia. What can you be talking about?

May 9, 2008 at 1:02 pm

Derik,
Well, I’m a graduate of a math department, and I should tell you that I recall the striking difference in impression that probability theory has left on me personally, and some other fellow students to whom I could talk about it as well, in the sense of its integrity, if you like. Although I respect Prof Kholmogoroff and recall how his 70 something birthday was celebrated with his already famous pupils in our department, it really struck me how superficial the whole idea is and how it onften seems to help to mask the lack of understanding the underlying essence of things – compared to all other fields, be it differential calculus, the measure theory, mathematical logic, differential geometry – you name it. All other fields permitted to grasp the inner logic of things and actually establish links between them, showing that everything is interrelated, really elegant theories are somehow deeply rooted in reality, well, now it is all used in quantum mechanics, where it serves its direct purpose of providing just the necessary degree of approximation/generalisation (obviously at variance with what it is used to achieve in medical area – or rather your perception of this, certainly not to establish the links of causes-effects), although I have not continued with this and do not follow the recent thought for almost 20 years now. But the impression that probability is only there to cover the lack of something more substantial does not leave me, especially after I did some economical studies and learned how they apply probabilities and statistics – in different areas, though, – in economics.

I guess GSAC is quite well versed in history of science so rather than resort to frustrated retorts, you’d better search your information beyond googling and wikipedia and use your own head just once in a while, with a doubt that your apriori superior attitude is not quite adequate sometimes.

May 9, 2008 at 1:07 pm

Andy,
you say “a small percentage from from both the belladonna and the placebo will experience the expected symptoms, but there will be no significant differences between the groups” – now why exactly the 5 “expected” symptoms, arbitrarily chosen out of hundreds recorded for Belladonna symptoms should be expected to appear in the provers?

I reread how Vithoulkas outlines the proving protocols, everything with blinding, recording of symptoms up to 3 months, detecting sensitive provers, “discarding” the suggestible individuals, using ascending potencies for sensitive provers, and the whole procedure requiring more than 2 years, – so this trial was a poor parody at the real thing, I hate to say, I would not really concentrate on it any more, but of course, if it helps you to “score your point” then we’ll have to listen to all of it again.

May 9, 2008 at 2:21 pm

Andy Lewis

ez – you have a very superficial understanding of statistics in science. Quantum mechanics in itself can only offer predictions of how wave-functions evolve through time. This can only ever give rise to probabilistic predictions. Probability is at the heart of physics and is not a result of lack of knowledge.

But stepping outside of quantum mechanics, other areas of physics rely totally on probabilistic methods. gas and fluid dynamics, weather prediction. We know in enormous detail the physics of gases, liquids and thermodynamics that allow us to compute weather forecasts. But due to the chaotic nature of the system it is only possible to predict weather probabilistically. This is inherent within the system and not due to our lack of knowledge of the science. It is a problem with knowing starting conditions – i.e. contingent elements – not the science.

In medicine, we may understand causes of diseases and actions of drugs at the biochemical level enormously well. But that does not mean that the system is linear and deterministic. Statistical methods of measuring success will always be necessary. Homeopathy cannot wriggle out of it.

May 9, 2008 at 2:27 pm

Andy Lewis

now why exactly the 5 “expected” symptoms, arbitrarily chosen out of hundreds recorded for Belladonna symptoms should be expected to appear in the provers?

Are you serious? If you take several hundred people and ask them to record every twinge, itch and ache over six weeks you are going to get hundreds of symptoms – stomach cramps, headaches, bad knees, irritability and snotty noses. Some large symptoms, some minor.

In seeing if Belladonna works, you have to subtract that background noise. This is what the above trial does and the answer is zero. Belladonna 30C adds nothing to the background level of symptoms experienced. Basic stuff. It does not work.

If Vithoulkas believes he has a better protocol then there are two things to say:

1) 99% (?) of homeopathic provings have not been done in this way and so are highly suspect. Do we see homeopaths jumping up and down with anxiety about this? No.

2) If Vithoulkas is right. Let us see the independently replicated papers that show his methodology is right and foolproof. Please give URLs.

My belief is that Vithoulkas is a big obscurantist and apologist. Please prove me wrong with papers and references. If he can do what you think he could do, it would be the scientific breakthrough of the century. I suspect we shall have a deafening silence.

May 9, 2008 at 3:02 pm

Andy Lewis

And I would still be interested to see if any homeopath can say what is wrong with the protocol followed in the largest proving ever undertaken.

http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/full/10.1046/j.1365-2125.2003.01900.x

Specifics please. Why did it not work?

May 9, 2008 at 3:11 pm

M Simpson

And I’m still waiting for anyone to show me a forum or blog where two homeopaths are challenging each other’s opinion about some aspect of homeopathy.

I think we’re both going to be waiting a long time, Andy.

May 10, 2008 at 12:16 am

laughingmysocksoff

Timely! Well to back up a bit and answer questions specifically directed to me …

M Simpson wrote:

PLease point me to any homeopathy discussion forum or blog, anywhere on the net, where homeopaths are disagreeing about some aspect of homeopathy.

I don’t frequent the forums any more — no time — but the history of homeopathy is riddled with dissent. Just do some reading. All the well-known homeopathic ‘authorities’ throughout history have had their own methodologies about which there is never-ending argument. Anyone who makes any new discoveries and introduces new methods is invariably jumped on by the ‘classical’ faction who tend to feel adhering to Hahnemann’s methods is where it’s at … it’s really no different from the tension between innovators and luddites that occurs in any branch of human knowledge. Google George Vithoulkas for starters and you’re bound to find a few rants to whet your appetite.

As for tones of conversation being “atypically conciliatory”, I suspect that’s only by comparison with the Rottweilering that passes for ‘debate’ in some scientific circles. Not every profession finds it necessary to indulge in such savage discussion. Perhaps a post-modern perspective sits more easily with people who are used to acknowledging the validity in idiosyncrasy and uniqueness? Who are themselves pursuing a fairly maverick and idiosyncratic path through life? Try stepping outside the ‘protection’ of institutionalised conventional consensus once in a while. It’s amazing what it does for your tolerance of viewpoints that are different from your own …

Having said that, there is a PC brigade that makes its presence felt throughout homeopathy and they can sometimes get painfully over-zealous. However, that doesn’t mean that dissent and debate are absent.

So why can’t this consistency and replicability be demonstrated? It is easy to have ‘consistent, replicable’ evidence if everything is post hoc anecdotes. You really don’t grasp it, do you, despite this being possibly the most basic logical concept it is possible to formulate: if something is consistent and replicable then you should be able to say in advance ‘if X happens, Y will follow’. And then every time you, or anyone else, does X, Y follows. That is what ‘consistency and replicability’ means.

Yes M. But you don’t seem to get the fact that we’re dealing with human beings here, not machines. There’s no such thing as absolute consistency and replicability in medicine and I doubt you’ll find one clinician from any branch of medicine anywhere in the world willing to say in advance ‘if X happens, Y will follow’ unless it’s on the level of ‘if I amputate your leg, you’ll have one less leg’.

Medicine deals in probabilities. There are no guarantees. So it’s highly disingenuous of you to hold homeopathy to standards that aren’t applicable in conventional medicine. If you go to your GP for a prescription for whatever ails you, s/he’s not going to promise you anything s/he gives you will work. It’s a case of ‘this drug has helped this condition in 30-50% (according to GSK’s Allen Roses) of others, it may help you’. Homeopathy also operates on the basis of probability. We prescribe remedies with reference to patterns that are evident in provings and case history. But the differences can be very subtle and we might not get it on the nail first time. You can call that post hoc rationalisation if you like, but you’d have to apply exactly the same rationale to conventional treatment because it proceeds on a similar basis. The only differences between the two are in the nature of what’s taken as evidence of prior efficacy.

Crikey, if I could do something amazing and lots of people doubted me I would do my utmost to prove it.

Would you. Why? What on earth is the point? If people don’t want to see the validity of something, no amount of “proof” will convince them. Whatever proof is offered is dismissed or rationalised away as something else and none of the people concerned seem willing to actually come and witness the therapy in action for themselves. So why would you waste all your time and energy on trying to convince a group of sceptics who don’t want to be convinced? Why would you do that when every day you’re witnessing the results of what you do? You know it works, your patients know it works, and they’re the ones who chose to come and see you. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. If people get better, then people get better. That’s the aim of the process, that’s why people train as homeopaths, not to try and convince the world that this is some “one true way” of healing.

Unless of course I was earning my living at pretending to do this amazing thing, in which case I would bluster and obfuscate because there was no way I could demonstrate the ability without somebody pointing out that it wasn’t real.

Well if you’re the kind of person who sacrifices their moral integrity as soon as money comes into the equation, then I feel really sorry for you M. There’s far more to life than that. I can’t speak for the profession as a whole, but the vast majority of the homeopaths I know personally are homeopaths because they discovered for themselves that this therapy actually works and they were so excited by the discovery that they were inspired to dedicate themselves to trying to help others through it.

20 years ago I was earning a 6-figure salary doing a soul-destroying job. These days I struggle to make ends meet, but I wouldn’t turn the clocks back for anything. Have you any idea what it feels like to be able to help someone overcome a long-standing illness that no other treatment has been able to touch? To see strength, vitality and happiness return to people who’ve been without it for years, sometimes decades? There’s very little financial reward in this occupation M, but the job satisfaction is awesome.

May 10, 2008 at 12:36 am

laughingmysocksoff

Andy Lewis wrote:

Well, the test you describe is fatally flawed as it would be easy to determine if you were dealing with a real, trained homeopath or an actor – especially over an hours consultation.

Any decent actor worth their Equity card should have no trouble convincing subjects after studying an interview protocol with a homeopath. To your average person accustomed to their GP’s technique, a homeopathic interview is so full of seemingly unrelated and strange questions that none of it makes sense. It’s not hard to emulate and only an experienced homeopathic patient would be likely to spot the difference. If you still think actors would be rumbled, then use psychiatrists instead. The interview technique is not dissimilar in some respects.

I am not sure if lmso’s ideas are fully thought through, but a simple RCT with placebo remedies would at least show that the pill was important. I do not see how this cannot be a good test of homeopath, even if ‘intention’ and ‘consciousness’ are vital. It would at least show if the pill played any part.

Of course they’re not fully thought through! You asked me a specific question: namely, what sort of experiment would convince me that homeopathy didn’t work. I answered that question. If you wanted a fully thought out protocol for a scientific trial, then that’s what you should have asked for.

As for your suggestion, why repeat what’s already been done umpteen times already? The balance of trial data shows a weak effect for the remedies when isolated by blinding. That’s entirely consistent with the hypothesis that the sum of homeopathy comprises both specific and non-specific effects which in total are significant, but individually isolated are not. It’s not a case of one or the other. It’s both in combination. So you need to test both in combination against a control group that’s not tainted by either the specific or non-specific effects of the therapy.

This is a total inversion of moral responsibility. I am making no claims that need to be tested. I a merely saying that homeopathy is totally implausible given the thoroughly tested science of atomic physics and chemistry.

Much as I can see that it appears this way to you, Andy, the “thoroughly tested science of atomic physics and chemistry” is not a well-circumscribed, unanimously agreed and static entity. Your claims do need to be tested for the simple reason that empirical evidence is at odds with your theory. There is an enormous amount of work going on in the boundary zones of established ’science’, pushing ever outward, much of which appears potentially capable of encompassing a therapy like homeopathy. There are dozens of scientists working in these areas, and a large number of clinicians open to all sorts of new approaches, particularly in respect of pathology where conventional treatment has little to offer. There are also a large number of patients very willing to try different techniques, having established there’s nothing conventional medicine can do to help them. Who are you to say that none of this should happen because the particular kind of proof you’re wanting to see isn’t there? People make their own choices based on evidence which they feel is adequate for them. Practitioners do the same. There is no lack of due diligence here.

In your answer you must explain how a solution that is beyond the avogadro limit can have a physical and biological effect. Please give references to support your evidence.

Well this is the crux of the matter, isn’t it? I think part of the problem that many sceptics appear to have is that they get completely hung up on the idea that a sugar pill that in all statistical likelihood contains not one molecule of the original substance cannot possibly have a biochemical effect when ingested. Well of course that’s utterly implausible! But who ever said that this is how homeopathy works?!! I don’t think it was any homeopath. This is just a sceptical assumption predicated on an underlying belief that the only way to create physical and biochemical change in a living system is through biochemical means; a notion which well-established science has already shown to be complete horseshit. The body-mind dichotomy passed its use-by date a while ago.

You are making the wild claims that this is not true. You are treating patients on the basis of fanciful thinking.

I presume you meant “that this is true” rather than “that this is not true”? These are not wild claims Andy. We’re treating patients on the basis of well-founded empirical evidence. That’s the foundation of homeopathy and that’s how it continues. What’s more, nobody is forcing people to come to us. They choose to do so because they have relatives and friends who’ve told them of their own experiences with homeopathy and whether you like it or not, human beings consistently rate the experience of people they know and trust far more highly than any amount of ’scientific’ studies. I wonder why that is? Could it be that people have an instinct for what’s really ‘real’? But as I’ve said before, one anecdote may amount to weak evidence, but hundreds of similar anecdotes all attesting to the same patterns are not.

Believe me, I listen. Am all I hear is unsubstantiated and garbled nonsense. Look through this thread and count the times I have asked for evidence of the claims made here. Count the number of coherent replies.

I’ve suspected for a while now that this whole debate isn’t so much about the underlying truth of the situation as about language differences. I was even thinking of writing up a post about it, but since I don’t have the time at the moment, I’ll outline it here instead.

It operates in a similar way to the way prejudices against regional accents in Britain used to operate. We no longer have positive selection in favour of RP — if anything, it’s swung in the opposite direction — but we do appear to have extreme prejudice operating in the area of what’s perceived to be the lingua franca for any trade or profession.

It looks to me like there’s no substantial lack of coherence in the correspondence here unless you’re employing a selective filter that only ‘permits’ language that fits your conception of what ’scientific’ language should amount to. Homeopathic terminology doesn’t fit that box, therefore it’s “garbled nonsense’. Actually it’s not. It makes perfect sense in its own terms, but you have to be willing to open your mind to alternative ways of describing the elephant to get it.

May 10, 2008 at 12:38 am

Andy,

you write “In seeing if Belladonna works, you have to subtract that background noise. This is what the above trial does and the answer is zero. Belladonna 30C adds nothing to the background level of symptoms experienced. Basic stuff. It does not work.” – in Vithoulkas protocol people stay on placebo for an unspecified for them – the whole thing is blinded – I repeat, for unspecified them period of at least a month, so all the background symptoms typical for each particular person (individualised basic noise) are recorded before they receive the real remedy. – These people have not done this, so indeed, any conclusion they make cannot be persuasive in any direction.

May 10, 2008 at 6:27 am

Andy Lewis

You really have to give me an URL for the Vithoulkas method. How can the trial be truly blinded if the method involves the same people recording background symptoms before the real remedy?

May 10, 2008 at 7:02 am

Andy Lewis

Well I have found this short description…

http://www.vithoulkas.com/content/view/157/9/lang,en/

My word! I did not think it would be this bad. It is just a futile excercise in confirmation bias and self-deception. The experimenter is not blinded BUT SELECTS PATIENTS BASED ON WHAT THEY EXPECT TO SEE!!!!

No wonder you don’t like properly conducted provings like the massive one above. They give you no opportunity to swing the results in the way you want them to go.

I must admit I am shocked at how stupid this Vithoulkas method is. I thought he was supposed to be one of the great intellects of homeopathy. He is fooling you all.

May 10, 2008 at 8:37 am

Andy, I do not have any URLs, I use my hard copy of the book for reference.

The baseline of the provers’ normal state of health is done in the course of the PREPARATION to the proving, which lasts for about a month before the proving starts, during which nobody takes anything. (I admit that I have misinterpreted this point in what I wrote in my previous post. Pity I really do not have time to be sufficiently attentive now! Apologies!) That’s what Vithoulkas suggests in his book.

What do you mean by “WHAT THEY EXPECT TO SEE”? I read your URL and I am at a loss at what part you interpreted as having this meaning. Can you please elaborate?

“He is fooling you all”. If you have not yet noticed, homeopaths tend to be capable of independent thinking (good homeopaths, that is), who are able to understand what they are being told rather than just follow any and every protocol suggested by someone in (mostly percieved) “authority”. Obviously, if they do not agree with the idea, they will not adopt it. It is not easy to fool a homeopath, at least, those homeopaths I personally know.

May 10, 2008 at 9:09 am

Andy Lewis

Vithoulkas selects the volunteers who ‘most senstive’ to the remedies to go onto the final stage of the proving. He is not controlling the experiment, he is not blinded, and is massively distorting the trial in favour of those people who are predisposed to the expected symptoms.

Think of it this way. Can such a trial ever show that homeopathy does not work? What Vithoulkas is doing is throwing darts against a wall and then drawing a bullseye around where the darts landed and then claiming he is a hotshot.

May 10, 2008 at 9:17 am

Jeff Garrington

A small question to ez and lmso. Your practice homeopathy alters the energy of the body, the essence or life force. The result being a return to health. Other cam/alternative practitioners make the same claims. Therapeutic touch, acupuncture etc. Claims are made for whole body scans altering of meridians and the flow of chi etc. Where do you two sit in regard to these claims. Are those practitioners deluded or are they dong the same thing but in an entirely different way, ie no potenised solution, like cures like, etc.

May 10, 2008 at 9:29 am

Andy Lewis

Let me spell this out…

Imagine for a moment that homeopathy did not work.

You get a large group of people and give them a homeopathic remedy in high dose. By chance, some of these people develop symptoms similar to the ones you are expecting. You declare that these people are ’sensitive’ and take them to the next round.

You give these people ultramolecular doses but because these people already have a predisposition to these symptoms they may continue to report them. Worse, since they now know they are ’special’ they may become more sensitive to their previous symptoms and over-report them.

You declare your proving has worked.

It is nothing but a recipe for self-delusion. In fact, I would go so far as to say it is dishonest. The large Belladonna trial above had none of these shortcomings. There were no opportunities to bias the trial in favour of the desired result. That is why it showed no effect for Belladonna 30C, because it was a fair test and homeopathy does not work.

And so far, no one has come up with a specific criticism of that trial.

May 10, 2008 at 9:40 am

Andy Lewis

lmso – how do you ensure that your actors do not have any ‘intention’ to heal too? How do you ensure that the real homeopaths do not give away more detail than the actors without resporting to scripted conversations?

May 10, 2008 at 12:54 pm

Geff,

my opinion is that any stimulus to the person which is capable of producing a reaction can be either curative or suppressive, that is improving the person’s level of health or depleting it – and the decision about the result can be made on the basis of the Direction of CUre, that was already mentioned somewhere in this thread. I am told that practitioners of Chinese Medicine, the real one which is based on constitution analysis and corresponding prescription, uses the same principles of assessing the course of treatment – if the ill health moves from internal areas to more superficial and less life-threatening, or impairing person’s self-expression directions – then it’s going in the right direction.

Re Direction of Cure, I was recently amazed when I heard my neighbour tell me her story of eczema when I told her about my daughter’s atopic dermatitis and my worries if this does not develop into asthma at some point. She has no idea of any system of medicine not to say of the direction of cure, of course, but she has detailed to me how she was suffering from eczema which started on her hands and feet, then moved to bigger joints – elbows and knees, and then it disappeared there but appeared on her face, and finally the face cleared, but within a year she dounf herself having mild asthmatic fits. I hope I did not have my mouth gaping as she was telling me this because I just could not beleive that all that I read in homeopathic books about examples of possible scenarious of deteriorating health is so exactly reproduced in real life. I read many times that when the eczema is really cured it tends to go from above downwards, and from the centre to the perifery – just the opposite direction of what she had. And I guess you might have heard that homeopaths often say that asthma comes after suppression of eczema – well, in her case she did not use anything on her eczema, but obviously the stresses of her life depleted her health, well, this probably happens often enough.

Re acupuncture – I have had a chance to witness that it works when our Chinese friend once had her relative acupuncturists – practicing in China – come over, and they visited us, and just by chance my father complained of a headache and general tiredness, and he did indeed have a yeallowish unhealthy colour of face on that day. The Chinese lady had her set of needles with her so she said if he wants some treatment, he did not refuse, she went to stand behind him to examine his head, and before anyone knew a dozen of needles were sticking out of his head. In a matter of seconds his colour of face has started to change and soon was quite healthy and rosy, but as it was happening he was still asking when is she going to start, because she did it so quickly and so painlessly that he even did not notice anything! So any possibility of placebo is excluded – he thought that the treatment was not yet started while we all who were looking on already say the results starting to appear.

However, to know whether this sort of treatment is curative or suppressive I guess one has to monitor the person – on all levels, physical, location of pathology, general stamina, emotional status, – for at least a couple of years. By the way, the responses to remedies outlined by Kent can actually be applied to any stimulus the person receives, including conventional treatments. If you take note, there is a pattern described as “initial amelioration followed by aggravation to the state worse than the initial” (I do not recall exact wording now), well, this is typical of all supplemental treatments used in conventional medicine, when the medicine once used has to be repeated more and more often – well, Kent warns that this is the road to worse health, which it often the case if you take and examine the person’s history over a long span of several years.

On the other hand, homeopathy can be used in the suppressive way as well – you always have to know what you are doing and how to assess the results and reassess what you are doing if you see it’s moving in adverse direction.

May 10, 2008 at 12:57 pm

Andy,

Vithoulkas does not describe a trial, but a protocol for the proving – finding out what symptoms the substance may create. I was trying to tell you that the people in the article you quoted have tried to compare real and dummy proving to see if the real proving was in any way different from the dummy proving, but as they failed to reproduce the real proving reasonably well (in my opinion) the results of their comparison cannot tell us anything at all. I’m not sure what are you so angry about. Do you know what a proving is done for?

May 10, 2008 at 1:05 pm

Annemieke

“how do you ensure that your actors do not have any ‘intention’ to heal too”

I think it is not about the intention to heal in itself what it is about. What I suspect is that the ‘intention of giving the right remedy’ is important here. So I think it would be a great idea to have a controle group of actors.

May 10, 2008 at 3:24 pm

Andy Lewis

ez said.

but as they failed to reproduce the real proving reasonably well (in my opinion) the results of their comparison cannot tell us anything at all.

Of course it can. It tells us that homeopathic remedies do not have any effects. The results of the trial are exactly what you would expect if homeopathy was just a delusion.

I can only repeat the question. What is wrong with the trial that would suggest that this was not a fair test? Why should we just not walk away and conclude that homeopathy is an inert treatment?

I do know what a proving is for. But all I can see is a methodlogy for self-confimraiton of previous expectations. That is why provings fail when done completely blinded. The Vithoulkas methodology is most definately not blinded, but a very good way of amplifying expectations. If I come across as angry it is because I cannot believe sincere people are so obviously involved in something so stupid as the Vithoulkas method and expect other people to believe it. What is wrong with my interpretation of the Vithoulkas provings?

And,

Why is the ‘intention of giving the right remedy’ so important. Whta if the intention was there, but the pill was swapped for a dummy. Would the healing still work? If not, then we don’t need actors. If it does work, then we don’t need homeopathic pills. Which is it?

May 10, 2008 at 5:05 pm

Annemieke

“Why is the ‘intention of giving the right remedy’ so important.”

Maybe because the moment the homeopath recognises the remedy that is needed, there will already be a reaction of some sort.

“What if the intention was there, but the pill was swapped for a dummy.”

So then the reaction could be there already, even before the remedy is taken. Then while taking the remedy that might give a reaction again or increase it.

“Would the healing still work? If not, then we don’t need actors. If it does work, then we don’t need homeopathic pills. Which is it?”

I think it would work, but still the pills are needed because the right remedy is only part of the total treatment.
The redosing at the right moment is just as important and also depends on the potency that is used.

May 10, 2008 at 6:32 pm

Andy Lewis

Annemieke, forgive me, but it feels like you are busking.

Do you have any evidence for what you have said or is it just what you wish to be true?

May 10, 2008 at 7:15 pm

Annemieke

No, I do not have any evidence at all, and I also do not wish it to be true. It would be much less complicated if all the evidence was in the pill.

It is just that I think the test Laughingsocks proposed was a good one. And if it would be tested, then why not test the whole package and use actors in the controle group.

May 10, 2008 at 7:31 pm

Andy Lewis

Well, I just think that if I spent an hour with a trained homeopath and an hour with an actor I just might be able to tell the difference. if people in the test knew that they might be in with an actor they would be on the look out – and informed consent would require them to know this was a possibility.

I think it is fascinating that when asking a homeopath to describe a test that would convince them that homeopathy might be wrong they come up with a fatally flawed test – and when they try to justify it they have to postulate extra mechanisms in homeopathy that justifies the extra contortions in the test.

Hahnemann was quite clear that it is ‘like cures like’ that is the important factor. Does he speak of patient-practitioner intention interactions? What is also fascinating, that after postulating that ‘intention’ is a key factor that no test is put forward to suggest that this might be real.

All in all, it shows a complete lack of basic curiosity about basic beliefs. It looks to me that homeopaths use beliefs as props to support their desired world views rather than build beliefs based on evidence.

May 11, 2008 at 12:03 am

Andy,
you write “I do know what a proving is for. But all I can see is a methodlogy for self-confimraiton of previous expectations.” So can you just write it down here for me what do you think the proving is for?

May 11, 2008 at 5:19 am

Annemieke

“I think it is fascinating that when asking a homeopath to describe a test that would convince them that homeopathy might be wrong they come up with a fatally flawed test – and when they try to justify it they have to postulate extra mechanisms in homeopathy that justifies the extra contortions in the test.”

Maybe there are other possibilities as well, but the test proposed here was a good one in my opinion. And you can test beforehand if people would be able to tell the difference between a homeopath and an actor.

“What is also fascinating, that after postulating that ‘intention’ is a key factor that no test is put forward to suggest that this might be real.”

That could be the next thing to do. Say there would be a difference between the two groups, the following test could be to test both groups with homeopaths and see if there is still a difference.

“All in all, it shows a complete lack of basic curiosity about basic beliefs.”

I do not think it shows a lack of curiosity, but I think the test should be designed as good as possible. And to me that would mean testing to whole thing and not one factor.

May 11, 2008 at 6:11 am

Andy,

Maybe you should concnetrate on answering Annemieke for the moment but I just wanted to tell you that although you write
“Why should we just not walk away and conclude that homeopathy is an inert treatment?”, I have repeatedly seen that it works, it has an effect and the effect is curative if the remedy is administered according to some well-defined principles, – to which you cannot say anything in return because you have never even bothered to do any observations yourself (you simply cannot claim that what I observed was imagined by me or someone else – you have not been there at the moment and putting forth any argument you might think of is just indicative of your desire to dismiss someone’s experience because of some fixed ideas that you might have but which are not necessarily true, although we have heard many times that you are being told by “science” that some things are simply not possible – so who is just accepting what they are being told?), – and the result of the action of the remedy is not always desirable at that, I’ve seen responses which cannot be under any circumstances be due to anyone’s wishful thinking because the result was such that anyone would wish they did not have to experience all that.

So personally I would be interested to see a well designed test – based on some interesting hypothesis like the one that Laughinsocks mentions about the “intention to heal”, or maybe some other factor – after all we don’t know on what level and how exactly the communication between people occurs, – helping us to find out why the remedies affect us the way they do.

May 11, 2008 at 6:37 am

Jeff Garrington

ez, thank you for the reply. If I understand you correctly “any stimulus to the person which is capable of producing a reaction can be either curative or suppressive, that is improving the person’s level of health or depleting it”
Doesn’t that rather negate the need for homeopathic pills, the ritual of succusion.
Would this also explain why Homeopaths find it difficult to devise a means of testing their procedures. Anything and everything can either get in the way of, or promote healing. Hahnemans laws are just one way amongst many of doing this. For example, a child falls to the ground and receives a kiss and a rub to comfort them, the child stops crying and returns to play. Or hug them (counsel) and pop a sugar pill into their mouth.
It appears that it is only the ritual of healing that is different, take your pick, if you like the orient TCM or an alternative from Tibet, freedom to choose your means of staying healthy. A rich platter of “alternative modalities ” to choose from. All share one thing in common they all alter the life force, chi, etc.
Is this a problem for Homeopaths, how do you show your practice to be more effective than, raiki, therapeutic touch, crystal healing, quantum healing, etc.
Andy and others have suggested a means of establishing this data. Could this however be the main problem, you really do not want your world view to be altered. At the moment you are a healer with your chosen means of retaining your health, always available, its safe (not sure on that anymore) its natural (whatever that means) there is also a ritual and history to learn and observe. Come on Homeopaths, can you show your different.

May 11, 2008 at 8:14 am

Andy Lewis

ez a proving is the traditional method, instigated by Hahnemann, for determining the ’sypmtom picture’ ellucidated by a proposed or existing homeopathic remedy. On the basis of the principle that like-cures-like, a remedy capable of creating a set of symptoms in a healthy person could be used to cure someone who has those symptoms. Provings are typically conducted on a panel of volunteers who take the remedy and record their experiences (from overt symptoms to more esoteric experiences like dreams) over serveral weeks or months. The tester then reads the diaries and selects which symptoms from the diaries they believe are significant.

There is not a shred of evidence to suggest this technique works as the reviews of the provings literature above show. There is no reliable evidence that ultramolecular dilutions can produce reproducable symptoms sets in people. My challenge on my web site asks homeopaths to prove this. No one has. No one can. If they do, they will also win James Randi’s One Million dollars.

May 11, 2008 at 8:19 am

Andy Lewis

ez – “I have repeatedly seen that it works, it has an effect and the effect is curative if the remedy is administered according to some well-defined principles”

My alternative hypothsis is that you are experiencing selective confirmation bias. That is much more plausible than homeopathy working. We disagree on the interpretation of your experiences. How do we decide who is right? We have to remove the selectiveness of your experiences.

shpalman discusses the requirements for this as he dismantles Milgron on his blog.

T for Trial
You have to test something to make sure that you aren’t just remembering the positive anecdotes and forgetting the negative ones.
C for Control
You compare your treatment group with a group receiving no treatment, to make sure that it’s really the treatment having an effect. It’s usual to give the control group a placebo.
R for Randomized
To make sure that the patients in the treatment and control group are similar, so that similar disease progressions would be expected in each group if the treatment were ineffective. Otherwise you could deliberately or subconciously put the healthier people into the treatment group and then of course they likely to be healthier at the end of the trial. It’s good to have large groups.
B for Blind
The patient shouldn’t know whether they are getting the treatment or the control because this could bias their self-reported symptoms and also their expectations.
D for Double
The doctor shouldn’t know whether a patient is in the treatment or control group either, or else he or she can deliberately or subconciously influence the patient.

May 11, 2008 at 9:55 am

Geff,

“Come on Homeopaths, can you show your different.” – different from what? I am of the opinion that all that ends well is well. Hug a patient, give them a pill – most of my prescriptions are done over the phone, so there’s no hug, and the pill they go and buy themselves. But it seems that you have got me basically right.

I have just been thinking where I and other people I see often different from you as a group, if you do not mind me saying this. I personally have never had felt any benefit at all from ostheopathy and any type of massage, although I was referred by people who found them “very good”. From this I have deduced that obviously this sort of stimulus does not fit me somehow, and that’s it. An idea of going out to the streets with slogans like “ostheopathy is a fraud, osteopaths should prove that what they do really works” – or, which is basically the same, find an ostheopathic site and go and troll people telling them that I tried their methods and there is nothing in it that might work and that they should be honest and admit that they are deluded – such an idea would just never occur to me, and I’m glad to have realised this difference, thank you all for that.

So, dear Andy, you can give me any diagnosis that you wish, because that is basically that you are doing, and even suggesting means of treatment, thank you, but I’ll stick with my personal homeopath, I’m quite satisfied with what he finds for me when I need it.

You say “We disagree on the interpretation of your experiences. How do we decide who is right? We have to remove the selectiveness of your experiences.” Well, the thing is I was there and have “witnessed” my own experiences, and you have not, I really do not know how WE can discuss something that one of us has not really experienced and only has someone’s (mine in this case, but I’m just someone for you, am I not?) “hearsay” to rely on.

Oh, yes, and before I opened the blog I thought about another factor that must be affecting the patient when they come for treatment – it is the desire of a patient to get healed, if you know what I mean by the word “healed”, that is.

May 11, 2008 at 10:28 am

Andy Lewis

ez said

“Well, the thing is I was there and have “witnessed” my own experiences, and you have not, I really do not know how WE can discuss something that one of us has not really experienced “</blockquote?

You are absolutelty right and that is why it is not evidence and yet personal testimony like this is offered up time and time again as if it were evidence of homeopathic efficacy.

May 11, 2008 at 1:30 pm

Andy,

the word “evidence” is derived from the word “evident”, which stems from latin prefix “ex”, meaning “out of, from” and verb “vedere” which means “to see”.

So evidence is something that someone has seen basically. CHeck your dictionary.

May 11, 2008 at 5:54 pm

Jeff Garrington

ez, would you be happy for osteopaths to claim to cure AIDS or prevent Malaria,
then to set up clinics in Africa. Or crystal healers to arrive in Burma offering to help the injured. The problem people have with Homeopathy, is that Homeopaths make these claims, without a shred of evidence to back up any of their claims.
Are you not in the least bit curious about your perceptions, curious enough to test your intuition. Does it not alarm you that Peter Chappel a prominent homeopath claims to be able to protect you from bird flu with a homeopathic remedy broadcast over the radio. Again, for example, would you be comfortable seeing crystal therapists, walking amongst the stricken in Burma, laying healing crystals amongst the sick. Would you not think them deluded.

May 11, 2008 at 9:56 pm

Andy Lewis

ez – thank you for the Latin lesson. Now, how would you define good evidence and what sort of evidence do you think you can count as authoritative and trustworthy?

May 12, 2008 at 12:22 am

Jeff, (sorry, seem to have always typed your name the worng way!)

“ez, would you be happy for osteopaths to claim to cure AIDS or prevent Malaria,
then to set up clinics in Africa. Or crystal healers to arrive in Burma offering to help the injured. The problem people have with Homeopathy, is that Homeopaths make these claims, without a shred of evidence to back up any of their claims.” – I have learned what homeopathy can do, I’m quite satisfied with it, however, I have not ever studied none of the other therapies you mentioned, so I do not feel it proper for myself to comment on them either way. However, the desire of people, if sincere, to help people in need is commendable, they are not there for money, at least, the majority of them, so I would see absolutely no harm from them as long as people – to whom these practitioners are offering help – are given the right to decide for themselves – on the basis of their common sense and ability to evaluate reality sufficiently well, – whether they will follow the advices or not.
“Curious enough to test your intuition” – throughout my life my intuition did not fail me too often, not in the major things, at least, but I always make notice of this aspect – why do you ask?

I am not easily alarmed at the things that you describe – if Peter Chapell feels like this, let him have do it? I do not understand why does this alarm you? You don’t have to beleive all that this person is saying, does someone force you to? I have no idea what crystal therapy is about, but maybe it’s a good idea to try to study it open-mindedly rather than trying to gauge if it makes you personally comfortable or not? Make a long-term survey of the health state of the people who go to them, see how they fare, if you really detect any changes – try to think why is this. And this refers to all the other therapies, of course.

What you write suggests that you prefer to go by your intuition rather than calm reasoning and observation, and your intuition seems to be heavily weighted with fear and anxiety – just check your own language.

Are you afraid of people who are deluded? Please, don’t tell me that “harm can be done to others”, trust others, they also have their common sense, more than you credit them with actually. Or you cannot trust others to be able to think for themselves? THen this means that there is a great decrease in the survival abilities of the humanity. Imagine all conventional medicine, and other modern-day “comfortable” appliances being taken away from people – the people as they are now, how long will they survive? I suspect that the survival rate will be much lower than humanity had before this all was invented, which means that all this modern progress has made us weaker, rather than stronger. But that’s my intuition, of course, we’ll have to see when it’ll be put to test, hopefully not too soon?

May 12, 2008 at 12:23 am

Andy,

I have just described it to you several posts up – can you scroll and reread? It has not changed in the course of the recent several days.

May 12, 2008 at 12:30 am

By the way, Andy, your quote from SHpalman contains lines: “D for Double
The doctor shouldn’t know whether a patient is in the treatment or control group either, or else he or she can deliberately or subconciously influence the patient.” What is meant by “subconsciously influencing”? You seem to ridicule “quantum entanglement” between patient and practitioner, but consider that “subconsciously influencing” is a strong enough factor to distort the results of a test? Some of the above remarks about the test of Belladonna that you made also suggest that you believe that the simple knowledge by the person that they are “undergoing a test” can affect the results – well, how then the results can in any way be sufficiently reliable for you?

May 12, 2008 at 1:19 am

To Jeff, again – speaking of intuition, my intuition suggests me that it is not appropriate to judge people by their occupation, and in general by any type of generalisation, and also by what someone says about them. Everyone should be “examined” on their own merits, and not on any apriori judgement – which latter is called “prejudice”. I have seen people who were recommended to me to be sensible etc. turn out to be quite deluded, and the other way around as well, so I would be cautious to put any labels before I thoroughly examine the situation myself. I have to admit that those ostheopaths that I have seen were close to what I’d call deluded, but I think it would be a gross error to label ANY other ostheopath in this manner. And unfortunately the “image” based on internet correspondence is not sufficiently realiable as well, so I don’t think one should jump to any conclusions on the basis of this.

On the other hand, my father is a university professor teaching biochemistry and used to be a researcher in microbiology, and I also worked at a research institute related to microbiology, so I have seen how much rat race actually surrounds the area and especially publications, and – again – especially peer-reviewed, so I’m very distrustful of the whole establishment, but again, one should not generalise, not everybody is involved, so you always have to use your own common sense to judge the matters AFTER you have researched them sufficiently – not BEFORE this. DOes that not sound reasonable to you?

May 12, 2008 at 7:42 am

Jeff Garrington

for ez, “I have to admit that those ostheopaths that I have seen were close to what I’d call deluded,” explain if you would.

May 12, 2008 at 8:22 am

Andy Lewis

I do find it hugely amusing when homeopaths talk about quantum entanglement as if a) they understand what it means and b) it has anything to do with homeopathy.

A quick test. Fill in the missing word…

Position is to momentum as energy is to ____________.

If you cannot answer that question instantly and know why the answer is correct then you do not know the first thing about quantum mechanics. That is why I might appear to ‘ridicule’ homeopaths about their clutching at quantum entanglement to stop them doing DBRCTs. It’s bullshit.

Quantum entanglement occurs between very small groups of elementary particles. It does not happen to macroscopic objects like homeopaths and pills. The people telling you it does are charlatans. They are relying on your ignorance of science to convince you that they are clever.

Now “subconsciously influencing” is a very strong possibility. That is why using actors for the above test is so dodgy. But when you blind people and the practitioner cannot know how to influence the test subconsciously, then you have a fair test. The homeopath has to treat everyone equally.

I have just been listening to the CERN podcast with Chris Morris. Scientists talking about discovering new thing at the new collider in the Alps. Chris questions them about their possibility that they are biasing their experiments. One scientist says, “The last we people we trust are ourselves. We always sit there and think this is a really clever idea, but let us assume this is really stupid and what do we do to find out [if it is or not]“.

That makes them scientists than that is why homeopaths are not. That is why the CERN physicists will discover new things about the universe and why homeopaths will forever wallow in a fog of their own wishful thinking.

http://www.cernpodcast.com/?p=43#comment-272

May 12, 2008 at 8:42 am

Jeff,

Deluded would not be the right word, maybe, they were kind of strange, I only had sessions with two different persons, both of whom looked like what my image of a shaman is, making strange noises while doing the massage and stretching and moving their hands ritualistically from time to time, I guess they believed they were manipulating the “energies” whatever that means. I was quite young at the time, though, I did not think about asking them what they were trying to do and why, I would do this now if I were to visit them. And I did not feel absolutely no relief, and absolutely no effect at all during the sessions. But please do not assume anything, because this was not in a setting of a private practice in a Western country, but rather a sort of an underground practitioner in Soviet Russia. My mothers friends took me to visit them both time, for acute lumbar pain, for which I now know Rhus Tox would have worked very well, as I recall the modalities fit perfectly, and the second time I had headaches after a mild trauma, so I received neck massage “to releive the tension”. But what is this to you – over the internet? You cannot check on anything and I’m speaking from my memory, so I might miss something you might believe important? Are you trying to check my common sense? Again – internet is not exactly the right place to do this.

I’m sorry to occupy the space of LMSO’s blog for this sort of conversation, but I really beleive that it’s phychological attitudes of the sceptics that we should discuss here rather than anything really scientific, as I do not see much trace of logical reasoning in most of your (not your personally, but of the sceptics as a whole) posts, but rather a lot of inherent anxiety of being cheated out of your health and/or money, and maybe some other not quite sincere agenda at the background.

If you were really worried about someone being harmed you should try to teach them independent thinking, because if today they will be fooled into malaria prevention, tomorrow it might be Andy Lewis with DBRCT, and the next day someone like Hitler will appear – the people who are looking for authority to tell them what they should believe and do can be made to follow anyone, be it for a short time, and they will just as easily switch from one orthodoxy into exactly the opposite – because they are not able to determine whether there is something behind the appearances or not -due to inability to think and observe FOR THEMSELVES. If you see what I mean, of course.

May 12, 2008 at 8:55 am

Andy,

As I wrote before I will not pretend that I know something about quantum mechanics, because I do not.

You say an interesting thing though, that quantum entaglement cannot happen to macroscopic objects – and what can? How can they interact? I suppose you know why a stone bridge may fall shattered if a troop of soldiers (or other people, of course) walk there stepping rhythmically. What do you think about this? How exactly does resonance occur? I recall reading somehwere how sceptics were “discussing” the idea that every physical body (with distinct border, whatever that be) vibrates at a certain frequency, so what about the stone bridge? And I regularly have the “La” strings in my piano (sadly standing by the wall most of the time) resonate exclusively to a loud sound of the same frequency, what’s happening there? How human bodies are different?

You also say – “But when you blind people and the practitioner cannot know how to influence the test subconsciously” – how on earth a person can know how to influence someone subconsciously? Are you sure you understand what “subconscious” means? I’d hate to give you another lesson of Latin. You might understand something about physics, I cannot really judge about this, but when you speak about psychological matters… I really do not know what to think.

May 12, 2008 at 9:01 am

If you need a repetition, though, homeopaths are not people involved in fundamental science discovering new things, where it is not possible to readily produce empirical evidence – can you? For each recent discovery in quantum physics – some empirical evidence from real life? It’s only natural that in such a field people have to rely on specifically designed tests and think how to check themselves by other tests.

The situation is completely different in medicine, though, does this not occur to you?

May 12, 2008 at 9:16 am

Andy Lewis

The situation is completely different in medicine, though, does this not occur to you?

No. I think the practice of medicine has a great inherent capability to delude people. People often get better in their own for minor things. The healer attributes the healing to whatever magic bones they were shaking at the time. That is homeopathy in a nutshell.

The point of my quote is that scientists do not let their own personal and subjective experiences of the world guide them as to what is true. Perhaps the greatest invention of humanity is the realisation is that there are far more robust ways of determining what is true about the world – the scientific method. Homeopaths are stuck in a prescientific worldview where their “ability to think and observe FOR THEMSELVES” mesmerises them into thinking they have discovered truth. All they have discovered is a projection of their desires onto the world.

PS ez – Do you know what Godwin’s Law is?

PPS I find it fascinating that you thing that using trials and science to look at homeopathy is somehow just being ‘othodox’. it is the exact opposite of that. Science undermines orthodoxy by exposing truth claims to objective tests. That is why science in religion and totallitariuan regimes suffers. Teh authority of orthodoxy is challenged – just like the homeopathic orthodoxy is challenged.

May 12, 2008 at 9:21 am

Andy Lewis

ez – your questions about quantum entanglement just highlight you have no idea about basic science. The example you give – bridges etc – are just good examples of classical mechanics. Nothing to do with quantum mechanics and entanglement. The resonances of bridges and piano strings are well understood with a Newtonian mechanical approach. Similar approaches show that homeopathy can have no effect.

I do not understand your whine about subconsciously influencing people. You brought the subject up and I cannot see how it is contentious that people can unintentionally give away verbal or non-verbal clues about things without being aware of it.

May 12, 2008 at 5:30 pm

Derik

I was just thinking this post had gone on to long with out anyone mentioning Hilter and was going to do it myself for fear of a law of nature being broken and the world coming to an end.

Anyone who patiently debates with you is unlikely to be keen on the idea of darkly clad men smashing into your house in the middle of the night and disappearing you. It doesn’t mater that this is rude as epithets are part of the game. It might matter to your cause that it appears extremely silly.

I can’t imagine what people who have suffered genuine oppression around the world make of western cranks, quacks and fringe political groups when they whine about being oppressed. I imagine the best of them smile wryly to themselves and hope you never have to find out what that really means.

May 12, 2008 at 11:59 pm

Derik,

Coming from Soviet Russia, and living now in a country which weirdly resembles this “communist” “at its worst” regime I’m afraid I’m getting a bit consternated and wish sometimes that all those sceptics just came to live here for a while and see what they are doing resembles so much. I’m sure at least half of them will forget all their “whims” (forgive me this, I’m sure some of them are on their earnest with what they’re saying) and just be glad they are staying emotionally alive, if they survive as humans, that is.

To Andy – well, I was trying to suggest to you – you do not seem to be especially sensitive to hints, do you? – THat the idea of “like cures like” is essentially a “resonance” sort of interaction, and this should not be anything wild or really difficult to grasp – to have you radio play what is being transmitted from the radio-station, you’ll have to attune it to the same frequency, and this principle is so ubiquitous that I really do not see why it is considered as something outlandish when it comes to medicine. Only now it’s the receiver end – the patient – that is a “given”, and the healer-practitioner should find something that the receiver is able to receive, in essence that’s the idea, nothing counterintuitive as far as I am concerned. But I guess this is too much to grasp? I really do not wish to indulge in “long words”, I have no time to refresh the rigors of this in my memory right now, and I think that it only obscurs the essence. It’s nice to know that you are so fond of quantum physics, Andy, nobody is trying to blame you for this, but do you really think that anyone who is active in some other field is an unpardonable fool deserving to be fought and suppressed?
Concerning

May 13, 2008 at 6:28 am

Jeff Garrington

So there we are, healing by resonance, “the healer practitioner should find something that the receiver is able to receive” why not use the resonating homeopathic pill, or alter the resonance with needles, or crystals, or prayer, perhaps over the phone. Why not simply make it your intention to heal. Take your pick, if you need a diploma, get one in a couple of weeks. Its legitimate some of it is even available as a degree. Is there a problem with this, yes. To date nobody has been able to show that they can detect this vibration, resonance, life force. No body can detect Chakras, close your eyes ez and have somebody place their hands close to yours can you detect this life force? Tests have been devised and run, all willing practitioners, all convinced about their skills, unfortunately the same result each time, failure. Homeopathy is in the same rainbow coalition, with not one shred of evidence it works. You will not even devise tests your selves. I did ask you if Homeopathy is different from raiki, energy healing etc, apparently not. Although some practitioners, as you stated, are deluded.
By all means keep on with your Homeopathy. The rest of us want to move on.
We don’t build computers with intuition, nor replace hips, heart transplants, light bulbs and flushing toilets, you know the world to day.
If we are to spend taxes as a group, we want value for money. Show it works, and its in, until it’s replaced, its called progress. Why be afraid.

May 13, 2008 at 8:59 am

Andy Lewis

ez – sorry for not picking up on hints, but the reason is that what you were hinting at is utter nonsense.

Resonance is an extremely well understand classical phenomenon. Lots of things resonate and we can measure the frequency and amplitude of the resonance and do very elegant maths to predict the properties of resonant systems. The key point is that things resonant and we can mathematical model and measure the properties of such things.

The reason that this is difficult to grasp is that you do not say what it is that is resonating. Things resonate. As Jeff says, all the mystical mechanisms proposed by homeopaths and alternative healers posit things that cannot be measured or mathematically described. In which case you have to ask how you know there is something resonating. What you are doing is just saying words without any meaning or relationship to the real world. You may well claim that physics does not everything, and you would be right, but you must also say how you manage to know stuff that science does not.

You say you do not find this counterintiutive but that is because you do not have any reliable intuition in the first place. At your own admission, you do not know about physics and so, in your world, you allow anything to go, rather than reserving judgement based on lack of knowledge.

I think it is fascinating and a big difference between believers in alt med and sceptics is how people like homeopaths simply believe what they feel is right and then, maybe, selectively look for evidence, no matter how weak or misunderstood, to support that belief. It a recipe for self-delusion. Sceptics tend to reserve holding beliefs, or at least hold hem provisionally, until sufficient quality evidence can support those beliefs.

And when it comes to healing people, I think that difference is quite important. That is why this subject interests me. How do people, with so little grasp of reality, and so unaware of it, feel able to take on such huge responsibility?

May 13, 2008 at 1:47 pm

M Simpson

“That is why this subject interests me. How do people, with so little grasp of reality, and so unaware of it, feel able to take on such huge responsibility?”

Personally, I’m amazed that some people manage to get their shoes on the right feet in the morning. How can someone get through life believing anything that they’re told, except when they’re told that they’re wrong?

By the way, I’m still waiting to be shown an example, any example, of two homeopaths disagreeing about some aspect of homeopathy.

May 13, 2008 at 5:41 pm

Derik

Are you suggesting that a couple of private citizens disagreeing with you is equivalent to a state sponsored political terror campaign?

May 14, 2008 at 9:52 am

givescienceachance

Andy has just come out with the following remarks:

You allow anything to go, rather than reserving judgement based on lack of knowledge.

I think it is fascinating and a big difference between believers in alt med and sceptics is how people like homeopaths simply believe what they feel is right and then, maybe, selectively look for evidence, no matter how weak or misunderstood, to support that belief. It a recipe for self-delusion. Sceptics tend to reserve holding beliefs, or at least hold hem provisionally, until sufficient quality evidence can support those beliefs.

So let us look at how he has shown himself to be ignorant, stupid and a liar – and all that in this thread alone. As an example I shall take his statements about the George Lewith belladonna trial.

If he were not ignorant, he would know that NO eminent homeopath has outlined a methodology for provings resembling that of Lewith’s trial.

If he were not stupid, he would have noted the fact that the authors themselves questioned whether there might be flaws in the methodology, and he would have investigated for himself whether these flaws might be significant. He would have found out that that those flaws are highly significant.

If he were not a liar, he would have been unable to state that no-one had pointed out the flaws, when in this thread on April 14th I myself, quoting from the report sated a number of these flaws and added that the Patient Questionnaire left a lot to be desired.

Andy himself “allow[s] anything to go, rather than reserving judgement based on lack of knowledge.”

Andy himself ” simply believe[s] what [he] feel[s] is right and then, maybe, selectively look[s] for evidence, no matter how weak or misunderstood, to support that belief.”

Andy fails “to reserve holding beliefs, or at least hold hem provisionally, until sufficient quality evidence can support those beliefs.”

As I have said before all Andy’s efforts are oriented to defending his stupid and ignorant beliefs, not towards increasing his knowledge or anyone else’s. The only amusing thing about such people is that they constantly expose their ignorance, stupidity and mendacity to everyone else because they seem unaware that others can put 2 and 2 together and make 4.

May 14, 2008 at 10:07 am

ross

If I had my way this thread would win the Turner prize. It is beautiful.

May 14, 2008 at 10:13 am

givescienceachance

Jeff, you state:

No body can detect Chakras

Well that is not exactly true. As far as I know, nobody HAS detected chakras yet, but that is not to say that they cannot.

Furthermore the existence of acupuncture points has been demonstrated by biophysicists, as has their relation to organs, the existence of pathways corresponding to meridians and distinct from the pathways of the nervous, circulatory and lymph systems, and measurable changes at acupuncture points in response to potentised remedies.

I have been informed (though I want to check the original research myself) that physicists have also demonstrated that random events can be affected by intention, particularly the unified intention of more than one person.

We all have a lot to learn, and the stupidity of denying 200 years of people’s experience, rather than investigating it using appropriate tools, is beyond belief.

May 14, 2008 at 10:17 am

Andy Lewis

givescienceachance – charned as always.

Maybe prominent homeopaths do not suggest fair tests of provings like this as the fraudulent industry of homeopathy knows it would fail the tests. Instead it has to dream up excuses like how the provers were probably young drug users to explain away the negative results.

Maybe if the flaws were significant new trials would have taken place to account for them. New trials have not taken place. It looks like the homeopathic industry is complacent about its ignorance.

givescienceachance – how do you feel able to take on the responsibility of healing when the whole subject of homeopathy has no good confirming evidence base and is based on utter pseudoscience?

May 14, 2008 at 10:24 am

givescienceachance

Andy
May be if you were not stupid, ignorant and prone to ignore the truth, you would be able to answer your own questions.

As it is you have shown that you do not know what you are talking about, and that your ignorance and prejudice are so well guarded as to make any response pointless.

May 14, 2008 at 11:25 am

Andy Lewis

This is the sum total of my knowledge:

1) Homeopathy is a set of 200 year old conjectures (like-cures-like and minimum dose) that have not been subjected to rigorous scientific analysis and have long since been shown to be in direct contradiction with what we know about biology, chemistry and physics.

2) The foundational practices of homeopathy, such as provings and individualised prescription, have been shown to not work as homeopaths say they do and have never been shown to be reproducible in their outcomes in objective tests.

3) When clinical trials of homeopathy are undertaken, the trials that show positive results tend to be small and methodologically flawed, whilst the larger better controlled trials tend to show no homeopathic effect. This is completely consistent with homeopathy being a placebo-based intervention. The latest and best conducted meta-analyses are consistent with this picture. The sum total of evidence says that homeopathy does not work.

4) As a result, homeopathy has never been shown to be unequivocally beneficial for any health condition. Minor effects in some trials are consistent with the expected false positive rate from clinical trials.

5) Despite two hundred years of practice, homeopaths have made no contribution to science and knowledge and have not made any single advance in healthcare anywhere in the world. No disease has been effectively treated, no medical procedure advanced, an no alleviation of suffering beyond that expected from a placebo.

6) The beliefs of those who proclaim to have benefited from homeopathy and the beliefs of practitioners who claim that their methods work can be fully explained by human psychological factors including post hoc reasoning, false attribution and wishful thinking. Diseases often run their course on their own, chronic illnesses tend to be cyclical and the placebo effect may alleviate minor symptoms. Homeopaths and their customers misinterpret these effects, selectively remember ’successes’ and downplay, excuse or forget failures.

7) Despite this utter failure, homeopaths continue to proclaim that they have a panacea like recipe for good health and do not just limit their interventions to minor self-limiting conditions (as would be fitting for a placebo based treatment) but also claim to be able to treat and prevent major life threatening conditions from asthma to malaria, cancer and AIDS.

And homeopaths undermine the relationship their customers have with their real healthcare providers by mistakenly offering alternative choices that cannot be justified, overplaying the faults of medical care and abusing peoples understanding of evidence and science. Homeopaths lobby for public healthcare funding to be diverted into pseudo-scientific alternatives in the false belief that this is offering ‘choice’.

Such is my ‘ignorance and prejudice’. My beliefs here are based on careful assessment of the science and evidence. When good evidence to the contrary is presented, then I will change my mind. None has been forthcoming.

May 14, 2008 at 11:26 am

Andy Lewis

The is supposed to be point number eight.

May 14, 2008 at 11:40 am

M Simpson

“As I have said before all Andy’s efforts are oriented to defending his stupid and ignorant beliefs, not towards increasing his knowledge or anyone else’s.”

The problem here, GSAC, is that Andy’s ‘beliefs’ are supported by solid evidence based on 2000 years of research and are generally accepted across cultural and national boundaries. So if Andy is “stupid and ignorant” so is, well, pretty much every educated person on the planet.

Your beliefs, on the other hand, genuinely are dogmatic, faith-based beliefs rather than evidence-based opinions and the ideas you base them on are outdated views promoted by a small minority of people whose ideas are at odds with the human race’s current understanding of how the universe works.

Now it could be that you’re right and everone else is wrong, but if that’s the case you need to really know your stuff and make a convincing case for your ideas. It is very obvious that you don’t and hence you haven’t.

Science is not a democracy and it is possible for minority views to be correct and to become accepted but they don’t normally take 200 years. And the people who propose initially derided minority views (plate tectonics is a classic example) persuade the deriders by presenting convincing evidence that fits in with existing knowledge, not by simply bleating that everyone else is wrong or claiming the existance of magical things which cannot be measured, defined or predicted.

“We all have a lot to learn, and the stupidity of denying 200 years of people’s experience, rather than investigating it using appropriate tools, is beyond belief.”

And yet you deny 2000 years of documented experimentation which contradicts those people’s anecdotal experiences.

“Furthermore the existence of acupuncture points has been demonstrated by biophysicists, as has their relation to organs, the existence of pathways corresponding to meridians and distinct from the pathways of the nervous, circulatory and lymph systems, and measurable changes at acupuncture points in response to potentised remedies.”

Really? Then, er, why are these acupuncture points and meridians not shown in anatomy textbooks? There are plenty of very detailed books out there showing prospective doctors everything they need to know about the different bits of the human body: bones, muscles, tendons, ligaments, nerves, blood vessels, organs and everything else, yet they always seem to miss out a diagram showing the acupuncture points and meridians, which are only shown in books specifically about acupuncture.

Curious that. I would have thought that any surgeon, cutting into a human body, would need to know if he was slicing through a meridian just like he has to know whether he is cutting through a nerve or a vein. Are you saying that modern surgical techniques routinely ignore the existence of a health-giving system within the body, cutting it up without even knowing it’s there in the first place. That seems a pretty awful way to behave!

“I have been informed (though I want to check the original research myself) that physicists have also demonstrated that random events can be affected by intention, particularly the unified intention of more than one person.”

See, if that was true – rather than just a bit of sci-fi nonsense – don’t you think that this would be used in some way by someone? It would be a fantastic and wonderful thing if it was true and would justify vast amounts of research and generate copious quantities of publicity.

Serious question: Do you ever, when you read about something fantastic and marvellous, doubt it and consider the possibility that what you’re reading isn’t actually true?

May 14, 2008 at 12:41 pm

Derik

Ah as your back GSAC could you point me at something about the “vacuum experiment for gravity”? I’m sure it’s similarity to my experiment to see if car needs it’s the engine on in order to move will be immediately obvious so there’s no need to explain that.

It’s such a lovely name for an experiment I want to find out what it was about.

May 14, 2008 at 12:50 pm

openmind

We all have a lot to learn, and the stupidity of denying 200 years of people’s experience, rather than investigating it using appropriate tools, is beyond belief.

You might have a point if homeopathy had not been investigated using appropriate tools.

Scientists have a dad-sized tool box full of real tools and when these have been applied to homeopathy it has been demostrated to be nothing but wishful thinking.

Homeopaths on the other hand have used their Fisher Price ‘My First Tool Set’ (which looks a bit like the real thing but is too flimsy for anything other than playing with) and have come up with, er…some implausible hyoptheses and a belief that their first hand observations are infallible.

May 14, 2008 at 5:34 pm

givescienceachance

Such is my ‘ignorance and prejudice’.

Exactly. Almost total.

May 14, 2008 at 5:53 pm

Derik

Andy has just laid his entire approach to homeopathy out to you, so that you can have the opportunity of pointing out where he is wrong, with evidence.

Sceptics are prejudiced in so far as they make the pre-judgment that good evidence for a phenomena is required before it is accepted. Is this not a good prejudice?

We are ignorant of any advance that homeopathy has made in healthcare around the world. Where is homeopathies small pox or polio eradication? Where is homeopathies antibiotic equivalent for acute infection? Where is homeopathies heart transplant or bypass?

Why not just dispel are ignorance and challenge our prejudice by producing a robust body of work demonstrating time and again, in a myriad of situations, the phenomena you claim.

Oh there isn’t one, hence the stamped feet and stuck out tongues. The cries of “your stupid” and “it isn’t fair”.

May 14, 2008 at 5:54 pm

Derik

our / are – damn

May 14, 2008 at 6:07 pm

givescienceachance

The problem here, GSAC, is that Andy’s ‘beliefs’ are supported by solid evidence based on 2000 years of research and are generally accepted across cultural and national boundaries.

Don’t talk nonsense. This is so easily shown to be untrue as to be utterly laughable.

Your beliefs, on the other hand, genuinely are dogmatic, faith-based beliefs rather than evidence-based opinions and the ideas you base them on are outdated views promoted by a small minority of people whose ideas are at odds with the human race’s current understanding of how the universe works.

I have never given an answer supported by faith, but only by reason.

Science is not a democracy and it is possible for minority views to be correct and to become accepted but they don’t normally take 200 years.

But there is no science of medicine. There are powerful economic interests though.

simply bleating that everyone else is wrong or claiming the existance of magical things which cannot be measured, defined or predicted.

I do not say that everyone else is wrong, nor make claims for magic – I leave that to magicians.

you deny 2000 years of documented experimentation which
contradicts those people’s anecdotal experiences.

By the end of the nineteenth century the only drug known by Europeans to be effective was quinine (for malaria), which happens to be the medicine which led to the discovery of homeopathy over a hundred years earlier.

why are these acupuncture points and meridians not shown in anatomy textbooks?

Because they do not fit in with the idea that living organisms are the product of only chemical reactions – the dominant belief system, and demonstrably insufficient as an explanation.

See, if that was true – rather than just a bit of sci-fi nonsense – don’t you think that this would be used in some way by someone? It would be a fantastic and wonderful thing if it was true and would justify vast amounts of research and generate copious quantities of publicity.

I am glad you ‘know’ it is not true. Perhaps you also know who conducted the research and can provide incontrovertible evidence that it is wrong.

Do you ever, when you read about something fantastic and marvellous, doubt it and consider the possibility that what you’re reading isn’t actually true?

To state this after quoting me doing just that shows exactly how poor your reasoning, observation and scientific ability actually is.

Overall a collection of wild generalisations like these, which are all easily shown to be wrong is not a great advertisement for your intellect, let alone a good means of winning support for your beliefs.

May 14, 2008 at 6:08 pm

givescienceachance

Derik, the “vacuum experiment for gravity” was a short-hand term for an experiment comparing the rate of fall for different objects in a vacuum.

May 14, 2008 at 6:13 pm

givescienceachance

You might have a point if homeopathy had not been investigated using appropriate tools.

But it has not. The tools are almost always inappropriate for the job, or inappropriately used. This is not because the tools are bad – I blame the ‘bad workman’. You need to know what you are doing to use the tools properly.

May 14, 2008 at 6:18 pm

Andy Lewis

givescienceachance – I have laid out my stall. And you could come back with evidence to disprove any of the eight points. But you have not.

You make bold assertions in refuting M Simpson’s comments but do not back them up with evidence. You think argument by assertion is a winning technique. It convinces no-one but yourself.

Can you give an example of any biological observation that undermines the biochemical model of life and makes it “demonstrably insufficient as an explanation”?

Let me take you up on the malaria claim. You say quinine/malaria led to the discovery of homeopathy. Where is the evidence that homeopatically prepared quinine is effective? Given that this was the first remedy, one might expect it to be also the most documented and studied.

But no. Hahnemann made a mistake. It was obvious to observers at the time and was obvious now. Where is the evidence that you can prevent or treat malaria with homeopathy?

May 14, 2008 at 6:30 pm

givescienceachance

Why not just dispel our ignorance

Because you are so desperate to defend it that you will not make any effort to dispel it yourself. One of the great homeopaths set out to disprove homeopathy, but unlike so-called “sceptics” (who are actually firm believers in non-science) he studied his subject in order to criticise it from a position of knowledge. As a result he was able to make an informed judgement and became a homeopath.

When you ask for evidence you are asking for only one specific type of evidence gathered in one specific form from one specific period. However, this form of evidence is not the only one used in orthodox medicine, is regarded as no more than “the best we’ve got” by orthodox medical researchers, and has been terribly inadequate at meeting even its original purpose (proving drugs are safe), let alone at proving what medicine’s actually do. These facts show that this method cannot be guaranteed to produce accurate answers about homeopathy, especially if the methodology is incorrect for the task being examined.

All Andy Liar has done is set out his belief system – a belief system based on ignorance, a failure to investigate what he is attacking, and a repeated tendency to misrepresent the facts.

May 14, 2008 at 6:51 pm

Andy Lewis

Asserting again. So we are supposed to now believe that ’someone’ investigatd homeopathy and became a believer after studying it. What about Edzard Ernst who trained as a homeopath, studied the evidence and conlcuded that it was nonsense?

I am not asking for one sort of evidence. I am asking for your best evidence. Whatever hat may be. When I hear simple anecdotes, appeals to authority and unsubstatiated claims, I conclude the evidence is very poor.

If my ‘belief system’ is based on ignorance then I am sure it will be simple for you to give a precise refuation of each of my eight points. I welcome it and look forward to it.

May 14, 2008 at 7:33 pm

M Simpson

“”The problem here, GSAC, is that Andy’s ‘beliefs’ are supported by solid evidence based on 2000 years of research and are generally accepted across cultural and national boundaries.

“Don’t talk nonsense. This is so easily shown to be untrue as to be utterly laughable.”

So show that it’s untrue. Do something easy. Show that what Andy claims to be true is not supported by the consistent build-up of scientific knowledge that has progressed since the time of the Ancient Greeks. Go on. It’s easy. If you can’t do it, we have to conclude that you’re so hopeless that you can’t even do easy things.

“But there is no science of medicine.”

So all those scientific journals, all those scientific conferences, all those science books, all those scientific degrees: what are they precisely? You’re just wildly claiming that black is white now. I mean, at least make some effort to present a cogent point rather than just gainsaying, especially when it makes you look so foolish.

“By the end of the nineteenth century the only drug known by Europeans to be effective was quinine (for malaria)”

It took me about five seconds to find that the first synthetic drug, mass-produced and marketed in pill form, was antipyrine which was first synthesised in 1883. This was followed by antifebrin in 1886, phenacetin in 1887 and aspirin in 1897. Put some effort into this, please. You’re not even trying. You’re just typing the first thing that comes into your head.

May 15, 2008 at 9:39 am

Derik

I any case the mechanism of quinoline is now understood. Plasmodium feeds off haemoglobin when inside red blood cells. The haem groups (the iron-heterocyclic complex that binds oxygen) are toxic to the plasmodium and it usually polymerises this by-product to form a non-toxic crystalline substance. Quinoline inhibits this polymerisation and so kills the plasmodium.

So quinoline curing malaria has nothing to do with like curing like. Understating that it is quinolines molecular properties working within the parasite rather than it’s effect on the “whole person” lets us devise chemically similar compound like Chloroquine and Mefloquine which are less toxic to humans and kill plasmodium at lower concentrations in the parasites cytoplasm: 10 – 100 milli Molar, low but not homeopathic concentrations.

Also understanding that the drug must be present in the plasmodiums cytoplasm lets us understand resistance in terms of membrane proteins pumping the drug out of the parasite. Once this is understood we can move on and perhaps select a new molecule that the protein pump doesn’t recognise, or find a separate drug to inhibit the protein pump or pursue any other biomedical application of human ingenuity.

How would homeopathy explain malarial resistance to quinoline? Malaria still has the same symptoms; as does a large dose of quinoline. So how, in homeopathic terms, could quinoline cure malaria one decade and not the next?

Nice review contains further reference to things is mention above:

Quinoline antimalarials: Mechanisms of action and resistance
Foley, M; Tilley L,
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL FOR PARASITOLOGY, 27 (2): 231-240 FEB 1997

May 15, 2008 at 11:08 am

givescienceachance

Show that what Andy claims to be true is not supported by the consistent build-up of scientific knowledge that has progressed since the time of the Ancient Greeks. Go on. It’s easy.

Read Thomas Kuhn “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions”.

“But there is no science of medicine.”

So all those scientific journals, all those scientific conferences, all those science books, all those scientific degrees: what are they precisely? You’re just wildly claiming that black is white now. I mean, at least make some effort to present a cogent point rather than just gainsaying, especially when it makes you look so foolish.

So what is the science of medicine? What are its basic theoretical principles? There are none. Read Wulff, Pederson and Rosenberg “The Philosophy of Medicine”.

“By the end of the nineteenth century the only drug known by Europeans to be effective was quinine (for malaria)”

It took me about five seconds to find that the first synthetic drug, mass-produced and marketed in pill form, was antipyrine which was first synthesised in 1883. This was followed by antifebrin in 1886, phenacetin in 1887 and aspirin in 1897. Put some effort into this, please. You’re not even trying. You’re just typing the first thing that comes into your head.

Did you not notice the word “effective”? Read Bynum “Science and the Practice of Medicine in the Nineteenth Century”.

None of these authors are homeopaths, nor do they support homeopathy, but they make the statements I have made.

May 15, 2008 at 11:42 am

M Simpson

GSAC, if refuting what I said about Andy’s ideas is “so easily shown to be untrue as to be utterly laughable” it shouldn’t require me to read an entire book in order to be refuted.

You said it was easy to refute. Granted, just saying “read this book” is laughably easy but just saying that doesn’t achieve anything. You claim to be able to easily show that what I said was untrue. So show it. Come on, it’s laughably easy.

Or could it be that, as usual, homeopaths claim to be able to do something then back out or obfuscate as soon as they are actually challenged to do it. (Like demonstrating any argument between two homeopaths – come on, still waiting for that one.)

I don’t have time to read the books you recommend. I’m a busy guy. Presumably you’ve read them so why don’t you summarise them for us? What, in a nutshelll, do these various authors say (and on what authority/evidence do they say it)?

You’re just floundering now, aren’t you? You are so far out of your depth and have no idea which way to turn. It’s a bit sad.

May 15, 2008 at 12:02 pm

givescienceachance

M Simpson, nothing I say will be accepted by you without “evidence”. For me to summarise the arguments is therefore pointless, since you will demand the “evidence”. On the other hand you say that you are too busy to read the evidence or to educate yourself in the facts of a subject you claim you know about.

What is the problem here? The problem is that you prefer to remain ignorant of the facts because you are happy with your beliefs.

May 15, 2008 at 12:02 pm

Derik

Once again we get this silly “Over Arching Theory” nonsense. Real science is strong because it is made up of many interlocking, overlapping theories backed up with many many empirical observations. Often one theory can turn out to be wrong, and be replaced, without the whole edifice tumbling down. Like a suspension bridge held up by many wires, lots of wires can snap before the bridge falls down.

Homeopathy is a single abstract theory based on premises which are implausible, given everything else we know, and which makes inaccurate predications. It doesn’t matter how beautiful it is, it fails and falls at the first hurdle.

A single, simple theory is nice because it is parsimonious. We should try to make our theories as simple as possible. If, however, we make them simpler than is possible we end up with useless rubbish like homeopathy.

May 15, 2008 at 12:37 pm

M Simpson

“So what is the science of medicine? What are its basic theoretical principles? There are none.”

Ah, I see what you mean by “the science of”. You mean simplistic, universally applicable, underlying concepts. Well in that sense you’re right. There is no “science of medicine” because the human body has a million things going on inside it at any one time and each of them can go wrong in a variety of ways for a variety of reasons. So there are no simplistic, universally applicable, underlying concepts (except the basic principles of chemistry and physics, like ‘things become less potent, not more, as you dilute them’).

Expecting a ’science of medicine’ is like expecting a ’science of food’ or a ’science of manufacturing’ – the thing you’re asking about is so vast and complex that it involves lots of different sciences, all of which – and this is very important – fit together into a coherent model without contradicting each other and without requiring the invention of invisible, undetectable concept to explain them.

So there is no ’science of food’, no ’science of manufacturing’ and no ’science of medicine’ – but there is food science, manufacturing science and medical science.

The fact that homeopathy does have these naive, simplistic ‘theoretical principles’ based on the naive, simplistic view that all medical conditions have something fundamental in common is a clear indicator of how nonsensical the whole thing is. People like yourself, who are frightened of clever people who use long words, would like the world to be simple and easy so that it can all be explained in words of one syllable.

A few centuries ago, the world was like that. But today it isn’t because hard work and dedication by millions of scientists has vastly increased our understanding of the universe, including the bit of the universe inside our bodies. Some of us think this is wonderful, that our ever-increasing understanding of the world around us – which will never end because every discovery throws up more questions – is a beautiful testament to the God-given intelligence of the human race.

And some of us tell fairy stories and think they’ll be true if we just wish hard enough.

May 15, 2008 at 12:43 pm

M Simpson

“What is the problem here? The problem is that you prefer to remain ignorant of the facts because you are happy with your beliefs.”

No buddy, the problem is that you said something was “laughably easy” to prove and now claim that this proof is in fact book-length.

The other problem is that you don’t have any ‘facts’ and your only response to reasoned debate is repeating “No, you are.” ad infinitum.

Proving that what I said is wrong is, by your own admission, laughably easy and yet you are unable to do it. Who’s laughing now?

May 15, 2008 at 3:31 pm

Derik

The book is also a book about philosophy, which is a very valuable pursuit but not even slightly the same as science. The point is it doesn’t matter how subtle your definitions of disease and health are, how sophisticated your engagement with a patients expectations or how carefully you select a pill bottle if, in the end, you always just hand out the same biologically ineffective sugar pill. It is the effect of that sugar pill with which science is concerned. The scientific evidence suggests it has none.

May 15, 2008 at 7:04 pm

givescienceachance

The problem here, GSAC, is that Andy’s ‘beliefs’ are supported by solid evidence based on 2000 years of research and are generally accepted across cultural and national boundaries.

“Science” did not start to come into existence until the Renascence, and the mature sciences not until the end of the eighteenth century, so to refer to 2000 years of research is to give validity to evidence acquired by methods you claim are fanciful.

In the field of medicine there are numerous approaches accepted across cultural and national boundaries apart from the biochemic model, and have been such different models for over 2000 years. Some of these models are consistent across widely separated cultures.

The biochemic model is based on a perspective which was going out of date 200 years ago, and it has shown itself to to be unable to produce any medicine free of side-effects, and unable to present a coherent explanation of why it cannot ‘cure’ without causing harm. It has even had to redefine ‘cure’ in order to minimise the discrepancy between its claims and the facts.

Furthermore, science does not progress by incremental growth but by revolutionary change, so old ideas are thrown out EVEN when they can explain some things better than the old ideas because as a whole they do not explain the world so well.

Lastly, complex results can emerge from very simple causes, so there is no justification for claiming that complex results require complex causes.

May 15, 2008 at 7:38 pm

givescienceachance

Derik and M Simpson, have you ever actually read a book about science, the philosophy of science, or medicine?

Do you know the meaning of the word ‘ignorant’?

May 15, 2008 at 10:08 pm

Andy Lewis

gsac – perhaps you ought to read this.

Homeopathy and the Paradigm Problem

May 15, 2008 at 11:08 pm

Derik

The biochemical model was going out of date 200 years ago. That has got to be one of the funniest things you have said so far.

You have almost pinpointed the moment when the world took off. When after much debate the phlogiston theory of combustion is abandoned. When Lavoisier determined the existence of oxygen and documented its function in rusting metal, combustion and animal respiration.

Perhaps more importantly it is about this time that Wöhler synthesised the organic molecule urea from the inorganic molecule ammonium cyanate. Thus demonstrating that there is nothing “special” that distinguishes living matter from inorganic molecules and thus disproving the vitalism theory, which I’m afraid is very important in homeopathy.

In the last hundred years we have seen the micro structure of cells determined by electron and confocal microscopy. The lipids that make up the membrane structures characterised. The DNA found in the nucleus identified as the carrier of genetic information. Proteins identified as the functional components of the cell, their mechanisms and kinetics studied, their 3D structures determined by X-ray crystallography and NMR. Their binding partners determined by yeast 2 hybrids and other in vitro and in vivo methods. The sequence of chemical reactions carried out by these proteins have been worked out and metabolic pathways mapped out.

You want to see something properly amazing look up ATP synthesis by ATPase in the mitochondria. That is properly cool.

Immense strides have been made in our understanding of biochemistry in the last century and yet every new answer brings fresh questions. The cataloguing tasks alone could take generations. There has never been a more exciting time for unravelling the secrets of the natural world and you think biochemistry became obsolete 200 years ago!

It’s tragic really.

May 15, 2008 at 11:20 pm

Derik

I also think it’s quite telling that you group books about science and the philosophy of science together like you somehow think they are about the same thing. They aren’t science and philosophy ask different TYPES of question and seek different TYPES of answer.

I am a scientist, I do science, I talk to scientists every day, I meet scientist at conferences, I read scientific journals and text books. I have taken an interest in the philosophy of science at various times. As an undergrad some of the best arguments I had were with philosophy students about what philosophy might have to offer the jobbing scientist. The answer in practice is really very little, much better to spend time learning about statistics than epistemology.

However it might interest you to know that there are many philosophers working in bioinformatics. We have vast quantities of information about genes, proteins etc and we need computers to be able to manipulate that information so we need philosophers, experts in propositional calculus, to help build the databases and write the analysis packages so that can be done. It’s fascinating, it really is, and this is the world you have shut your mind to as unscientific.

May 18, 2008 at 11:53 am

givescienceachance

Derik, there is absolutely no point in misquoting me, since it makes all of your subsequent comments irrelevant.

Also anyone can comment that they “do science” or “talk to scientists every day”, but there is no guarantee that they are telling the truth.

On the other hand, the failure to observe accurately (a requirement for scientific work) CAN be determined from such comments, so your comments suggest that you are either not a scientist or an incompetent one.

May 18, 2008 at 12:18 pm

Andy Lewis

gsac – are you going to defend your rather amazing claim that “The biochemic model is based on a perspective which was going out of date 200 years ago”.

Are you simply prepared to say anything, no matter how outlandish, to support your worldview? Does the truth not matter to you?

Please, we would love to hear. What are we missing? Is the triumph of the bio-molecular view of life an illusion?

As always, please try to be specific and substantiate your claims with evidence (something you are very poor at).

We cannot wait.

May 18, 2008 at 3:22 pm

Derik

Of course I could be lying, you should apply your insight here to all the anecdotes you rely on for your trust in homeopathy. Please accept this is the same insight that prevents us from accepting the things you claim. This is why we require proper controlled experiments for your outlandish claims.

I’m glad you don’t really think that biochemistry went out of data 200 years ago.

One thing a scientist does do is read the relevant literature and cite it appropriately, as I did above with malaria. You have not commented on this yet.

The discovery of the homeopathic cure for malaria is one of your great founding stories. The – one man, one statistical inference, once – of Hahnemann when he noticed that cinchona bark produced symptoms in himself similar to malaria and inferred that substances would cure symptoms similar to those they caused. Now I say that modern science has worked out that quinine is the active ingredient in cinchona bark. That it is toxic to the plasmodium parasite because it inhibits the polymerisation of the toxic heam groups left over from their metabolism of haemoglobin.

If quinine worked by treating the “whole person” we would not expect it to kill plasmodium in cell cultures, but it does. If cinchona bark cured because it caused similar symptoms we would never expect resistance to appear, after all we are healing the person not the parasite, yet resistance does arise. If quinine treated the whole person there would be no thought of finding molecular analogs that were effective at lower doses and had fewer side effects when you can just dilute the side effects away and increase potency at the same time. Show me a good experiment demonstrating this last and I will change sides.

So homeopathy either fails so make predictions, or makes the wrong predictions, about the behavior of its first flagship remedy. But perhaps I’ve been reading the wrong literature. Point me in the direction of the useful information discovered by experimental homeopaths about malaria and I will stand corrected.

May 18, 2008 at 9:51 pm

givescienceachance

modern science has worked out that quinine is the active ingredient in cinchona bark

This is inaccurate. It has been found that an ingredient of cinchona bark is chemically active in a particular way. How else it is active, and how other ingredients of cinchona bark are also active are facts that should be taken into account, not least because of the problems of side effects and toxicity. Unless, of course you subscribe to the view that limited knowledge is sufficient.

If quinine worked by treating the “whole person” we would not expect it to kill plasmodium in cell cultures, but it does. If cinchona bark cured because it caused similar symptoms we would never expect resistance to appear, after all we are healing the person not the parasite, yet resistance does arise.

Unfortunately this argument is nonsense because you are using multiple definitions of your terms. You are claiming that prescribing a derived drug on the basis of a single specific action at a cellular level is the same as prescribing a more complex substance on the basis of the symptoms of the “whole person”. The problems of prescribing quinine for malaria are not due to a failure of homeopathy, but to a failure of the former prescription model.

If quinine treated the whole person there would be no thought of finding molecular analogs that were effective at lower doses and had fewer side effects when you can just dilute the side effects away and increase potency at the same time.

Exactly. Quinine does not treat the whole person: the whole person is not taken into account in establishing the symptoms being treated; the drug is not tested for its action on the whole person; and it is not prescribed for the whole person. The failure to treat the whole person is the one factor NOT taken into account when seeking better treatments. Instead another attempt is made to find a single specific action at a cellular level which has no effects beyond that, and that is a search for the impossible.

Of course, you will insist on evidence! The evidence is the fact that every drug produces side effects. If the aim is to find a curative treatment, this consistent and universal failing shows that the method being used is the wrong one. In fact, when it comes to “overarching theories”, the hypothesis that a chemical acting at cellular level can cure illness cannot be justified, even before we get into questions about what constitutes illness and what constitutes cure. It is a chimera – but a very lucrative one for the drug companies.

May 19, 2008 at 6:32 am

M Simpson

A clearer difference I have never seen than between Derrick and GSAC’s last posts. Derrick’s is a clear, coherent, logical argument that even a child could follow. GSAC’s is a rambling, incoherent grab-bag of words and phrases thrown together randomly without thought to meaning or consistency.

May 19, 2008 at 8:57 am

Andy Lewis

And always ignoring straightforward and reasonable requests to substantiate arguments, like,

“The biochemic model is based on a perspective which was going out of date 200 years ago”

I can only conclude that gsac lives in a world where simply proclaiming homeopathy works, biochemistry is out of date, black is white, is enough. Say it often, say it loud and it must be true.

This thread, fast approaching 500 comments, is devoid of any evidence for homeopathic claims. Despite repeated asking, we have yet to see and science, any evidence that can withstand more than a seconds scrutiny, to back up the wild and bizarre claims. I guess 500 comments is a short time compared with 200 years of utter failure.

May 19, 2008 at 12:23 pm

Derik

GSAC, your post contains two main points.

First you contend that quinine is a drug derived from cinchona bark and, almost coincidentally, poisons the plasmodium parasite by its biochemical action, whilst the whole cinchona bark is a complex mixture of substances that treats the whole person. I think that would be a valid criticism if you could back it up with empirical evidence. Examples would include a good trial showing that homeopathic dilutions of cinchona cured malaria or perhaps a demonstration that a quinine depleted preparation of cinchona bark has similar curative properties to normal cinchona. It would be unethical to do such a study now, but if homeopathy were effective I’d expect something to have been done in the first half of the 20th century.

Secondly you offer the existence of side effects as evidence for the failure of molecular medicine. I think there are two things going on here. Philosophically you think that a medicine that causes some harmful side effects in addition to alleviating symptoms is no medicine at all. Medically you consider side effects to be such a drawback of conventional medicine that we should turn to homeopathy. I say that it is not enough that homeopathy causes no side effects; to be a medicine it must also actually cure disease, the evidence suggests it does not do so. Indeed we expect homeopathy to cause no side effects because it does nothing at all. I also think your philosophical position is wrong. It seems based on metaphysical ideas about health disease and cure. This is the wrong starting place for thinking about how the functioning of the biological systems that make up the human person impact on an individuals well being and how these can be manipulated to provide relief from suffering.

May 19, 2008 at 1:23 pm

Derik writes:
“Medically you consider side effects to be such a drawback of conventional medicine that we should turn to homeopathy. I say that it is not enough that homeopathy causes no side effects; to be a medicine it must also actually cure disease, the evidence suggests it does not do so. Indeed we expect homeopathy to cause no side effects because it does nothing at all. I also think your philosophical position is wrong.” …
Givescience a chance’s philosophical position?
I beleive it was Hippocrates who said something to the effect “First do not harm”, and all medical workers repeat this in their oath of Hippocrates? Why then the reality of their practice deviates so strikingly from the basic principle that should guide them?

May 19, 2008 at 1:25 pm

Then, of course, we have Andy Lewis who constantly tells us that “people get better – and homeopaths wrongly ascribe this to the action of their remedies”. Or people do not getter better by themselves?

May 19, 2008 at 1:26 pm

get better, I meant, what a strange typo! Sorry!

May 19, 2008 at 4:21 pm

Andy Lewis

“First do no harm”

Well, it all depends on how simplistic you want to be about this statement and also how you want to interpret it.

Imagine you have just been mauled on the knee by a wild dog. Big traumatic injury. Its going nasty and amputation looks like the only option. But bu chopping your leg off above your knee you are also chopping off a perfectly healthy foot. First do no harm? Would you let the patient die because you do not want to harm a healthy foot?

It would appear to be a prefectly sensible interpretation to consider this statement as being something more upon the lines of “a physician should first and foremost act in the best interests of the patient and not do things that are likely to have a net effect of harm.”

The bigger problem here is how as a homeopath you are turning to ancient authority rather than thinking through a problem. It your life was in immediate peril and the only cure had a 75% success rate and the remainder of the time it quickly finished you off, would that cure go against your principles?

In the real world, medics (with informed consent from patients) have to assess the balance of benefits and risks from any intervention. That is responsible medicine. And it is often very hard.

As homeopaths, you escape these often difficult decisions because your remedies have no effects whatsoever and so you live in a pink fluffy world without consequenses. Although, you are so blind to this, there emerge consequences because of your utter inability to make any meaningful intervention, even when one is required.

The difference between medicine and homeopathy is that at best a homeopath can do no harm. A homeopath’s best possible outcome is to hope that the illness progresses in a way where the patient will get better or that the patient is also seeking medical advice which stands a chance of alleviating symptoms and producing a cure.

May 20, 2008 at 5:11 am

Re the dog and patient I’d check the symptoms and give them either Ledum or Hypericum – or maybe something else if the symptoms point to it – in appropriate potency – if the patient wishes to try to save their leg and gives their consent to trying a magic pill, of course, and you’d be surprised to see the patient running about with the whole leg just fine in a couple of weeks – if they agree to receive the treatment. Similar “anecdotes” have been recorded, I’ve read about them in a book , although I have not had a chance to try this out yet, as noone in my vicinity has been bitten by a dog. However, I have been able to save a person a foot which they broke while ridining on a bike and crashing all the toes after missing a curve. It was going septic and the doctor said that if it does not stabilise within a day or two, they’ll have to resort to surgery. Well, repeated doses of Arnica 30 in water calmed the whole thing down, all the purple swelling and pain, and everything healed in half the time than it normally does – according to the doctor, who was surprised to see a middle aged person recover much faster than any young guy from such complex fracture that started to become hopeless. Obviously, the person received no other medication, except for the bandage that the surgery doctor fixed for him.

You can consider me crazy and whatever you like, but I would really advise you to just forget for a little bit about Avogadro’s number and assume that there is still something in this world that you don’t know, and try an acute remedy in an appropriate situation, and then, please, come back and we’ll go on with all this theoretical discussion.

May 20, 2008 at 6:40 am

Keeping in mind that you will pretend to ignore the existence of figures of speech and take everything literally, I thought I should probably mention that by saying “just forget for a little bit about Avogadro’s number” I meant that I suggest that you put aside for a while the supposed consequences of this principle (related to the states in which substances can exist in nature) to the effects of various stimulus on a living organism – and just try to imagine for a little moment that there exists something that you and some other people do not know in this world.

I guess you like the other sceptics have seen that reference to Feynmann’s metaphor about planes coming to the Southern Island and the attempts of the aboriginal tribes to cause this happen again? Well, it occurred to me that the position that Andy Lewis is occuping in this sort of dispute – if we imagine that the humanity is represented by the aborinigal tribe, and various events of nature – the Coming of the Planes – Andy Lewis is basically saying that as we know that none of the objects that we – inhabitants of the island – have created so far cannot fly, then such an event as coming of the planes is simply impossible, and all those people who have witnessed it must be deceiving themselves.

May 20, 2008 at 6:52 am

M Simpson

EZ, please try to grasp this very simple thing. Avogadro’s Number is not a reason why we dismiss homeopathy. We dismiss homeopathy because it has never, ever, in more than 200 years produced any incontrovertible evidence that it works. The whole Avogadro thing is an explanation of WHY it doesn’t work.

Take a look at your crushed toes anecdote. The doctor “said that if it does not stabilise within a day or two, they’ll have to resort to surgery.” So the doctor considered it a possibility that the injured foot would stabilise All By Itself. Perhaps your magic water caused the foot to recover but it might have done it naturally anyway. We can’t tell in that particular case. Hence it is not in any way evidence for the efficacy of homeopathy.

(I know you hate having your own words quoted back at you, so feel free to deny or ignore this like you usually do.)

May 20, 2008 at 8:26 am

Derik

I’m going to stop commenting on this thread now, but before I go I’d like to say how stimulating it’s been and how much fun.

Hope to cross swords again some time.

May 20, 2008 at 8:31 am

Andy Lewis

ez – you really missed the point here. I was not asking for make believe anecdotes about sugar pills curing injured legs. I was talking about a philosophical point about ‘doing no harm’. Or to put it simply, you cannot make omelettes without breaking eggs. You completely ignored the point of this and instead tried to tell us how special your fairy dust is. Was this deliberate? Do you accept that, as in all walks of life, sometimes you might have to do (or risk) some harm in order to achieve a greater good. Only in fantasy worlds are choices easy and binary. In the grown up world, choices are about trade offs and risk.

And then you resort to the tired old ’science does not know everything’ routine. That is a point we can agree on. What is intruiging is how you think you are so special that you can know something that is beyond scientific enquiry. How do you know your pixie pills cured that foot? The answer is – you do not – but you wish it were true. As M Simpson has pointed out – the doctor was well aware that the foot could heal itself – and it did. You then attributed the cure to five magic beans diluted in water.

Can you not see that such thinking might be considered crazy?

May 20, 2008 at 11:26 am

givescienceachance

Derik, you ascribe two points to me:

First you contend that quinine is a drug derived from cinchona bark…

Which it is

Which I never said at all

… whilst the whole cinchona bark is a complex mixture of substances …

Which it is

that treats the whole person.

Which I did not say. I said that quinine is not used to treat the whole person.

Secondly you offer the existence of side effects as evidence for the failure of molecular medicine. I think there are two things going on here. Philosophically you think that a medicine that causes some harmful side effects in addition to alleviating symptoms is no medicine at all.

Think that if you like, but what I said was that the presence of side effects indicates an insufficiency of the model used, especially as the side effects are unpredictable.

I also think your philosophical position is wrong. It seems based on metaphysical ideas about health disease and cure. This is the wrong starting place for thinking about how the functioning of the biological systems that make up the human person impact on an individuals well being and how these can be manipulated to provide relief from suffering.

Fascinating! So treatment should precede understanding of the framework within which it needs to act? THAT explains why patients feel like guinea pigs in a mass experiment. They are!

Of course it does not explain why orthodox medicine defines disease and cure, nor why the definitions are so inadequate.

May 20, 2008 at 11:30 am

givescienceachance

Correction

Derik, you ascribe two points to me:

First you contend that quinine is a drug derived from cinchona bark…

Which it is

… and, almost coincidentally, poisons the plasmodium parasite by its biochemical action, …

Which I never said at all

… whilst the whole cinchona bark is a complex mixture of substances …

Which it is

… that treats the whole person.

Which I did not say. I said that quinine is not used to treat the whole person.

Secondly you offer the existence of side effects as evidence for the failure of molecular medicine. I think there are two things going on here. Philosophically you think that a medicine that causes some harmful side effects in addition to alleviating symptoms is no medicine at all.

Think that if you like, but what I said was that the presence of side effects indicates an insufficiency of the model used, especially as the side effects are unpredictable.

I also think your philosophical position is wrong. It seems based on metaphysical ideas about health disease and cure. This is the wrong starting place for thinking about how the functioning of the biological systems that make up the human person impact on an individuals well being and how these can be manipulated to provide relief from suffering.

Fascinating! So treatment should precede understanding of the framework within which it needs to act? THAT explains why patients feel like guinea pigs in a mass experiment. They are!

Of course it does not explain why orthodox medicine defines disease and cure, nor why the definitions are so inadequate.

May 20, 2008 at 11:33 am

Andy Lewis

So treatment should precede understanding of the framework within which it needs to act? THAT explains why patients feel like guinea pigs in a mass experiment. They are!

Some of the first breakthroughs in modern medicine were performed using simple trials. The eradication of scurvy by the addition of citrus fruit to the diet was a result of a very early on board trial where sailors were guinea pigs. The disease was killing tens of thousands in the Navy.

Finding that citrus fruits could cure scurvy was completely unexpected and it was not known why it should help. Vitamins were not known about for a long time after. And yet, sailors became ‘limeys’ and scurvy was virtually eliminated. On of the first great successes for the precursors of randomised trials.

gsac – would you have denied the sailors of the Navy limes because there was no ‘understanding of the framework within which it needs to act’? Would you have called ‘orthodox medicine’ deficient because of its ‘inadequate’ definition of disease in the sailors?

May 20, 2008 at 11:38 am

givescienceachance

ez, about Andy Liar: I wouldn’t by a used argument from this blogger. You can guarantee that the clock will be turned back in it; it will be two wrecks welded together; and the paperwork won’t match either. Better to by a used car from a stranger you have been advised not to trust.

May 20, 2008 at 11:40 am

Andy Lewis

Do you want to answer my point about scurvy rather than bluster?

On a similar tack. What would a homeopath done about scurvy. We now know that Vit C can prevent and cure the disease. Would a homeopath have performed a individualising consultation and prescribed a sugar pill to each sailor?

Would you have to admit that the biochemical view of scurvy is vastly superior?

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