I learned something from running this blog. And that’s that it takes up a phenomenal amount of time and energy.
It got to the stage a few months ago when the extent to which it was impinging on the rest of life was unacceptable: disputing differences in perspective, for all the need for better public debate on the subject of homeopathy, isn’t quite up there with First Life. (Not to mention that the blog seemed to be doing perfectly well without me.) So having gone socks away for a bit, this business of the time and the energy brought me very conveniently round to the subject of this post.
So far in this blog I’ve tried to avoid what might be construed as playing the men not the ball. But when it becomes clear that the men are as much part of the ball as homeopathy itself, then this is no longer appropriate. Science is a hard task master. It requires us — all of us — to thoroughly and critically examine our biases, preconceptions, tendencies to fool ourselves, or to mistake the maps for the territory, and while it’s easy to see where other people appear to be falling prey to themselves, it’s not quite so easy to see when looking in the mirror. A degree and a lifetime spent working in science doesn’t immunise us against this any more effectively than anything else. If anything, it likely increases susceptibility to it — as Steve Jones, Professor of Genetics and head of the Biology department at University College London, said, “Science is a broad church full of narrow minds, trained to know even more about even less.”
It’s quite apparent by now who the main protagonists are in this media game of pimp-my-perspective, both online and on paper. The extent to which they reliably appear in the comments section of any news article, opinion piece or blog mentioning homeopathy, especially in any favourable light, doesn’t take much research to reveal. Even assuming use of the most efficient of webcrawlers, RSS feeds, etc, how do they find the time? And the energy? How do they manage to maintain interest — for what seems like years now and probably is — in arguments that invariably end up going round and round in the same old circles after 5 minutes? They’re plainly on a mission, and I think we can reasonably assume — correct me if I’m wrong, gentlemen — that’s it’s not a mission from God.
Let’s also assume it’s a mission in the sense of “a self-imposed duty or task; calling, vocation” rather than “a sending or being sent for some duty or purpose” (again, feel free to correct me if I’m wrong there). Personal missions of the self-imposed kind can be tricky things though. Some are indisputably worthy causes. Like raising the awareness and attention given by society to difficulties encountered by various groups of people in living their lives freely and to the full, and coordinating some means of help and support for them.
Other missions aren’t so clear cut. They seem far more to do with advancing personal perspectives or opinions.
To those who identify with those perspectives, then the quest to save “the innocent victim” from a fate worse than death, either at the hands of some fraudulent “evil monster”, or from their own (assumed) ignorance and stupidity, or both, is clearly the most unquestioningly obvious thing to do since the invention of sliced bread.
For those placed in the role of “evil monster”, they’re equally clearly part of some “grand conspiracy” to destroy them for umpteen nefarious and totally uncool reasons.
For those who have no particular reason to identify with either perspective, they have a way of appearing uncannily like obsessions.
How can one perspective elicit so many different reactions? It’s to do with that word “I”dentification. In other words, it’s an ego thing, revolving around what we each form emotional attachments to (and antipathies against) in defining our personal realities. It’s not science, and to mistake it as such is a fatal flaw in both the self-critiquing and peer review processes.
So how do you differentiate between a worthy cause and a personal obsession?
1. In a worthy cause, people are suffering at the hands of what the cause seeks to alleviate; objectively, and by their own admission.
2. In a worthy cause, a significant proportion of those affected are asking for help.
3. In a worthy cause, the evidence of the need for intervention is clear and incontrovertible.
None of these 3 criteria are satisfied in the missions of homeopathy’s detractors, despite attempts to co-opt them as justifications. Ergo, their missions are personal crusades. Obsessions.
How can I be so sure? Simple.
The claim that there is “no evidence” for homeopathy, repeated ad nauseam by “sceptics”, is not based in scientific fact.
Let me put that even more bluntly. The claim is false.
The evidence base for homeopathy which is currently deemed “scientifically acceptable” is equivocal, and contentious in its interpretation. Look no further than the 1250+ comments on this blog for evidence of its contentiousness. Search PubMed, read the abstracts from published papers (currently 3733 under the topic of homeopathy), and see for yourself exactly what the evidence base comprises. It’s still relatively small and thinly spread — too wide-ranging in the circumstances and methodologies employed in the trials which have been conducted. As a result, most of the studies, either positive or showing no effect over placebo, have not been adequately replicated. This is the fact of the matter. Don’t take my word for it. Check it for yourself.
It is axiomatic that while what constitutes an agreed evidence base remains equivocal and contentious in its interpretation, then what is under question has been neither proved nor disproved, no matter what strong opinions on either side of the divide might like to believe is implied, and notwithstanding evidence that lies outwith what can be mutually accepted as such.
Consequently, anything that states the accepted evidence base is any more than equivocal and contentious is a matter of interpretation and opinion. There’s absolutely no getting away from this.
Baum, Colquhoun, Dawkins, Ernst, “Gimpy”, Goldacre, Horton, King, Lewis, Rose, Singh et al are guilty of providing misleading information and of misrepresenting their personal interpretation and opinion as scientific fact. Many have used their established scientific credentials (and NHS-headed paper, without permission or sanction) to do so. Some of them are hounding universities offering degrees in complementary medicine, tying up limited departmental resources in endless question-answering. In short, these people are making thorough nuisances of themselves (as well as amply demonstrating the extent of their obsessions). They are, in fact, doing exactly what they accuse the homeopathic profession of doing … claiming opinion and supposition as fact without good evidence … which is no surprise whatsoever to anyone who’s studied Jungian psychology.
Of course they’re entitled to their opinions. We all are, including those of us — patients, practitioners, university course-providers alike — who share the opinion and experience that there is more to homeopathy than placebo effect (and have plenty of additional evidence which we believe should be admitted into the debate about this). But what none of us are entitled to do is to misrepresent opinion as fact when it’s nothing of the kind.
In this country, we are still free (just) to choose what form of medical care we wish to use. This is a fundamental and basic human right. Who’s bodies and minds are we talking about anyway? And as taxpayers we all have a say in what is provided through the NHS. Becoming a patient of one of the homeopathic hospitals doesn’t automatically disenfranchise you (even though some sceptics seem to feel that it should).
Since there don’t appear to be large numbers — if any — homeopathic patients begging for knights on white chargers to come and rescue them from evil monster homeopaths, and since there’s no evidence to support the sceptical opinion that there’s “no evidence” for homeopathy, what exactly is their motive? Some egotistical belief that they “know better” and must protect poor mythical Jo(e) Public from their own ignorance and stupidity? How arrogant! How paternalistic! How totalitarian!
(Their continual adherence to, and ridicule of, a posited mechanism of action which has never been claimed for homeopathy doesn’t say much for their intelligence either.)
So what’s the greatest risk of homeopathic treatment that our brave Sir Galahads have been able to identify that they want to protect us from? That poor Jo(e) Public delays getting conventional treatment for his/her condition by visiting a homeopath (which of course they “know” can’t possibly do anything) and maybe, just maybe, succumbs to it.
OK.
Meanwhile conventional treatment is, by its own admission, not far behind heart disease and cancer as the leading cause of death in the developed world with an evidence base that admits only 13% of its treatments are of proven benefit. Do any of us need a degree in statistics to determine where the greatest statistical risk lies here? Do any of these people deny any member of the British public the right to make their own informed risk assessments in respect of their own, or their children’s, healthcare?
So until the accepted evidence base for homeopathy delivers a conclusive and incontrovertible verdict, which it’s a long way from doing, and until conventional medicine can boast proven efficacy for substantially more than 13% of its treatments, I call publicly on these men to have the honesty and integrity as befits their profession to clarify that their opinions and interpretations are just that. I call on them to honour basic human rights in healthcare and stop in their attempts to destroy a legitimate healing profession which people choose to use of their own free will and which has been a valued part of the NHS for over 60 years, and I call on them to employ a far greater degree of honesty and transparency in invoking evidence-based medicine in defence of conventional medicine.
Not, I imagine, that this will make the slightest difference to their activities. Obsession is like that. But then I don’t imagine I’ll be the only one to surmise that this will amount to vivid confirmation of the nature of that obsession either.
Men of science? Pah! Fetchez la vache!
150 comments
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September 15, 2008 at 11:43 am
gimpy
I’m reading an awful lot of ad hom, unsupported assertions and wilful deceit but no supporting evidence.
Look the facts of the matter are this:
(I) There is no plausible mechanism for any purported homeopathic effect.
(II) There is no evidence of a homeopathic effect after biases, placebo effects and poor studies are accounted for. All criticisms of Shang et al., have been dealt with by the authors.
If you cannot prove one of these statements false then it is reasonable to assume that there is no homeopathic effect. Every sceptical argument stems from these two statements. You can waffle at excruciating length all you like but without challenging these two statements with evidence there is nothing worth you saying on the subject.
September 15, 2008 at 12:56 pm
laughingmysocksoff
That, Gimpy, is your opinion and interpretation.
I’ve also read an awful lot of ad hom, unsupported assertions and willful deceit but no supporting evidence on your own blog.
The facts of the matter are:
i) The lack of plausible mechanism for any purported homeopathic effect does absolutely nothing to detract from the existence of the effect itself. We are far from omniscient.
ii) The imputation that there’s no evidence of a homeopathic effect after biases, placebo effects and poor studies are accounted for is not incontrovertible fact. This position relies on circular argument. For example, per Shang et al
Whereupon they of course concluded, according to their initial premise, that in the absence of methodological deficiency, such positive results must all be due to ‘bias’. This argument is a self-maintaining construct fabricated out of the premise that your “fact” i) constitutes valid reason to deny the validity of homeopathy, and has no independent validity.
September 15, 2008 at 2:41 pm
gimpy
LMSO
Really? I take great pains to reference any claim I make and lay out the factual basis of my arguments. I would welcome comments pointing out when I have failed to do this or made assertions that are not backed up by evidence.
But at least we are now agreed that there is no plausible mechanism for any homeopathic effect. This leads us onto your quote from Shang, if you don’t mind I’d like to replicate it in full as you left out important detail by selecting the text you did.
I also think the final sentence of the Shang paper deserves stating again:
Shang et al., believe that their analysis demonstrates the presence of bias. When that bias is accounted for homeopathic effects become indistinguishable from placebo effect. Now do you accept that Shang et al., demonstrate that there is considerable bias in many homeopathic trials? If not, why not?
September 15, 2008 at 3:45 pm
laughingmysocksoff
Yes you do. But that wasn’t my point. And it’s that word “basis” that’s critical. There’s a fine line between fact and interpretation/opinion based on reading of fact. I notice you’re careful to state (correctly — does that mean you’re taking what I say on board?) that
And it constitutes a circular argument. What’s more, it demonstrates precisely the same effect as Shang et al assert is present in homeopathic trials — ie. positive bias creates the very results one is expecting to see. Note too that although they assessed trials for false positive bias, they did not assess for false negative bias.
I’m going to quote David Reilly on this, because at least he does it with humour:
Let’s get this straight, Gimpy. I’m not saying for one minute that positive bias isn’t present in trials of homeopathy. It’s just as present in conventional trials too, and is somewhat inevitable. Quantifying it though is another matter, and quantifying it with sufficient objectivity in order to arrive at a conclusion on which an entire medical system with a 200-year history stands or falls, another matter again. The requisite objectivity is not demonstrated in Shang et al. Bias towards expected conclusions was present at the outset. More work is needed.
Neither of us would be having this conversation if the evidence base for homeopathy wasn’t contentious. It plainly is. The argument is not settled, no matter how hard your merry band of sceptics are working to force the issue. For as long as it remains as contentious as it is, then your conclusions amount to no more than opinion and interpretation.
All I’m asking is that you concede that, and stop trying to give the impression that it’s otherwise.
September 16, 2008 at 12:58 pm
Andy Lewis
lmso – you are missing a big distinction here that critics of homeopathy make. We do not criticise homeopathy because there is a no plausible mechanism. The chief criticism is that it is implausible. This is a very big difference. Homeopathy is incompatible with thoroughly understood principles of basic science. There are very good a priori reasons for believing it does not work.
Let’s list a few objections to homeopathy so at least you can address your critics and not a straw man:
1) The proposition that a remedies effects can increase with dilution is implausible. Dilution reduces effects. It is thoroughly implausible that effects can still be measured beyond the Avogadro dilution limit.
2) Succussion is not a plausible mechanism for increasing any effect in that it should have no effect beyond local minor heating and mixing.
3) The biological basis of a general principle of ‘like cures like’ is implausible and incompatible with what is well known about biology.
4) The technique of provings is fatally flawed in that it fails to remove subjective elements from its reasoning.
Then there is the evidence…
5) There are no repeatable experimental results that demonstrate any of the fundamental principles of homeopathy.
5.1) There is no way of producing a dilution-response curve as suggested by 1)
5.2) The actions of dilution and succussion have not reliably been shown to have specific effects on a liquid. There are no good reliable experiments to show this.
5.3) There are no conditions where homeopathic remedies have been shown to be effective beyond a placebo in repeated robust trials.
5.4) Homeopathic remedies have failed to demonstrate reliable, repeatable, distinct effects on healthy volunteers in blinded provings.
6) Metaanalyses have failed to demonstrate any strong evidence for homeopathy. The later metaanalyses are quite clear that the data is compatible with homeopathy being a placebo.
Can you understand why we might be a tad sceptical?
September 16, 2008 at 4:17 pm
laughingmysocksoff
Andy, I understand totally why you (pl.) might be a tad sceptical. Don’t you think that most of us who found our way to homeopathy haven’t already been there?! However, since when has that been an adequate reason not to investigate apparently anomalous phenomena? It’s usually by peeking through the cracks in the established models of the universe that we get to advance our knowledge. Surely you can’t be so full of hubris as to assume we know it all already?
Well since I was using Gimpy’s exact words there, I might contest the unanimity in your distinction. Were the thoroughly understood principles of Newtonian physics sufficient to render quantum mechanics invalid?
1) This is the case so long as you’re working with a uniquely chemical model in trying to explain the effects; something that was ruled out as a possible mechanism of action right from the start (Hahnemann was a chemist, after all). So why sceptics continue to bark up this particular tree and then get all hot and bothered because it’s the wrong one beats me.
2) Again, you’re applying a basic level of understanding of physical and chemical reactions to postulate implausibility. Materials science has long since gone beyond this, so you need to widen the scope of your model. This area of study is still in its infancy, but it’s easily sufficient to demonstrate that accusations of implausibility are based on an inadequate model.
3) Quite simply, wrong. Note that conventional pharmacology utilises the same principle (eg. quinine, digitalis), and check out hormesis (used to be the Arndt-Schulz law): substances which produce an inhibitory action at doses in the clinical range produce paradoxical stimulatory effects at subclinical doses and vice versa.
4) Illness is a subjective experience as well as producing objective signs and symptoms. I don’t understand your objection here.
5) You need to qualify this statement. What you mean is “There are no repeatable experimental results that sceptics will accept that demonstrate any of the fundamental principles of homeopathy.” Homeopathic case history has amply demonstrated this for over 200 years. Which is precisely why homeopathy has the kind of support it does. EBM isn’t just about clinical trials, or even case history, which is why David Tovey, editorial director of BMJ Knowledge, writes:
5.1) See 1) above.
5.2) See 2) above.
5.3) Depends on what you’re willing to concede as “repeated” and “robust”. The 8 trials of homeopathy in upper respiratory tract infections referred to above (cited in Shang et al) don’t conform to your assessment in my estimation. Neither do Jacobs’ studies on the use of homeopathy in acute childhood diarrhoea.
5.4) Again, the validity of this depends entirely on what you’re willing to admit into the evidence base, so this statement is contentious.
6) Firstly, only one meta-analysis (of 6) has come out with this conclusion outright. Secondly, its conclusion is highly contentious (see above for starters, and pay particular attention to Reilly’s comments), relying entirely on a circular argument in order to make it.
There’s also the far from small matter that equivocal and inconsistent results such as those produced in homeopathic trials tend to indicate inadequate control of variables rather than no effect.
The issue here Andy is not that your feelings aren’t understandable. They are. However, they are based on interpretation and opinion, not established incontrovertible scientific fact. As I said to Gimpy, we wouldn’t be here having this conversation if they were. The accepted evidence base is equivocal: open to differing interpretations and rationalisations. For as long as it remains that way, your assertions remain unproved.
What I’m objecting to is not your (pl.) opinions — you’re perfectly entitled to them — but the misrepresentation of those opinions as fact, and their use as such in what appears to be a campaign to have homeopathy removed from the NHS and university curriculums. Admittedly, I don’t think either you or Gimpy are the worst offenders here, but to be true to the aims of science, which is frequently invoked in defence of your position, it’s absolutely essential to be clear about where the basic facts of the matter end and where your opinions and interpretations begin. I’m not even asking you to defend your opinions; I’m merely asking you to clarify the fact that that’s what they are.
September 16, 2008 at 4:53 pm
gimpy
LMSO, just give some examples of how our current understanding of the universe is wrong and how it being wrong demonstrates that homeopathy works.
PS
For semantic purposes assume by not plausible I mean implausible. Andy puts it better than me.
September 16, 2008 at 5:04 pm
laughingmysocksoff
Why do you assume our current understanding of the universe must be proved wrong in order to admit mechanisms that might explain homeopathy’s effects? I think it far more likely that our present understanding of the universe will come to be seen as limited and contingent, Just as Newtonian physics is in relation to quantum mechanics — valid within certain parameters. Nothing needs to be invalidated here. Your universe is perfectly safe. All that’s required is the realisation that we need to take something into account that we haven’t before — which, to me anyway, is being screamed from the rooftops by the inconsistent and equivocal results coming out of the homeopathic data set. As I said above, inadequate control of variables …
Let’s be clear about DBRCTs. They don’t exactly exhibit the precision and accuracy of the surgeon’s laser now, do they? There’s an awful lot of “noise”, even in the highest quality ones. This leaves a not inconsiderable amount of room for mechanisms and effects so far unaccounted for.
I’ve speculated elsewhere here where I think it might be appropriate to look for that something we need to take into account. Those are my opinions. Others have different ones.
So are you going to confirm that your conclusions about homeopathy are just your opinions? Or continue implying that they’re proven fact? Or do you want more maple syrup with your waffle?
September 16, 2008 at 6:01 pm
Andy
lmso – first off…
You ask “since when has that been an adequate reason not to investigate apparently anomalous phenomena”. What phenomena are these? Where are the observables that need a radical explanation that breaks down well established physics/chemistry/biology. If you can answer this question, then you have won the argument. As I have said, there are no experiments that show an effect of ultra-molecular homoeopathy. As an example. Let’s say you were setting up a BSc in Homeopathy. Science degrees have lots of lab sessions where undergraduates recreate the classic experiments for themselves so that they can see the evidence first hand. What experiment would you suggest student homeopaths do to show an ‘anomalous phenomena’ that there are real effects that need explaining?
As for your responses…
1) I am not stuck in a ‘chemical model’. It is just that there is no other plausible alternative. Anyone who mentions quantum mechanics has no idea what they are talking about. Any mention of ‘material science’ and you still do not come up with plausible mechanisms. Memory of water? Where is the evidence that it lasts longer than picoseconds? Please have some dignity and do not talk about R. Roy et al.
2) The material science aspect of homeopathy is still so far in its infancy that it has failed to come up with a plausible mechanism.
3) I am not wrong – I said ‘general’ as homeopaths claim. Talk of specific things like vaccines is specific – not general. A general law is utterly implausible. We know of no reason why this should be true. Homeopaths who venture an explanation wander off into mysticism – things like Vital Forces and cosmic vibrations etc. What do you believe?
4) If provings worked – where is the body of evidence to show that they are repeatable and reliable under controlled conditions – i.e. no cheating, like unblinded trials.
5) Scepticism is not specific to homeopathy – it is universal across science. Sceptics only ask for standards of evidence that would be insisted upon in any other discipline. Evidence for homeopathy is not accepted because it is grossly inadequate – not because sceptics are somehow being obtuse. Your Tovey quote is misplaced – it is just expressing the opinion that a patients delusions may be sufficient reason to offer a treatment – something I disagree with.
You quote Shang, but reference Linde – so no idea what you are talking about. As for the Jacobs studies, it is interesting that you only only cite one paper. Jacobs has done four studies and a metaanalysis. The first four were fairly small and poor quality. Her own metaanalysis suggested there was no effect. A final larger study showed no effect. Your best evidence is pretty poor.
Finally, I have not misrepresented anything. What have i misrepresented specifically? Yes, these are my opinions, but they are based on the following facts 1) Homeopathy is implausible, 2) There is no coherent mechanism proposed for homeopathy, 3) What data does exist is really shabby – as you would expect if homeopathy were quackery.
I am willing to be proved wrong.
September 16, 2008 at 6:16 pm
Andy
I think I should add the obvious response to your views of metanalysis. You said, “only one meta-analysis (of 6) has come out with this conclusion outright. Secondly, its conclusion is highly contentious (see above for starters, and pay particular attention to Reilly’s comments), relying entirely on a circular argument in order to make it.”
Looking at it another way, no recent meta analysis has shown a positive clinical result for homeopathy. Shang is only contentious among homeopaths who repeat lies and distortions about it. Why do you object to Shang et al and its conclusions?
September 17, 2008 at 12:42 am
laughingmysocksoff
Holey socks! Come on, Andy. Surely you can do better than that? I’d taken you for some kind of scientist, not a kid standing in a corner with his hands over his eyes hoping that’ll make the bogeyman go away.
Let me try and summarise what you appear to be saying here. The initial premise is that homeopathy can’t work, so it doesn’t.
There can’t possibly be any evidence, so there isn’t.
There can’t possibly be any alternative to the chemical model, so there isn’t, and since we all agree that’s implausible, ipso facto homeopathy is disproved. (And anyone who mentions quantum mechanics has no idea what they’re talking about, so that doesn’t exist either and we’re back in the Newtonian age. Well I guess that’s the €6 billion-odd spent on the LHC up in smoke then …)
Finally, anything that isn’t covered by the above can be put down to lying cheating homeopaths.
And there you have it! A thoroughly “scientific” and watertight analysis of the phenomenon. Very good. There’s not much I can say to that really, except to ask where on earth did you do your degree?
Thanks for confirming that your views are opinions, not facts. As for the “facts” you base them on, 1) is a matter of opinion entirely contingent on the perspective derived from the models you admit into consideration, 2) is fact if you add the word “accepted”, and 3) is opinion again, but since Shang et al identified a far higher proportion of high quality trials out of the homeopathic data set (19%) than they did out of the conventional one (8%) (see Reilly above again), by your standards this must mean that conventional medicine is even more heinous quackery than homeopathy.
Thanks for pointing out my duff link to Shang et al. Over-hasty copy-and-paste. I’ll fix it once I’ve posted this. My objections to the study have been repeated ad nauseam elsewhere on this blog. Some of them are above. And I think you’ll find it’s not just homeopaths who object to it either.
September 17, 2008 at 6:16 am
Andy Lewis
lmso – you have misrepresented my arguments. I do not say that “There can’t possibly be any evidence, so there isn’t.” That is a straw man – a debating technique that homeopaths must learn at homeopathy school.
What I say is that homeopathy is highly implausible and so any evidence for it must be interpreted in that light. Evidence does not exist in a vacuum – it has context and must be appraised given what other evidence there is and what evidence exists a priori.
Example – if I said there is a polar bear in my garden, you would use the same common sense technique I use for distrusting the weak evidence for homeopathy. You would evaluate my claim with the prior knowledge of the probability that garden has a large carnivore in it. You would quite rightly conclude that this claim is highly unlikely and that my claim that one exists adds little to the chances of there actually being a bear there. You would quite rightly conclude – on the best available evidence – and without substantial corroborating evidence – that I am either a) joking, b) lying or c) deluded. Had I claimed that there was a peacock in my garden then you might adjust your conclusion more in my favour. If I claimed there were squirrels in my garden, you would probably take my words as sufficient evidence for you to believe that I do indeed have squirrels.
As you well know, homeopathy creates an extraordinary claim – and that requires extraordinary evidence before we move away from the more likely scenarios that homeopaths are either a) joking, b) lying or c) deluded.
September 17, 2008 at 7:13 am
Andy Lewis
And as for you ad hom about my degree and my statement that any homeopath who mentions quantum theory as a plausibility mechanism for homeopathy does not know what they are talking about, then this is quite simply true. There is no plausibility mechanism for homeopathy from quantum physics – it does not exist. Only quantum homeobabble exists, and by pretending it does exist, you are misinforming people.
September 17, 2008 at 10:30 am
givescienceachance
But that is precisely where RCT evidence does exist – as you go on to point out:
Evidence is only removed from a vacuum by theory, which links evidence together into a coherent and testable form, not by more of the same sort of evidence. As such the RCT is an experiment which can guide scientists towards knowledge, but cannot in itself define a body of knowledge.
As for the polar bear example, this only serves to show the entirely limited perspective on which you base your ideas. You assume that we know the geographical location of your garden, suggesting that you are unable to conceive of the idea that people might have gardens elsewhere. This is precisely the frame of mind about which LMSO is complaining, namely that the only truth is the one you see and believe in, regardless of other facts which contradict that belief, let alone other truths seen and believed in by other people with at least an equal claim to validity.
As regards physics and chemistry, physics can explain chemical activity, but not vice versa, and the field of physics (quantum or otherwise) is still developing. To rely for your one of your primary arguments on Avogadro’s number, that is on chemistry, a field demonstrably unable to explain many aspects of the the world we live in or of the technology we use in order put the case for dismissing the experience of hundreds of thousands if not millions of people is perverse. It is a statement of opinion, and to elevate such an opinion to the level of “fact” is not only extremely arrogant, but wholly unscientific.
September 17, 2008 at 10:59 am
laughingmysocksoff
Hmmm … perhaps facetiousness doesn’t come over so well in this medium. Check your wording, Andy. You said “anyone who mentions quantum mechanics” not “any homeopath who mentions quantum mechanics”.
And bleating “ad hom” because I asked you where you got your degree seems a touch oversensitive next to your continual imputation that all homeopaths are liars, cheats, frauds and stupid. Such wholly unprecedented homogeneity in one profession! That’s really quite an extraordinary claim. So where’s your extraordinary evidence?
Be that as it may, I disagree with you that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. This may be a superficially satisfactory line of thought, given our collective tendency to fool ourselves and others, but it’s not a satisfactory scientific one. It’s way too subjective — entirely dependent on your initial presuppositions, and I think we’ve already seen to what extent you conflate opinion with fact.
All claims require evidence. Claims about methodologies and procedures require those procedures to be consistently demonstrable and replicable. While one piece of anecdotal evidence proves nothing, a large body of anecdotal evidence that demonstrates consistency, predictability and replicability in a wide range of circumstances and locations and over a long period of time does not have the same status as a single anecdote. Your rationale for dismissing homeopathy’s 200 years’ worth of documented case history consequently doesn’t stand up.
Neither can you ignore this data when evaluating the body of trial data. In this wider context, confusing and equivocal results in the trial data set appear to be signalling inadequate control of variables far more loudly than they are no effect.
There’s no misinformation in quantum homeobabble. It’s presented as a hypothesis, not proven fact. This seems to be a distinction you’re a little bit unclear on. As for that polar bear in your garden, I’d be wondering how far away you were from the nearest zoo, not dismissing your claim as implausible from the outset. Perhaps that highlights the critical difference between us.
September 17, 2008 at 3:31 pm
gimpy
gsac/lmso,
Are you really arguing that because a mechanism for homeopathy has not been observed it must exist? I can’t work out the logic of this.
And lmso, your claim that a collection of anecdotes equals data is just absurd. You have heard the phrase ‘the plural of anecdote is not data’? Anecdotes are entirely subjective accounts of a situation, by corralling them together they do not suddenly become objective.
September 17, 2008 at 4:27 pm
laughingmysocksoff
No wonder. Try it from this angle. Because an effect from homeopathic treatment has been observed and recorded, consistently, predictably and with replicability, in thousands of cases over the course of 200 years, some mechanism to explain this is required. Further, the mechanism should account for the precise nature of what is observed consistently, predictably and with replicability. This is the purpose of science — to investigate and explain observed phenomena, not to attempt to deny the existence of observed phenomena because no robust explanation exists. The mechanisms put forward by sceptics are deficient and not supported by observation.
Well I guess in the real world they don’t agree with you Gimpy. A substantial body of conventional practice in all manner of different disciplines is based on case history. Not only that, but subjectivity in medicine is unavoidable since illness is as much a subjective experience as it is objective. Sometimes more so. So your attempts to dismiss the validity of homeopathic case history in this way just don’t hold water.
As for the statement that “the plural of anecdote is not data”, this depends entirely on context. Have you never heard of the fact that endless repetition of essentially meaningless phrases doesn’t turn them into truth?
September 17, 2008 at 4:57 pm
Andy
More to come. But you have to be joking. The whole point is that there are no observed effects. Homeopaths have failed to collect any data that show any effects. What you see is people getting better and then saying that it is the pills what did it. You are all dogs barking at postmen and believing you are scaring him away. All you see is correlations without causations. And there is no data to suggest otherwise. Your observations are much more easily explained by wishful thinking, placebo and post hoc reasoning.
You failed to answer my earlier question – what undergraduate experiment would you suggest shows an effect for homeopathy that needs explaining? I think you did not answer it because there is no experiment. No effects – no need to invent new science to explain it.
September 17, 2008 at 9:58 pm
givescienceachance
OK. It’s time to start on kindergarten medicine.
First a few simple questions:
1. What is the difference between a sign and a symptom?
2. Is a headache a sign or a symptom?
3. Is the treatment usually prescribed for a headache chosen because of the signs or the symptoms?
4. How do you know that the headache has gone – by the absence of the signs or the symptoms?
5. If further investigations are made, will there always be a direct correlation between signs and symptoms?
For those who are unsure, such as Gimpy and Andy, the answers are:
1. A sign is a change observable by someone other than the patient, whereas a symptom is a change reported by the patient but not observable by someone else.
2. A headache is a symptom.
3. The usual medicine is prescribed on the basis of the symptom.
4. When the patient reports that the headache has gone – that is, the absence of the symptom.
5. No, there is no necessary correlation between signs and symptoms. A person may have signs and related symptoms, but they may have signs without symptoms and symptoms without signs.
If Gimpy and Andy want all prescriptions to be based on signs, they are asking for the impossible. As LMSO has pointed out, much of medicine is based on symptoms, and it has to be. The subjective aspects of health and illness are an essential part of the way the human organism works, and these subjective aspects are not imaginary but real and capable of being treated using real treatments.
Another way of putting it is that functional change precedes structural change, but functional change may not be observable by anyone other than the patient (symptoms), and only a sophisticated process of collecting and analysing information about the symptoms allows accurate treatment of the developing illness at the stage before structural change has taken place. Andy and Gimpy would have us believe that symptoms are the product of an overactive imagination, suitably treated by placebos, but this is total nonsense.
Let me give a simple example: You hit your finger with a hammer. The first reaction is pain, but there is no observable change – it is a symptom. Subsequently a variety of signs may appear, from bruising up to loss of the fingernail, but these are not apparent immediately. So is the pain, the symptom, imaginary or real? Of course we can now observe the change in nervous activity related to pain, but how many of us are hooked up to such equipment all day long so that we can prove that the pain is real?
Real medicine has to be able to work with symptoms, with the subjective, and the best way to do this is to have a system of medicine which recognises the subjective symptoms as well as the objective signs, with a pharmacopeia which records both symptoms and signs, and a method of applying treatment consistently on the basis of this information, whether reacting to signs or symptoms in the patient.
Homeopaths record precisely this information and treat according to this information, and its success over the last 200 years is not a result of piling up irrelevant anecdotes but of increasingly skillful objective use of subjective information. If you “test” homeopathy by throwing out the objective process it has developed in favour of a process which denies the validity of the subjective and argues that it cannot be assessed objectively, you are necessarily using a method inapplicable to any science of medicine. It is therefore fundamentally flawed, and will produce results which exhibit those flaws, as the RCT does.
September 17, 2008 at 10:00 pm
givescienceachance
PS The answer to Andy’s question about undergraduate experiments is the use of homeopathy in first aid situations.
September 18, 2008 at 7:17 am
jeff garrington
Givescienceachance, out of interest, could you list those experiments, please.
September 18, 2008 at 8:06 am
Andy Lewis
Thank you for your little lecture and the daft conclusion at the end which is not supported by your argument.
Frankly, I think you are not sincere. Either that, or you are utterly brainwashed.
Why do I believe this? Because you are willing to accept anything that allows you to not challenge your sure and certain belief in magic fairy pills.
Let me show what you have been prepared to argue in order to defend the indefensible:
– Both of you committed the sin of overextending my polar bear analogy and then attacking this overextension. They do teach you well in homeopathy school.
- You claim that one day someone might come up with a quantum mechanical explanation of homeopathy, therefore homeopathy works.
- You are prepared to abandon the idea that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. In the scientific world, we call such people ’suckers’. I do not believe you really believe this. You are just posturing.
– You cling to this idea that because people have believed in homeopathy for 200 years then it must be true. Some on. Can large groups of people never have mistaken beliefs? Religions? Myths? UFOs? Crop Circles? WMD? and so on…
- When asked for an undergraduate experiment. You say ‘first aid’. Oh FFS! You clearly have no idea what an experiment is – or you are just bullshitting. Which is it?
I do not know what sort of people you are. Perhaps you could help me understand you by answering one simple question?
- You quoted a Jacobs paper as evidence for the efficacy of homeopathy. You picked one of her papers. You ignored her other work and the conclusions from her meta analysis and largest, later trial which failed to show an effect for homoepathy. My question is this – “Why did you cherry pick?” (another good homeopathy school technique)
Was it because
a) You were unaware of the other aspects of her work?
b) You deliberately ignored the negative conclusions and criticisms of the overall work in this area and cherry picked to make a point?
c) You have some completely ad hoc explanation as to why only this study counts.
Your answer counts.
September 18, 2008 at 9:45 am
Derrik
I so want to hear about the undergraduate demonstrations of homeopathy via first aid. Do you carefully inflict the same minor injury on everyone in the class and give half the “correct” remedy and the other half completely the wrong one and record how long the wounds take to heal?
Any way having a chemistry degree and being currently engaged in biochemistry I thought I’d just throw something in about materials science, which is a branch of chemistry and meander through to its current applications in biochemistry and ultimately real medicine.
Materials science is, like much of chemistry, all about the behaviour of atoms and molecules interacting with each other based largely on their electrostatic properties and their shape. Some of these shapes and structures are accurately predicted by molecular quantum mechanics (MQM), which is the theory that describes the behaviour of electrons in their orbital systems within atoms arranged into molecules. You should not confuse this theory with the partial physics stuff, where higher energies and lower masses make truly strange things happen.
Nano-technology, which you guys sometimes confuse with ultra dilutions, has nothing to do with small amounts of stuff but with structures on the smallest scale. The exotic properties of such material depend on their structure, there is no structure in an infinitely defuse system. Examples of their uses include integration into our micro electronics or confirmation of useful properties onto surfaces.
All of this is very exciting and is becoming more so as scientists are now able to probe the properties of single macro molecules, such as proteins, when bound to surfaces. This empirical observation is important because calculations required by an MQM simulation of such a system would take an impossibly long time on even a modern super computer. I mention this both to illustrate how aware scientists are of their limitations but also to point out that QM stops being useful with single molecules only a few thousand angstroms across, no surprise then that people are sceptical when someone tries to apply it to systems consisting of entire human beings.
Study of single proteins is where we get to the real link between materials science MQM and medicine. Proteins, DNA and RNA form the molecular clockwork of cells. Proteins for example form clusters to do particular bits of work. The machinery of the cell continually modifies such proteins so that they stick together or come apart at the appropriate moments. When such processes are part of the underlying cause of disease then understanding the particular process helps us devise molecules to interfere usefully in such processes.
What I really want to illustrate is that there is indeed a lot of very interesting stuff going on in materials science and biochemistry but that rather than moving to provide homeopathy with an evidence base it is doing the opposite.
Molecular interactions are the basis of life and there is no reason to believe compounds that, by some coincidence, cause people to experience symptoms similar to those caused by other disorders will have any impact on those disorders. Likewise materials science deals with the properties of structures of atoms and molecules. Nano-technology deals with exacting structures on the nano-scale, not infinitesimal concentrations of molecules, such diffuse systems can have no meaningful structure or useful properties.
September 18, 2008 at 9:55 am
Derrik
Oh and I should add the assertions in my final paragraph aren’t “just another view”. It comes out of a huge amount of work performed by thousands and thousands of scientists using a range of experimental designs, techniques and instruments across multiple disciplines. These people have drawn on each others work, argued, debated and presented their ideas to each other and produced bodies of work recording all the thousands of their experiments their results and how they interpreted them. The rubbish you guys come up with as evidence is, well it’s like comparing a child’s finger painting to the ceiling of the sistine chapel.
September 18, 2008 at 11:20 am
givescienceachance
Andy, which part of my conclusion is unsupported by what comes before it. I repeat the conclusion below:
Subsequently I made an observation in the light of this conclusion.
I notice that you were unable to refute the content of the “lecture” and therefore the conclusion, but chose instead to meander off into an imaginary argument which you feel more comfortable with – oh yes, and insults (the frequent last resort of the anti-homeopath).
September 18, 2008 at 11:29 am
laughingmysocksoff
Calm down, dear, calm down.
The reference to the Jacobs paper was picked in a tearing hurry, as I was already late for an appointment elsewhere. (Also why the over-hasty cut-and-paste on the Shang et al reference ended up pointing to Linde.) It was the first one that came up on a search. Since the same page links to some of her other studies, you can follow the paper trail for yourself. I haven’t had time since to check out what you wrote about the remaining studies. The later ones are news to me, so I will need to investigate, which is why I haven’t addressed the point. Now that’s the truth of the matter. Do you see how far away from that you’ve got with your speculations?
GSAC is right, Andy. You really do exhibit an astounding ability to conflate your rather linear line of personal reasoning (largely inapplicable in living systems) with an objective ‘truth’: some mythical unanimous consensus viewpoint emanating from ’science’ which you claim to represent. Science as a body of knowledge can’t be co-opted and hijacked like this to confer the notion of final authority to mere opinions and beliefs. That’s something that seems to make you extraordinarily hot under the collar when you see homeopaths doing it, almost as if you think ’science’ should be off limits to homeopaths (being as they’re such an alien and inferior species), but it’s something which you’re doing yourself the whole time. (Naturally! It’s the nature of the Jungian Shadow!)
This was largely the point of this post. To demonstrate that this is what you and other sceptics are doing. Conflating opinion with fact. It’s like I said — all too easy to see when someone else is doing it, but invariably missed when looking in the mirror. The consensus you appear to perceive around you for your rather extreme opinions doesn’t exist, within the scientific community or outwith it. There is enormous diversity of opinion, and those that aren’t obsessed by some religious crusade to try and ram their view of reality down everyone else’s throat are perfectly capable of perceiving it. Even my pharmacist friends and relatives, normally healthily sceptical about homeopathy, have volunteered opinions concerning the obsessive and unscientific nature of the pseudosceptical position. In particular about your blanket dismissal of case history.
For a bunch of people who profess such hatred of any notion of the immaterial dimensions of existence, it’s quite hilarious the extent to which your behaviour is indistinguishable from the worst of the religious fundamentalist proselytisers, and as with that latter group, you seem to feel that any kind of abuse is perfectly justified in the name of your glorious belief!
Responses to homeopathic treatment may be an inconvenient truth, but they are a fact of human experience in no less a manner than responses to conventional treatment. They can be observed as demonstrable, predictable and replicable in exactly the way that responses to conventional treatments can be. Just because there’s no apparent biochemical action taking place doesn’t mean the reactions at the level of the whole person aren’t happening. Of course, you can call us all deluded idiots and propose as many alternative rationalisations as you like, but it doesn’t give them the status of fact. The arguments you use — self-delusion, misinterpretation, misattribution — are potential factors in the evaluation of any reaction to anything, and from the perspective of those who observe homeopathy in action on a daily basis, they’re equally descriptions of your own propositions.
Your polar bear analogy is delightfully illustrative of all this. I didn’t overextend your analogy. I merely pointed out that it wasn’t as implausible as you were making it out to be. Regardless of that, the nub of the matter is that it’s no less plausible to have a polar bear in your back garden than a squirrel. Both are within the bounds of possibility. Both are real. It’s just that one has a much lower statistical probability than the other. In addition to confusing fact and opinion, you appear to be confusing probability with validity.
September 18, 2008 at 12:28 pm
Derrik
[quote]For a bunch of people who profess such hatred of any notion of the immaterial dimensions of existence, it’s quite hilarious the extent to which your behaviour is indistinguishable from the worst of the religious fundamentalist proselytisers, and as with that latter group, you seem to feel that any kind of abuse is perfectly justified in the name of your glorious belief!
[/quote]
Don’t be daft, none want to kill you or hurt you. Most sceptics don’t even want to ban you working, they just want potential patients to be properly informed about the paucity of evidence for what you are trying to sell them and spend the recourses of the national health service on treatments with a better evidence base.
[quote]Regardless of that, the nub of the matter is that it’s no less plausible to have a polar bear in your back garden than a squirrel.[\quote]
HaHaaa
September 18, 2008 at 12:29 pm
Derrik
Damn, how do you quote on this blog?
September 18, 2008 at 1:14 pm
Andy
Firstly, we have established you cherry picked your study by googling the first study that supported what you wanted to say. You are also ignorant of Jacob’s wider work – some of which is quite hilariously naive. So, it looks like the sceptics know the homeopathic literature better than the supporters. That is interesting in its own right.
So, then to deflect from this ignorance you then start a ad hom by comparing me to a religious fundamentalist. I know of no fundamentalists who repeatedly ask for evidence to back up beliefs. Quite the contrary. Your accusation is as hollow as your knowledge of homeopathic research.
gsac wants to know why his conclusions are wrong. This must have been spelt out to homeopaths hundreds of times. RCTs are quite capable of measuring subjective elements of health. Homeopaths do this routinely in trials of homeopathy – you simply ask people on a scale how much pain, number of asthma attacks, quality of life etc. As long as all are blinded it is a fair trial. The homeopathic literature is full of people doing this. You appear to be ignorant of this too.
And do lmso ends by pretending that because a polar bear in the garden is plausible but improbable then he can dismiss my analogy. My point is exactly that the degree of probability – the prior probability in Bayesean terms – needs to be taken into account when assessing evidence. Maybe it would be more realistic for an analogy of homeopathy if I had said Minotaur or Sphinx instead of polar bear.
What we see here is people who so want to believe in homeopathy that they filter out all the negative evidence against it and hold onto any argument that might support it no matter how ridiculous. An utter lack of intellectual integrity and honesty.
September 18, 2008 at 1:20 pm
John R
“Try it from this angle. Because an effect from homeopathic treatment has been observed and recorded, consistently, predictably and with replicability, in thousands of cases over the course of 200 years, some mechanism to explain this is required. Further, the mechanism should account for the precise nature of what is observed consistently, predictably and with replicability.”
LMSO, I struggle to understand how you can post this on a thread about conflating opinion with fact. This statement is demonstrably false. A more accurate rewording of the second sentance would be:
“Because an effect from homeopathic treatment has been observed and recorded, consistently, predictably and with replicability, in thousands of cases over the course of 200 years, provided you only look at the times an effect occurs , some mechanism to explain this is required.
Also you claim:
The reference to the Jacobs paper was picked in a tearing hurry, as I was already late for an appointment elsewhere.
So you quickly searched for a paper (or possibly just an abstract) that supported your position. Do you not understand this is exactly what people mean when they complain of homeopaths cherry picking studies? It does absolutely nothing to strengthen your case, and in fact seriously weakens your credibility.
September 18, 2008 at 1:24 pm
John R
Damn my poor spelling and inability to edit my post.
September 18, 2008 at 2:18 pm
gimpy
lmso/gsac, let us conduct a thought experiment. Say there was an almighty conflagration of knowledge and every single case study and book about homeopathy was destroyed. This would include the works of every homeopath, the writings of Hahnemann, Kent and whoever, in fact there would not be a single reference to homeopathy in the works or minds of men (or humans if you prefer). The only person who understands and remembers homeopathy would be you. How would you convince the rest of the world that homeopathy was a real phenomenon with no literature to fall back on?
September 18, 2008 at 3:03 pm
Andy
Don’t be daft Gimpy. They would do some ‘first aid’ and all would be clear.
September 18, 2008 at 3:24 pm
jeff garrington
Still waiting and curious as to what First Aid Experiments are about to be revealed, bit like Xmas, although I suspect we may be disappointed.
September 18, 2008 at 4:36 pm
laughingmysocksoff
Thanks for your contributions Derrik. I think a lot of people coming here without your specialist knowledge will value your explanations.
You said
Can we leave aside ultra dilutions for a minute and address this point? If you believe this to be the case, then how do you rationalise hormesis (the Arndt-Shulz law that was)? Conventional pharmacy is predicated largely on the ingestion of substances which produce the opposite effect to the symptoms being experienced, but if a given substance can produce effects at subclinical dosage levels that are the exact opposite of the effects it produces at clinical doses, then the distinction between similars and opposites is largely irrelevant. It becomes purely a matter of affinity and dose.
There’s also the question of a given chemical initiating entirely different responses depending on where it’s released. Histamine in the blood supply to the extremities opens large pores in the walls of the blood vessels preparatory to initiating the inflammatory response. Histamine in the blood vessels in the brain doesn’t do this at all. It increases the flow of nutrition to the neurons. (Lipton, B H, Bensch, K G et al. Microvessel Endothelial Cell Transdifferentiation: Phenotypic Characterization. Differentiation. 1991:46:117-133)
Then there’s this whole business of how receptor and effector proteins in cell membranes respond differently according to their electrical charge.
The purely chemical rationale doesn’t explain the whole story in any one of these cases. It’s far too simplistic an approach. So if we already have to take account of variation in response according to dose, environment and charge, you’re looking at a multifactorial model with any number of potential inputs. Not so clear cut then.
Sure. No disputing this. But to imagine that this is the be-all and end-all and the final word on the subject is another matter entirely. Physiologists like Szent-Györgi, molecular biologists like Lipton, have identified deficiencies in the purely chemical/materialistic view of biochemistry/physiology and suggested quantum mechanics needs to be incorporated into the models. Trying to predict the movement of protein molecules using Newtonian physics doesn’t work. Using quantum mechanics does. (Pophristic, V & Goodman, L. Hyperconjugation not steric repulsion leads to the staggered structure of ethane. Nature. 2001:411:565-568)
So there are still gaping holes in our knowledge of how living organisms respond in sickness and health and no universal agreement on how they do. There’s no argument about the fact that a majority hold to a more limited conception — biology has its central dogma as much as physics — but science moves on. Homeopaths aren’t pretending to know any more than anyone else — homeopathy is an empirical science. We work from the point of view that we have an observed effect that’s consistent, predictable and replicable. How it happens we’re still trying to find out. That it happens is well evidenced in case history, despite all attempts by sceptics to dismiss that evidence as “no evidence”.
September 18, 2008 at 4:56 pm
Derrik
September 18, 2008 at 5:16 pm
gimpy
lmso, I’m utterly confused. None of the references you supply provide a mechanism for homeopathy. What is your point? We don’t know everything about everything therefore homeopathy works?
You also seem to have a remarkably simplistic, simple even, understanding of molecular interactions within the cell. It is no surprise that a circulated signaling molecule can have different effects in different tissues. It depends on the receptors in the target cell and their downstream signaling pathways. Also it is no surprise that altering the charge on a protein can cause a conformational change. In fact it would be surprising if this wasn’t the case, because then we would lack a plausible mechanism for many pathways within a cell. You seem to lack a basic understanding of molecular biology.
Anyway, back to my question. How would you convince the rest of the world that homeopathy was a real phenomenon with no literature to fall back on?
September 18, 2008 at 5:42 pm
Derrik
Unfortunately I can’t see that paper, I don’t recognise the authors and this isn’t my area of expertise. However it seems perfectly reasonable to me that cells in different parts of the body should behave differently when exposed to the same chemical because their internal circuitry is set up to do something different and it may well be a different receptor in the cell membrane doing the detecting. No need for histamine to be carrying round a ghostly metaphysical penumbra to do tricky things here.
The behaviour of proteins depend on their structure and their electrical charge. Changing their electrical charge changes their shape because parts of the protein repel or attract each other in different ways if the charge is changed in some way. Changing their charge also, obviously changes their charge! A common mechanism by which the cell regulates protein activity is the covalent addition of phosphate groups to serine, threonine or tyrosine amino acid residues. None of this is chemically inexplicable.
Of course you have to use quantum mechanics to model proteins, no surprise there. Quantum mechanics is a solid part of chemistry, the 1998 Nobel prise was awarded to Kohn and Pople for their work in this area. Quantum mechanics is not your friend, it offers no succour to homeopaths, it has nothing to do with “healing” people.
Except you can’t demonstrate that, if that could be demonstrated, we would all go home, and I would look forward to an exciting career investigating this fascinating new phenomenon. A science thesis will pull together results out of over 300 papers, I can tell you of the top of my head the dozen most important papers, in my view, of my field and why I think them important. All you can bring forward are cherry picked examples of small studies showing small positive results with barley significant p-values.
September 19, 2008 at 8:44 am
laughingmysocksoff
John R, you said
Nonsense! For something to be considered consistent, predictable and replicable in medicine, there is no requirement for it to occur in 100% of cases. Aspirin cures the symptoms of a headache, right? Consistently, predictably and reliably. But it doesn’t work for everyone. Some find it ineffective and take paracetamol. Some find neither aspirin nor paracetamol effective and take ibuprofen. Some find none of those effective. Yet that fact doesn’t stop the licensing of all 3 drugs for pain relief. Not one drug in the entire pharmacy of conventional medicine works for all of the people all of the time. That’s the nature of medicine and the nature of human beings. We are not machines, we are not closed systems, and our individuality is as much part of us as the things we have in common.
John this is a conversation, not a scientific paper being prepared for publishing. Sometimes the conversation is conducted in circumstances which are less than conducive to care, thoroughness and accuracy. Mea culpa, OK? But I do find it interesting that nobody has addressed the 8 trials of homeopathy in respiratory tract infections that not even Shang et al could find anything wrong with, but they were positive, so … um … must be down to bias then!
Gimpy wrote
What do you mean “let us conduct a thought experiment”?! This whole conversation is a thought experiment on your part, Gimpy. Since none of you appear to have bothered to actually go and experience homeopathy for yourselves, your assertions that it cannot and does not work, and your rationale for what’s going on when people think it does, are based on supposition, belief, interpretation and opinion.
Any effective medical treatment becomes widely known and used because people try it and it works. And then they tell people about it. Homeopathy has spread all over the world for this reason, and it’s done so despite people’s initial beliefs, not because of them. Your whole “placebo” argument falls down on this point.
People are neither as gullible nor as stupid as you seem to take them for and there is not much trust around these days in anything or anyone. Clinical trials aren’t trusted: there is widespread rigging by the pharmaceutical industry, the regulators appear toothless, and the ineffectiveness and amount of harm done by conventional medications, despite all the trials sanctioning their use, has probably affected every family in the land.
So people do what they’ve always done. They listen to the people they trust. Many come to homeopathy with severe misgivings, but they’ve tried everything else and nothing has worked. Where’s your placebo effect in this context? And if the patient is presumed peculiarly susceptible to the placebo effect, then surely conventional medication should have worked? After all, placebo effect operates irrespective of therapy, and belief in conventional treatment is way stronger than it is in homeopathy.
In the 1960s there were little more than a handful of practicing homeopaths in this country and not many more patients. Do you honestly think that every one of the practicing homeopaths around these days and all their patients were convinced by dusty old books from the 19th century? Homeopathy’s revival has occurred for one principal reason. Homeopathic treatment works.
September 19, 2008 at 9:44 am
Derrik
I see you’ve dropped your “chemistry can’t explain biochemical processes because these are governed by quantum mechanics” stance. That’s good. It was a bit like claiming Beuwulf can’t be studied in English because it’s written in Anglo Saxon.
Anyway, we think that homeopathy only gives the impression of working. There are a variety of tricks the universe and the mind pull to make things appear to be so, when they are not. I think the hold of your delusion is probably stringer precisely because of your initial scepticism. You think you have shifted from disbelief to belief because of the compelling evidence of your own eyes. Unfortunately this evidence was a mirage, an apparent pattern in the random fluctuations of patients symptoms combined with inevitable reporting bias, selective recollection of positive results and a bundle of people who just really needed someone to talk to about their problems.
This
September 19, 2008 at 9:44 am
Derrik
OOPs sorry forgot the /
September 19, 2008 at 9:57 am
gimpy
lmso.
Perhaps I was being too subtle. Any established theory of science today is the result of small incremental advances of knowledge based on the results of experimentation. If all records of these experiments and all knowledge of them were expunged from society then, given enough time, the application of the scientific method would result in identical theories being developed because the experimental results are replicable. For any given broadly accepted scientific theory I could give you a list of experiments to perform that would prove it correct even if the audience I was performing in front of had no knowledge of the theory beforehand.
Now, assuming a similar loss of homeopathic knowledge, what experiments would you devise to show the world that homeopathy works?
September 19, 2008 at 10:15 am
Andy
lmso – I think you are being too kind to yourself when you say “Sometimes the conversation is conducted in circumstances which are less than conducive to care, thoroughness and accuracy.”
The point is that you would not have made this mistake if you knew the literature. The Jacobs’ studies are pretty well known in homoeopathy circles precisely because the first small studies showed a positive result – the studies were poor and Jacobs was right to follow up with bigger and better work that then showed no result.
You are not the only person to present her work as proof of efficacy. Jayney Goddard had the gall to go on TV and say that it was proof.
What this shows is that you are actually uninterested in scientific studies. They are only on interest to you if they happen to show any support for your forgone conclusions. You have decided what you want to be true about the word and then fit any evidence around that and ignore anything that might challenge you. This is a certain recipe for delusion and defines the alternative medicine world. You are prepared to say anything, no matter how ignorant you are of a subject – such as quantum mechanics, just to support and defend your beliefs.
September 19, 2008 at 1:38 pm
laughingmysocksoff
Gimpy wrote
Right. Since this has fallen back into the same old same old, you’re all speaking at once, and I simply do not have the time to answer each one individually, I will attempt to state this as plainly as I possibly can.
None of my references supplied are intended to provide a definitive mechanism for homeopathy, or to prove incontrovertibly that it works, and none of them ever have been, so debating these points as if they are is barking up the wrong tree. How many times does this have to be stated? We don’t know how homeopathy works.
References are intended to demonstrate that there’s more than one way of looking at this, that potential lines of enquiry are not closed, and that the rationale for declaring an “end to homeopathy” is unproven, relying more on opinion than scientific fact. Obviously I have my own opinions and experience in relation to homeopathy, but I’ve tried to stick to what is more objective and consistently demonstrable to show you that your (pl.) judgement is premature and not supported by the full extent of the evidence available.
What we do know is that by using the principles derived through experimentation by Hahnemann, tested and found replicable by subsequent practitioners, plus the accumulated data on the recorded effects of each remedy in the therapy’s pharmacy, we are able to reliably and consistently (according to accepted medical understanding and use of those terms, John R) bring about relief of symptoms and even cure of longstanding chronic conditions. We also know that testing the various aspects of the therapy in a controlled trial situation produces variable and equivocal results which are not consistent with clinical case history.
This is the extent of what we know.
The basic factual underpinnings of the sceptical position is that there is no known mechanism by which homeopathy can work and its testing in controlled trials fails to demonstrate reliability and consistency. Both of these statements are true.
However, to jump from this to your conclusion that homeopathy does not work requires you to dismiss the entirety of homeopathic case history and clinical studies, assume that all that is known about the functioning of living systems is essentially all that can be known, and assume that all practicing homeopaths are either deluded idiots or no-good money-grabbing liars.
Throughout this blog, I’ve tried to show
i) that dismissing the entire body of homeopathic case history in this way is neither rationally defensible nor consistent with accepted practice throughout the medical profession
ii) that there are enough gaping holes in our knowledge about the functioning of living systems for the presumption that the case is closed to be premature
iii) there are valid reasons, besides lack of efficacy, for trial results to be inconsistent and equivocal
iv) that the posited sceptical rationale to explain homeopathy’s effects is inconsistent with what actually happens
v) the assertion that all practitioners of a therapy are either idiots or frauds is an unproven assumption.
Clearly opinions on how the facts of the matter can be interpreted differ, but they remain opinions, NOT fact. Personally, I don’t have a problem with any of you holding the opinions you do. I’m not on any kind of mission to convince any of you, or the world, that homeopathy works. What I do have a problem with, and it’s the reason why I started this blog, is that some of you are misrepresenting your opinions as scientific fact, and doing so in an attempt to have homeopathy excluded from the NHS and now from university degree courses. (For the avoidance of all doubt, I am talking principally about Ben Goldacre, David Colquhoun and Edzard Ernst in this regard.) This to me is an abuse of science, and I have no intention of remaining silent on that matter.
September 19, 2008 at 3:22 pm
Andy
Homeopathy is not science because it has no theory – that vital combination of descriptive models backed by empirical data. There is none. As you admit yourself – there is no model as to how homeopathy would work and no controlled data to show any effects that need a model to explain them. Simple. That is why homeopathy should not be taught as a BSc.
It is a pseudoscience – it wears the mantle of science without having the slightest scientific credibility. Its practitioners unquestioningly believe it though without critical appraisal of their actions or that of others in their field. That is why it should not be used in the NHS.
September 19, 2008 at 3:42 pm
gimpy
lmso,
How would you prove that homeopathy worked if you did not have 200 years of case-notes to brandish in your cause?
The fact is that if the world were to lose its knowledge every accepted scientific theory would end up being the same when reinvestigated, would homeopathy?
If one were to rely on historical anecdotes alone then one would have to accept the validity of witch trials. These trials used experimentation to determine if a woman was a witch. These experiments are recorded as giving positive results with over 10,000 witches successfully diagnosed and treated. Therefore witchcraft and witches exist. In what way does this differ from anecdotes proving an effect from homeopathy?
September 19, 2008 at 6:57 pm
James Pannozzi
LaughingMySocksOff wisely wrote:
“What I do have a problem with, and it’s the reason why I started this blog, is that some of you are misrepresenting your opinions as scientific fact, and doing so in an attempt to have homeopathy excluded from the NHS and now from university degree courses. (For the avoidance of all doubt, I am talking principally about Ben Goldacre, David Colquhoun and Edzard Ernst in this regard.) This to me is an abuse of science, and I have no intention of remaining silent on that matter.”
My most profound thanks for stating this.
If JUST ONE person’s life is saved by Homeopathy, I don’t really care whose theory is violated, challenged or contradicted, or that there is no theory at all to explain the result.
Dr. M. Blackie, in her book “The Patient, Not the Cure”, mentions the case of a child, bleeding badly from Purpura and abandoned as a hopeless case by the Doctors of her era.
She treated the child with Crotalus Horridus
and the child recovered and survived.
She later heard a nearby Doctor dismiss the cure as an example of “spontaneous remission”.
And the facts are that MANY have indeed been saved as your own posting on the cholera epidemic and much other evidence would indicate.
History will not be kind to the war against Homeopathy nor to the principals engaged in this despicable charade.
September 19, 2008 at 7:00 pm
Derrik
I think the point is that not all opinions are equal, they must be weighted by the evidence on which they draw. The like curing like principle is ridicules in the light of all the evidence we have for the molecular basis of life and the evidence in the scientific literature for the efficacy of homeopathy, taken has a whole, suggests it is ineffective. We have good reason to reject anecdotal evidence and case studies for reasons previously outlined.
You have retreated over the course of writing this blog from bold statements that sugar pills are the future and that quantum mechanics will rescue homeopathy to a final refuge of all opinions being equally valid.
This is where we step out of science and into ethics and politics. Is it ethical to sell treatments to people for their illnesses when the best that can be said for them is that their efficacy is a matter of opinion? Should the state pay for treatment with such a limited evidence base when it has other, perhaps more deserving, calls on its finances? What level of risk of patients being diverted from seeking effective treatment is acceptable whilst maximising patient choice? These are not easy questions.
September 19, 2008 at 7:01 pm
M Simpson
“However, to jump from this to your conclusion that homeopathy does not work requires you to dismiss the entirety of homeopathic case history and clinical studies”
We don’t dismiss it, we account for it. Humanity’s current understanding of the way that people work, both biologically and psychologically, is sufficient to explain the ‘results that are exhibited by, and claimed for, homeopathy. The limited effect it has and the extravagant anecdotes it generates are exactly what we would expect if the remedies were nothing but water or sugar pills. Which they are.
September 19, 2008 at 7:05 pm
givescienceachance
Andy, to say that
is just plain silly. It not only has a theory, but it is one that evolved out of empirical evidence and is constantly tested against the evidence. Orthodox drug therapy has no theory but only a hotchpotch of ad hoc proposals which do not fit with each other.
Gimpy’s remarks about what would happen if all homeopathic literature were destroyed, are equally silly. Homeopathic theory was derived from careful observation and experimentation, just as any scientific advance has been, so the same process could occur again with the same result. Indeed the observations and hypotheses were made repeatedly, and it was simply that Hahnemann was the first to scientifically test and formulate the principles – unsurprisingly at the time when the greatest scientific advances were starting to be made. Also, perhaps Gimpy would care to explain what would happen to any scientific field if it had more than 2,500 years of knowledge about it wiped out, which is what you would have to do to eradicate historical knowledge of the principle of homeopathy in Europe alone.
September 19, 2008 at 7:30 pm
Derrik
James
Our fear is that people’s lives will be lost because of homeopathy. It’s important to be clear when I say this that I believe most homeopaths to be both well meaning and sensible people. Unfortunately it is in the nature of the bogus theory behind homeopathy that some people, both potential patients and the practitioners can come to regard it as a 100% effective complete alternative to modern medicine. This can lead people to reject or seek to late, modern treatments which can genuinely reduce symptoms, prolong life or even offer an outright cure.
There is a second, possibly more insidious danger. The homeopathic and CAM community provide an environment which can be exploited by unscrupulous individuals and companies wanting to make money. Think of Neil’s Yard and the malaria prophylaxis, or Jomanda the Dutch homeopath.
One might say, if ONE LIFE is saved by banning homeopathy isn’t that worth it? I wouldn’t say that. In my view all life is ultimately lethal one way or another and it is up to individuals, not the state to make the choices and take the risks they deem fit.
None would care about that if there were some evidence that there was any effect from homeopathic treatment. It would be terribly exciting if our theory’s were challenged in such a way. You must have heard physicist this last week exclaiming breathily that their new roundabout toy will answer questions they can’t even pose yet. That is what scientists like.
Perhaps a helpful analogy of the weighting of the evidence is like this. Suppose you were a juror in a murder case. The prosecution case maintains that genetic evidence suggests the suspect was at the crime scene, he had the murder victims flesh under his fingernails, property stolen from the victim was found in the suspects possession, several independent witnesses of good character say they saw a man matching the suspects description around the area at the time of the attack, the suspect has a string of previous conviction for similar crimes, against which the defence brings fourth one character witness, the suspects mother, to assert her boy would “never do nothing like that”. Wouldn’t you say that the suspect was guilty beyond reasonable doubt? That is the way it is with homeopathy, only the evidence is a thousand times more damming and the defence not nearly so robust. There is obviously still room for “unreasonable” doubt, would you bet your life on that?
September 19, 2008 at 9:57 pm
Andy Lewis
Oh gsac – it is difficult to think down to your homeopathic level with your constant self-contradictory statements and clutching at straws. Of course homeopathy has no theory. LMSO admits as much when he says ‘we do not know how it works’.
Let’s just step into fantasy world for a moment and image that homeopathy did work. What sort of BSc would you teach? Can you think of any other BSC course where there is no theory of action for the subject and no reliable set of data to show there is an phenomenon worth researching? Homeopathy is an abusrdity. 200 years – nothing but a collection of deluded anecdotes to show for it. Does this not alarm you? It should, enormously.
And of course modern medicine is underpinned by science. It has been explained to you, for example, how chemistry/quantum mechanics can predict how receptors can be blocked by the right shaped drug. Your position is so far from reality as to be question your sincerity.
September 19, 2008 at 10:33 pm
givescienceachance
The unfortunate result of having an obsessive opinion is that you lose track of the real meaning of the terms you use. Take Derrik’s reference to:
What do these terms mean without a framework which allows one to measure wholly different symptoms against each other and determine which are lesser and which greater. Standing alone they are simply poorly defined opinions.
Corticosteroids can reduce the symptoms of eczema but are “in no way curative” (British National Formulary), so what is actually meant by “reduce symptoms”, and is the ‘reduction’ of symptoms really always a benefit?
Drugs can prolong life, but the quality of that life may be so reduced by the action of the drugs that the patient is unable to make any real use of their life, so is this a benefit or not?
When “cure” is defined as the absence of the syndrome in question for a period of five years, no matter what other symptoms or conditions may appear in that time, what basis is there for the use of the term “outright”, and isn’t the term “cure” really specious?
What you forget in your weighting of the evidence (however biased it is as a picture of the reality we are discussing), is that there is a theoretical framework connecting the pieces of “evidence”. Your description could easily be recast as follows:
The homeopath maintains that the detailed case records show that the patient’s health underwent a significant change between the consultation before and that after taking the remedy, the patient was seen to take the remedy, several independent witnesses of good character say that the patient’s health changed significantly after taking the remedy, the homeopath has numerous other cases reporting the same benefit from treatment. Against this the opposition brings forth one statement, that “it could be coincidence”. Wouldn’t you say that the homeopath has made their case beyond reasonable doubt, and that the opposition is just providing an unfounded opinion?
September 19, 2008 at 10:41 pm
givescienceachance
I see, Andy, so magnets and electricity and gravity and soap and breeding and grafting and spinning and so on and so on, all did not work until we knew how they worked? Does the fact that there were theories about how they worked, and that these theories changed over time mean that these things did not work until our current theory came into existence?
No, all it means is that you resort to insults and nonsense and mantras instead of thinking things through.
September 19, 2008 at 10:55 pm
Andy Lewis
So you think that is an argument gsac?
The big difference is that I can do simple experiments to show that magnets and electricity and so on are real, repeatable and quantifiable phenomonon. Care to stick your finger in a light socket? The science of electromagnetism was really born with the work of Faraday and so on, culminating in the beautifully simple equations of Maxwell. Maxwell’s equations predicted the wave nature of light and predicted its speed. Confirmed by experiment. Stunning science. The science did not really exist until the frameworks were produced. Before that, it was just a set of observations about the world.
Homeopathy fails at the first hurdle. It cannot even produce simple experiments to suggest its conjectures are real. There are no results to explain. Just shabby anecdotes and obsessed supporters.
September 19, 2008 at 11:02 pm
homeopathy4health
…they still don’t know how gravity works…..
September 20, 2008 at 6:37 am
Andy Lewis
Yes, tell that to the engineers who were able to place two robotic geology probes onto Mars.
September 20, 2008 at 10:37 am
Andy Lewis
To answer your question: “Wouldn’t you say that the homeopath has made their case beyond reasonable doubt, and that the opposition is just providing an unfounded opinion?”
No. And nor could you. You are confusing observations with interpretations. Improvements in health for the reasons for improvements in health. How do you know your reason for the improvement is correct? You cannot. It is the fundamental mistake that supporters of alt med make. It is called post hoc reasoning. That is why double blind trials are so good at sorting out this sort of thinking error.
As we have been over before, homeopaths have a narrative for every outcome:
1) If the patient gets better – it was the miracle of homeopathy
2) If the homeopath gets worse – it is a healing crisis caused by the remedy
3) If the patient does not get better – the wrong remedy has been selected
Repeat until condition 1 applies and proclaim the continued brilliance of homeopathy.
I am afraid it really is that idiotic isn’t it?
September 20, 2008 at 11:15 am
gimpy
gsac,
This just isn’t true. Homeopaths make subjective observations about their patients. There is no control, no blinding, nothing to drag detail from subjective to objective. If you reran the tape of homeopathic knowledge you would end up with completely different remedy pictures and hypotheses because there is no consistent theory that has emerged from homeopathic practice.
September 20, 2008 at 5:22 pm
James Pannozzi
Derrik
Your comments are well stated and you are correct that there are indeed unscrupulous opportunists who will infiltrate such fields as Homeopathy. But they infiltrate other fields including standard medicine too.
I must object to your portrayal of “good” Homeopaths as some sort of benign and well meaning fools.
View, for example, the Dr. Iris Bell MD, PhD presentation on an overview of current Homeopathic research at THIS link (presented during a debate on Homeopathy not too long ago):
http://youtube.com/watch?v=wYO6nNQGe1M
Here is a link to her research citations,
which might be of interest.
http://nationalcenterforhomeopathy.org/articles/view,173
Last but not least, you said in one of your responses to laugingmysocksoff,
“Anyway, we think that homeopathy only gives the impression of working. There are a variety of tricks the universe and the mind pull to make things appear to be so…”.
I have actually heard this response many times, for example that the people saved by Homeopathy in the cholera epidemics actually made out well because the Homeopathic remedies did nothing and that was so much better than the dangerous standard medicine treatments of the day. Rubbish. The statistics referenced by laughingmysocksoff refute that.
Stop and think Derrik, what kind of argument it is which admits that there is an effect but then attempts to diminish or disregard the effect (dare I say it, the cure!!) by regarding it as an illusion? Did those blokes that survived the cholera epidemic just “imagine” that they were better??
Here are the two words which refute the “delusion” theory, a gigantic fly in the ointment ( a fly the size of an elephant), which tell us we cannot assume omniscience to contravene the unknown…. SPONTANEOUS REMISSION.
Like the stomach ulcer bacteria that could never possibly be, but were (the clever little devils were hiding in the stomach lining!) we must be prepared for the unknown and leave room for it rather than so structure the framework of our theories as to exclude it, as was done for example in the case of the Mayan hieroglyphs, whose full reading was held up for decades because Professor Thompson was convinced that they were NOT phonetic and would ruin the career of any researcher who tried to show that they were.
Such an approach undermines science, blocks research and reinforces the establishment of despots, like Thompson, who reign over the followers that pay homage to them.
September 21, 2008 at 6:21 pm
laughingmysocksoff
Derrik said
No. There’s been no retreat here. “Sugar pills are the future” was Goldacre’s title. The hypotheses involving quantum mechanics are just that — hypotheses. They don’t pretend to be anything else. Sigh! It’s such hard work trying to have any kind of reasonable discussion with you lot.
There seems to be an enormous amount of dodgy reasoning going on here. Just because we don’t know how homeopathy works (ie. its precise mechanism of action) doesn’t mean there’s no theory governing its use. Not knowing how aspirin works or how gravity is created didn’t and doesn’t stop us using either effectively.
Andy wrote:
You cannot know your reasoning is correct in one isolated case. But if you repeatedly give remedy x to people whose state includes symptom y and symptom y is cured consistently by a wide range of practitioners in many different locations over a period of 200 years then you can reasonably assume that remedy x has something to do with it. It’s consistency, predictability and replicability that reveal causal factors, and you don’t have to set up a DBRCT to measure that.
Double blind trials are not necessarily good at sorting out these kind of thinking errors either, particularly where what’s being tested is a complex intervention. It might seem all very beautifully logical, elegant and simple in principle, but we’re not talking about principle here. We’re talking about what happens in practice. In real life. And there’s rather a large gap between the two. DBRCTs have a pretty unimpressive track record in proving both efficacy and safety in ordinary drug trials, let alone complex therapies. Your faith in them seems misguided.
And Gimpy, if all homeopathic literature disappeared in a puff of smoke, we would simply start again. A substance is what it is. It doesn’t change its characteristics just because a piece of paper describing them gets lost!
It really does astound me the extent to which some of you live in your imaginations concerning homeopathy. It’s not the homeopaths that are doing this. It’s you! You’ve concocted this wonderful little story that you think explains everything that goes on in a homeopathic consulting room, but have never actually bothered to check out whether or not it does for yourselves.
Life isn’t a theory. It’s what’s out there, happening. And what’s out there happening (and has been for the last 200 years) is that people are going to homeopaths after nothing else has worked for their complaints — including all those drugs that have been through umpteen DBRCTs — and they’re getting better. We know how to keep producing these results, but we don’t know exactly how it works. Is that really so hard to countenance?
Derrik said:
I can understand this fear. However, how do you square it with the FACT that homeopathic treatment is administered by a large number of conventional medical practitioners as well as non-medically qualified practitioners? How do you square it with the FACT that conventional medicine is, by its own admission, the third leading cause of death in the US (and likely of a similar order in Europe)? How do you square it with the FACT that only around 13% of conventional treatments have proven benefit?
So what is it exactly that you’re trying to save these notional homeopathic patients from? We’re not talking about potential losses here but real ones. Lives ARE being lost, unnecessarily, every day, because of conventional medical treatment. And that’s just counting the cases in which it’s a direct cause of death, not all those other cases in which absence of efficacy has led to death, which is where you’re arguing from in respect of homeopathy … This is way beyond the pot calling the kettle black. The hypocrisy is staggering.
I’d have a lot more sympathy for your argument if conventional medicine were all it’s cracked up to be. But in the real world, it’s not. It’s failing progressively more and more people who are voting with their feet, and going to seek therapies which you’ve amply demonstrated you know very little about. That IS their choice. Homeopaths aren’t shy of saying they don’t know how the therapy works. Don’t you think people have a right to make an informed decision for themselves? Especially when large clinical studies here and in Europe are indicating that around 70% of people, many under medically-qualified supervision, are satisfied with the treatment they receive under homeopathy? When some studies are even indicating a better outcome than conventional treatment?
None of what’s actually going on out there fits very well with your imaginings or your imagined rationale for how it all works, I’m afraid. I can only suggest, as I have many times before, that you actually go and check it out for yourself. That, after all, is how a large number of us got to be homeopathic practitioners in the first place. We were sceptical. We tried it. It worked. And worked in such a way as to eventually remove our doubts about this being a genuine effect. Many of us were previously medical practitioners, or scientists of one stripe of another. Do you honestly think such a large number of people would be so comprehensively fooled by a mechanism as simplistic and transparent as the one you (pl.) suggest?
September 21, 2008 at 6:31 pm
laughingmysocksoff
BTW I won’t be around to read responses to the above — I have a hefty schedule + travel from tomorrow and won’t have time to check in here for over a week.
September 21, 2008 at 7:11 pm
M Simpson
LMSO, when you get back here and check responses, perhaps you could explain this:
“You cannot know your reasoning is correct in one isolated case. But if you repeatedly give remedy x to people whose state includes symptom y and symptom y is cured consistently by a wide range of practitioners in many different locations over a period of 200 years then you can reasonably assume that remedy x has something to do with it. It’s consistency, predictability and replicability that reveal causal factors, and you don’t have to set up a DBRCT to measure that.”
I can’t square the idea of remedy x consistently curing symptom y with the ‘individualisation’ of remedies which is consistently cited as an integral part of the practice of homeopathy (and as a reason why RCTs can’t be used to demonstrate its efficacy).
Perhaps you could give named examples of remedy x and symptom y and some idea of the degree of known efficacy (assuming it’s less than 100%). That could then be very, very easily tested. Of course, if you can’t offer any named examples of x and y, or if you’re going to claim that your phrase ‘cured consistently’ means cured under certain individual circumstances only, then your constant use of the terms ‘consistency, predictability and replicability; is rendered nonsensical.
The nature of consistency, predictability and replicability is that the same thing, used in the same circumstances, produces a similar effect. Now, no medical intervention works 100% of the time (though I have seen homeopaths make this claim!) but a drug that is, say, 75% effective will cure, on average, 75 patients out of every hundred. And the nature of consistency, predictability and replicability is that any group of 100 patients will include about 75 that are cured by that drug. You could pick any 100 patients and you may find that 85 or 65 were cured but it will always be around 75 and the more different groups of 100 you study, the closer the average recovery rate will get to 75. The important point is that you pick 100 random patients, not just ones who recovered.
That is what is meant, in medical terms, by consistency, predictability and replicability. Please give us just one single example of a homeopathic remedy which is known to consistently, predictably and replicably cure a named condition in this way.
September 21, 2008 at 9:23 pm
homeopathy4health
“but a drug that is, say, 75% effective will cure, on average, 75 patients out of every hundred. And the nature of consistency, predictability and replicability is that any group of 100 patients will include about 75 that are cured by that drug. You could pick any 100 patients and you may find that 85 or 65 were cured but it will always be around 75 and the more different groups of 100 you study, the closer the average recovery rate will get to 75. The important point is that you pick 100 random patients, not just ones who recovered.”
Real life example please?
September 22, 2008 at 9:15 am
Derrik
LMSO
There are two reason’s why I can’t try homeopathy for myself. The first is that, for the moment, I am in rude good health. The second is that I would never trust what I would call an n=1 experiment. That is an experiment with only one subject. It would be impossible to tell if the result was representative of the general case or a one off. This is a particularly serious problem with the multiple variables you are dealing with in a person and the dynamic nature of their condition.
I think the two example you pull up of deaths in the US and treatments with insufficient evidence of efficacy in the UK show evidence based medicine at its best. It is not like a political party and required to show some kind of united front, it is a self reflective, self critical community trying to do its best for people less than complete knowledge.
James
The example of the Helicobacter stomach bacteria is another good example, the scientific community was sceptical, the work was done, the data brought fourth, the scientific community admitted it was wrong and got on with studying the exciting new thing. That is what we DO, no hypocrisy there. I can’t answer for the behaviour of anthropologist.
Both of you
Medicine is certainly a very imperfect system. However consider the increase in life expectance over the last century [1]. The increase in the number of years people live after being diagnsosed with breast cancer. How about the improvement of in survival rates of children with leukaemia from 64% in the eighties to 75% in the late nineties, we will have to wait a bit to see how we did in the 00’s[3].
Sorry, but yes I do, and I know I might be fooled as well by similar things. This is where I fall back on anecdote myself. I have been fooled so many times by so many things of greater an lesser importance that I am very carful about what I will give intellectual assent to and the kind of evidence I require to do so. If so many of you are scientists why are you incapable of producing the kind of data required to prove your point? You say your can reproducible and predictably cause certain effects in the world, why are none of your ex-scientists able to devise an experiment to prove it. You don’t like RCT’s? Fine. Work out suitable kind of experiment that will prove your point whilst meeting the requirements of your detractors. Obviously I don’t mean just you but the homeopathic community as a whole.
James again
The thing is you don’t have a good way of assessing homeopaths capacity. If you did have some way of measuring homeopaths outcome, sending the worse ones for retraining, identifying best practice and spreading it etc, you would also have a method for proving homeopathy works, which you don’t. But this is the sort of system that an effective regulator needs to have to protect the public. All you can fall back on is a code of ethics requiring, for example, that you not claim to be able to cure cancer or AIDS. That doesn’t make sense does it, if homeopathy is an efficacious medicine along the lines you suggest, then probably you can cure such diseases, and so true believers continue to say so. If homeopathy can’t really cure anything serious then why are you all still going?
[1] PDF! http://www.parliament.uk/commons/lib/research/rp99/rp99-111.pdf page 8
[2]http://info.cancerresearchuk.org/cancerstats/types/breast/survival/
[3] http://www.nature.com/bjc/journal/v99/n5/abs/6604460a.html
September 22, 2008 at 3:28 pm
givescienceachance
More important even than real life examples is an acknowledgment that a test of this sort provides zero information about WHY some are “cured” and others not. In addition, given that there are only two possible results considered (cured or not cured), it is absolutely imperative to be clear about what this term means, including an explanation of why the results should have a binary form as opposed to a more complex scalar form.
The reason empiricism was ditched was because it was an inadequate method of providing information, and it is still inadequate. You have to define the context to make sense of empirical evidence and that requires theoretical frameworks, and what is more theoretical frameworks which extend beyond the specific experiment. RCTs do not do this.
September 22, 2008 at 3:37 pm
Derrik
LMSO and James
I wrote a reply a while ago, it might be awaiting moderation because of its links or it might have got lost in the either. What ever, I’m sorry I can’t be bothered to write it again, but I did respond to your comments, honest.
September 22, 2008 at 3:37 pm
Derrik
ether, not either… fool that I am.
September 22, 2008 at 3:39 pm
Derrik
On reflection it’s probably aether.
September 22, 2008 at 5:15 pm
homeopathy4health
‘Real life example please?’
My point is that it is very unlikely that any drug can be slotted into M Simpson’s fairy story. And if I’m wrong I’d like to know which drugs do fit.
September 22, 2008 at 6:45 pm
M Simpson
You can call it a fairy story if you want. I call it a simple explanation of what ‘consistency, predictability and replicability’ means in medical terms. I’m not a medical scientist so I can’t cite a specific example of a named drug and its percentage efficacy. I’m just pointing out that ‘consistent, predictable and replicable’ doesn’t require a 100% cure rate (something which simply doesn’t exist in the real world) before asking for an example of this:
“if you repeatedly give remedy x to people whose state includes symptom y and symptom y is cured consistently by a wide range of practitioners in many different locations over a period of 200 years”
This claim by LMSO completely contradicts the concept of ‘individualisation’ so I’m asking for more information. I’m not expecting an example of something which is 100% guaranteed to cure a condition (because, as explained, such a thing does not exist anywhere) but if remedy x ‘consistently’ cures condition y then it must, by definition, consistently cure a certain percentage of people, on average. If it doesn’t, then it can’t be described as consistent.
September 22, 2008 at 8:15 pm
givescienceachance
M Simpson, there are two points of importance:
1. If the definition of the word “cure” in your example is that used in drug tests, then it is not the same as LMSO’s definition, but is far more limited than that one. As a result the two statements cannot be directly compared.
2. LMSO’s statement about “people whose state includes symptom y” does not contradict the concept of individualisation, as even a basic knowledge of homeopathy would inform you. Remedies are not prescribed for a single symptom, but for a complex of symptoms individual to the remedy (and patient). Those individual symptoms within the complex are repeatedly, consistently and predictably cured, confirming the validity of the remedy for those symptoms in the context of its use for that specific complex.
September 23, 2008 at 12:23 am
M Simpson
So symptom y is repeatedly, consistently and predictably cured by remedy x – but only sometimes.
September 23, 2008 at 10:43 am
givescienceachance
No. Symptom y is repeatedly, consistently and predictably cured by remedy x in specific and definable circumstances. Symptom y in other specific and definable circumstances will be repeatedly, consistently and predictably cured by remedy z, for example. That is the point about individualisation – it does not look at a symptom in isolation but in context, and the whole context is treated.
September 23, 2008 at 3:49 pm
gimpy
Bingo. Testable prediction. Name the remedy and the circumstances then explain why a DBRCT is inadequate.
September 23, 2008 at 6:44 pm
givescienceachance
This information for any remedy can be found in a homeopathic materia medica. Homeopathic training centres on how to identify the circumstances in which one particular remedy is the correct one as opposed to another, including taking into account reactions to previous remedies.
A correctly designed DBRCT, that is one based on the homeopathic relationship of a remedy to a patient, is not inadequate. The design of such a trial would, however, have to be based on the whole set of theoretical principles of homeopathy, including a completely different measure of success from that used in drug trials. Otherwise you are doing the equivalent of measuring angles in millimetres instead of degrees.
September 23, 2008 at 7:05 pm
M Simpson
“Symptom y is repeatedly, consistently and predictably cured by remedy x in specific and definable circumstances.”
So please specify and define the circumstances and name x and y. This info is in the materia medica (we’re told) so it should be accessible to someone like yourself who understands homeopathy and all the abbreviations and whatnot.
We’re just asking for one single example of homeopathic remedy x which will “repeatedly, consistently and predictably” cure symptom y in “specific and definable” circumstances z. And we’re asking for this because both you GSAC and the currently-absent LMSO are quite sure that this exists.
September 24, 2008 at 6:27 am
Andy Lewis
gsac – I note you are rarely sepcific in this claim about DBRCTs. So, specifically, what is it inappropriate to emasure and what wuld you like to measure instead then? And then why could a DBRCT not cope with this?
Why not the symptom you said would be cured?
September 24, 2008 at 7:32 am
gimpy
Come on gsac, you’ve made a bold claim that can be found “in a homeopathic materia medica” so you should have no trouble in repeating it here for us.
I’m also fascinated by your claim that homeopathy requires a “completely different measure of success from that used in drug trials”. What is this measure?
September 26, 2008 at 4:03 pm
givescienceachance
Gimpy, before I answer your question, would you like to state what the legal position is about claiming that a specific substance can “cure” a specific symptom?
As for your other question, surely you know enough about homeopathy to answer that yourself. If not, how do you justify claiming to be competent to criticise homeopathy?
September 26, 2008 at 4:09 pm
gimpy
gsac, what on earth are you babbling about? Do you think I’m trying to entrap you? I assure you I am not qualified to offer legal opinion nor do I have any intention of invoking the law. I’ll repeat my questions (it matters not if I know the answer – I want to see if you do).
September 28, 2008 at 12:43 am
ez
I was just silently reading the new thread, although I feel I would like very much ask GSAC about a few things (unrelated to this thread – for learning purposes! I wonder how I could I do this…), but with this one I felt I should say that I agree – I had indeed felt similar pressure, and in fact, Andrew on the homeopathy4health’s blog has once written very clearly that one of the possible outcomes of his comments would be getting homeopaths “lying about” him and then trying to have them answer legally for that… And on several other forums I have noticed that now and then a “sceptic” is trying to provoke a homeopath saying something which can easily have legal consequences. I am not talking about conspiracies, though, but about the mind-set of some “sceptics” which lead them to the same idea now and again.
Gimpy, you have been able to find Organon on-line, there exist a large number of sites which list various Materia Medicas of homoepathic remedies written by older authors – you can as easily copy and post them as anyone else, why do you not do this here if you want someone to comment on this issue?
September 28, 2008 at 9:32 am
gimpy
Oh noes, you have been silenced by Teh Man.
Frankly this is pathetic. When taken at your word and asked to stand by your claims you resort to the invocation of fictional threats to avoid answering the question. Your failure to answer leads me to assume that you have no confidence in your arguments. Now do the honest thing and take them back.
September 28, 2008 at 6:07 pm
givescienceachance
Don’t be an ass.
If you think that any homeopath is going to risk prosecution in order to provide an unnecessary answer to you, you are stupider than you believe homeopaths to be.
A person, such as yourself, who is so dedicated to ‘defending’ people from alleged fraud cannot act innocent about the legal framework of their chosen field of discussion – unless they are either truly ignorant or deceitful. In the former case, that shows that they have no right to expect people to pay attention to their opinions, since those opinions are ill-informed. In the latter case, no-one should trust them because they are demonstrably willing to mislead.
Also whether you know the answers to the questions raised is of great importance. If you are ignorant of the nature of homeopathy, your authority to question its validity is seriously compromised. Any idiot can ask questions, but I have yet to see any evidence that you know the answers, can explain them, or can oppose them with reasoned criticisms. All you have are obsessive mantras, as LMSO has pointed out.
September 28, 2008 at 6:28 pm
Andy
Wow – I have seen it all now. Fictitious healers frightened of fictitious threats from fictitious laws.
September 29, 2008 at 6:51 am
gimpy
Andy, I truly hope this isn’t representative of homeopaths. gsac and ez seem to think that there is a legal conspiracy preventing homeopaths from entering into debates about their claims. If such views are widespread then it is no wonder that homeopaths have proven so useless at engaging with critical opinions. It also seems to indicate a mindset that worries more about how it is perceived rather than how it is practised.
Now gsac, stop being an idiot and support your assertion with some evidence.
September 29, 2008 at 7:26 am
Andy
We know that the Society of Homeopaths hav told their members to be very careful about answering questions regarding malaria etc. That was shameful. Rather than advise their mebers that such actions could endanger the lives of their customers, they conspire to hide the evidence from scrutiny. That mindset would really appear to be general now.
October 4, 2008 at 10:03 pm
givescienceachance
The only advantage in trying to teach idiots is not that they will stop being idiots, but that one will learn how to explain things simply to those who really want to learn.
There is a limit to how much I can learn by trying to teach idiots even so.
October 5, 2008 at 6:16 am
Theo
Hello laughingmysocksoff,
Thank you for this brilliant post. It was a lucid account of what is taking place by a few obsessed individuals.
It is interesting that in a heartbeat the obsessive cacophony started led by gimpy. Look how much opinion as fact came out in the comments! Did anyone really read what you had to say? Do you get the feeling that no one really did! Well, I did and I appreciate you in your awesome clarity.
And even Andy mentions a few comments ago ‘conspiracy’ as you predicted! It now seems that the malaria canard has become the new justification. After fishing around for a few years they finally feel they have found an opinion that justifies their obsession with destroying homeopathy and homeopaths. (Something like: “Thousands, no hundred of thousands are dying of AIDS, malaria because they are seeking alternative treatment” The statistics and sources are a bit cloudy and perhaps fudged but we won’t talk about that…)
Well, your post still stands as the most comprehensive and brilliant post on this whole phenomena. Congratulations. Some of us are listening and appreciate your clarity and ability to articulate the facts versus the obsessive fiction.
October 5, 2008 at 6:49 am
gimpy
gsac,
So you can’t or won’t answer the questions? Absolutely pathetic.
October 5, 2008 at 10:09 am
Andy
… or are you perfecting your canards?
October 5, 2008 at 4:39 pm
givescienceachance
gimpy
You seem to have lost track. It is you who have refused to answer the questions, requiring me to answer them for you. I see no reason why I should answer the questions I have asked you until you have stated explicitly that you are ignorant of the answers – in which case see my comment of September 28, 2008 at 6:07 pm for an assessment of your competence to make the judgments you do about homeopathy.
Increasingly it appears that you prefer invective to argument and demanding answers to providing them. This is fine if you want to defend an obsession, but it is a very poor showing for someone who claims an interest in science.
October 5, 2008 at 7:15 pm
M Simpson
So no-one should ask questions unless they already know enough about the subject to know the answers? Wow, that’s an interesting take on education.
October 5, 2008 at 9:27 pm
givescienceachance
M Simpson, what on earth has your comment got to do with anything I have said?
I asked gimpy two questions. Gimpy refused to answer them and required me to answer them. I pointed out that if gimpy did not know the answers this called into question gimpy’s competence to judge homeopathy.
Gimpy can quite simply answer the questions or admit to not knowing the answers and accept the consequences. This seems a perfectly fair choice to me.
October 5, 2008 at 9:43 pm
M Simpson
And what of my question to you, GSAC, requesting examples of x, y and ‘definable circumstances’ which fit your claim about homeopathy:
“Symptom y is repeatedly, consistently and predictably cured by remedy x in specific and definable circumstances.”
Still waiting for that one. Or are you going to “admit to not knowing the answers and accept the consequences”? I’d feel pretty foolish if I claimed something specific like that and then had to admit that I couldn’t give a single example of it.
October 6, 2008 at 5:30 am
gimpy
gsac, what are on earth are you trying to do here? I asked you a couple of questions based on claims you made, you replied first suggesting that I was trying to trick you into breaking the law by answering them (!) then you said I should answer them first! This is utterly bizarre behaviour. Do you stand by your arguments or not? If you do you should be able to supply some supporting evidence. If you cannot provide evidence then you have to retract your claims.
October 6, 2008 at 7:05 pm
Andy
Well, I for one, have laughed my socks off at the false indignation of it all.
October 6, 2008 at 8:03 pm
givescienceachance
M Simpson, I quote:
and
I have quoted these points because I don’t think you understood them or their significance the first time around. The key point is the reference to “the whole context”, and the materia medica is the source for identifying this context. Different patients exhibiting the same specific symptom and requiring the same remedy will exhibit different collections of other symptoms (individuality), which will be contained in the overall symptomatology of the remedy. The only way of defining the context is through the materia medica. Any abbreviated version is liable to error, and the liability to error increases the more abbreviated the version is.
October 6, 2008 at 8:10 pm
givescienceachance
Gimpy said
Not exactly. I did not suggest that you were trying to trick me, YOU suggested that. I asked if you understood the legal context of a claim that a specific medicine can cure a specific symptom. A simple question which you decided not to answer but to deflect.
As regards the measure of success, your reaction indicated your ignorance, and this is an unacceptable ignorance for someone who sets themselves up as a “scientific” critic of homeopathy. It is therefor legitimate to question your competence.
October 6, 2008 at 9:22 pm
M Simpson
GSAC, yes I read what you wrote originally and no I don’t understand it because you are flatly contradicting yourself. You are saying that something is (your favourite phrase) ‘repeatable, consistent and predictable’, then you also say that this is different for every individual case. Both these statements cannot be true, unless you have some strange homeopath’s definition of “repeatedly, consistently and predictably” which does not involve repetition, consistency or prediction.
“Symptom y is repeatedly, consistently and predictably cured by remedy x in specific and definable circumstances.”
Just give us one example – just one – from the Materia Medica (or anywhere else) of a homeopathic remedy x, a symptom y and the “specific and definable circumstances” in which x will “repeatedly, consistently and predictably” cure y. That’s all we’re asking.
If the “specific and definable circumstances” are so specific as to relate to one individual patient only, then they are not in any way repeatable, are they? Or consistent. Or predictable.
You love to make these grand-sounding claims but, as usual, when anyone asks you to discuss the basis of your claims, you resort to (frankly hilarious) bluster.
Are you familiar with the British comic Viz and the character ‘Aldridge Pryor the Hopeless Liar’? He not only makes ridiculously grandiose claims but can’t keep his story consistent from one moment to the next, continually contradicting what he has just said with some new, equally ridiculous claim. You remind me very much of him.
October 6, 2008 at 10:17 pm
Andy
The only repeatable, consistent and predictable thing going on here is the wriggling of homeopaths.
October 7, 2008 at 1:34 am
laughingmysocksoff
Oh for socks sake …
First let’s get one thing straight, because some of you don’t appear to know the difference. A symptom is a single manifest aspect of a state of ill health, largely subjective. Like a sore throat. Or a blocked nose. A condition is a complex of symptoms which occur frequently and recognisably in association with one another, certain of which, together with objective signs, comprise the defining description of said condition.
Alternative health practitioners are prevented by law from making any claims to cure named conditions. While this is OK to some extent (because alternative therapies are holistic and tend not to view conditions as objectivised things-in-themselves or treat people on that basis), in a society which is accustomed to relating to illness in these terms, this constantly presents communication problems. The difference between a symptom complex defining a named condition, and a symptom complex exhibited by an individual diagnosed with that named condition can sometimes be practically indistinguishable, and the difference comes down to semantics. But it’s the law, so we have to make the distinction.
The symptoms of illness aren’t the sole creation of eg. a particular microorganism. Symptoms are the product of the interaction between microorganism and host, and the individuality of the host will result in expressions of disease which, though broadly similar to others infected by the same microorganism, are not the same. They differ in all sorts of ways. A child with chicken-pox that’s angry and irritable, where the rash is slow to come out and is accompanied by a cough, is going to need a different remedy to a restless child with a red-tipped tongue and a fast-appearing rash that’s driving then mad with the itching. So when GSAC and I say that symptom y is repeatedly, consistently and predictably cured by remedy x in specific and definable circumstances, what we mean is just that. The specific and definable circumstances are represented by the rest of the case. Remedy x will cure symptom y reliably and consistently in circumstances in which the qualities of that particular symptom and other symptoms of the case are consistent with an overall symptom picture that matches what’s been established for remedy x through its provings and subsequent clinical verification.
In order to test that reliability and consistency in a DBRCT, you would need to screen all participants to make sure that not only was there homogeneity in the broad symptom picture, but also in the subtle qualities of those symptoms and in the remaining symptoms of each participant’s case. Given that it’s hard enough to recruit sufficient participants for any DBRCT of homeopathy, the chances of satisfying such rigorous criteria in any sort of acceptable number are presently impossibly low.
The only circumstances in which individual variation between sufferers of the same named condition is low enough to make a good test of a small selection of remedies, and where there are sufficient numbers of affected people to provide statistical significance, are in instances of acute epidemic disease. But it’s unethical to conduct trials in epidemics. You have to treat. So no controls, only comparisons between different treatment methods. Further, notifiable epidemic diseases are mostly the preserve of conventional medicine these days, so no modern data. Back to the history books then, I’m afraid. You’ll find a summary of homeopathy’s performance in 19th and 20th century epidemics here.
October 7, 2008 at 1:49 am
laughingmysocksoff
Can we now please get back to the subject of this post?
I would like to see an acknowledgment from sceptics that the interpretations and opinions you’re expressing on this site (and others) are just that: interpretation and opinion. NOT scientifically-established fact.
Or are we going to see a lot of wriggling instead?
October 7, 2008 at 6:20 am
gimpy
No LMSO, I will not be distracted from calling gsac out on their claim. gsac has an obligation to provide evidence for the assertion:
Name the remedy, name the circumstance or withdraw the claim. It is apparently in Materia Medica’s so all you have to do is copy and paste. Your reputation for honesty is at stake here. And legal excuses about named diseases do not apply. As far as I am aware this is not illegal, it just breaches codes of conduct and advertising standards. But following on from your laughable explanation LMSO that:
this really raises the question about what goes on in a homeopaths consultation. Do you really say to the patient “Homeopaths cannot tell you we can cure diseases but I assure you that symptom y is reliably cured by remedy x in specific and definable circumstance (wink, wink, nudge, nudge)”? Just how intellectually dishonest are you?
This would be laughable if people like you weren’t actually out there playing at healthcare.
October 7, 2008 at 7:30 am
M Simpson
LMSO, your concept of the law in this situation is extraordinary. You are an anonymous blogger, you are not advertising. While it’s true that a medical manufacturer would be breaking the law if they printed something on the label of one of their medicines that ‘wotsit tablets will cure headaches’ (this is a sensible law to stop unscrupulous companies selling snake oil) there is nothing to stop anyone unconnected with the sale of wotsit tablets stating – in print, on-line or on radio or TV – that they cure headaches and all manner of specific ills. This happens all the time. It is not illegal for someone, in a non-advertising situation, to make a medical claim.
Look, I’ll do it (and I post under my real name). Wearing a blue hat will repeatedly, consistently and predictably cure whooping cough. It does, it honestly does. This is M Simpson telling you this and I should know because I’m an expert in hat therapy. If you have whooping cough, just wear a blue hat for a few days and the illness will be gone.
Let’s just pause for the police and/or ASA to come round…
Nothing.
You can claim, with absolute impunity, on your blog that something cures something. You may be right, you may be wrong but you cannot break the law by doing so.
Now, let’s see:
“So when GSAC and I say that symptom y is repeatedly, consistently and predictably cured by remedy x in specific and definable circumstances, what we mean is just that. The specific and definable circumstances are represented by the rest of the case.”
You are still saying that x will cure y in specific and definable circumstances. So they are “represented by the rest of the case”? So what? How does that stop you specifying and defining them? If you can’t specify and define them, they are not specific and definable. ‘Definable’ means able to define, do you see?
“Remedy x will cure symptom y reliably and consistently in circumstances in which the qualities of that particular symptom and other symptoms of the case are consistent with an overall symptom picture that matches what’s been established for remedy x through its provings and subsequent clinical verification.”
So what if “the qualities of that particular symptom and other symptoms of the case are consistent with an overall symptom picture that matches what’s been established for remedy x through its provings and subsequent clinical verification”? How does that stop you specifying and defining the “overall symptom picture”? If something has been ‘established’ and ‘verified’ then there is nothing to stop you stating what it is.
You and your pal are consistently claiming that pairs of things can be ‘consistently, repeatedly and predictably’ matched up and then refusing to give even one example of a pair of things that can be matched up, claiming either that to do so would be illegal (which is hilarious) or that the things which can be matched up are always different – which would make them unrepeatable, inconsistent and unpredictable.
Then you start blathering about DBRCTs! No-one is talking about DBRCTs. We are simply asking you to give one example of your claim that remedy x curing y in ’specific and definable’ circumstances is (altogether now) consistent, repeatable and predictable.
One more thing, regarding this:
“A child with chicken-pox that’s angry and irritable, where the rash is slow to come out and is accompanied by a cough, is going to need a different remedy to a restless child with a red-tipped tongue and a fast-appearing rash that’s driving then mad with the itching.”
You do realise that both those children, if left entirely untreated, would be naturally cured within a couple of weeks anyway, don’t you? Chicken pox is one of the most obviously self-limiting conditions around. I could give the first child a blue hat and the second child a green hat – and both would be cured in less than a fortnight.
October 7, 2008 at 10:19 am
laughingmysocksoff
Sigh …
Gimpy
I somehow think that the bulk of the distracting that’s been going on in these comments, is down to you. The subject matter of the post is pretty clear. So how come we’re not discussing it? How come we’ve gotten sidetracked into dancing around in the same old circles yet again? I’m confident I can predict how you’d react if I came to your blog and started demanding participants answer questions which have diddly squat to do with the subject of the post.
So I will not be distracted from calling on YOU to address my initial request at the end of the post. Are you or are you not going to acknowledge that the interpretations and opinions you put forward here and on your own blog are just that: your interpretations and opinions? Be the scientist you claim to be and demonstrate to everyone here that you know how to make the distinction between fact and opinion.
M Simpson
ROFLMSO!! Isn’t it just a tad disingenuous of you to put forward an argument that attempts to absolve homeopaths of a requirement which elsewhere you hold them to? Methinks you’ve voided that argument by your own standards. Unless, of course, you’re being as hypocritical as you accuse homeopaths of being. Your debating style kind of puts me in mind of this guy.
As for the mention of DBRCTs, I think you’d better check back through the comments.
I used the example of a simple acute for the very good reason that to unravel a complex chronic case and present it in a way that will allow you to perceive where predictability and replicability play their part would take a considerable amount of work and time that I simply don’t have. As GSAC pointed out, this information is available to anyone who takes the time to study homeopathic principles and then trace their application through the records of individual cases featuring cures by the same remedy. Much of the historical data on which prescriptions are based is available online.
Of course chicken pox is a self-limiting condition! But if there weren’t valid reasons for avoiding it, why do we now have a vaccine against it?
If you have a child with a compromised immune system or other circumstances in which it’s neither prudent nor humane to have them stick it out for 14 days and risk complications, then you can give Antimonium tartaricum in the first case (or possibly Antimonium crudum since there’s an insufficient level of differentiation in the handful of symptoms I listed) and Rhus toxicodendron in the second case and with a high degree of probability, both children will be over it inside 48 hours with no further complications. The degree of probability increases in direct proportion to the number of distinctive and characteristic symptoms of the remedy that are evident in the case, which is consistent with the highly specific and empirically-derived nature of homeopathic treatment.
I’m completely mystified as to why you seem to find this so hard to comprehend. It’s an identical process to the one taken to reach a conventional diagnosis of a named condition.
You examine the symptoms and signs present in the case, you compare them to the defining symptom complexes which have been observed and recorded for the various named conditions that exhibit symptoms of that nature, and you refine your diagnosis according to the more distinctive characteristics evident that will point you with a high degree of confidence to one particular diagnosis more than any other. Substitute ‘remedy’ for ‘condition’ here, and you’re doing exactly what homeopaths do. In the same way that a conventional physician is not always 100% certain of his/her diagnosis, so a homeopath isn’t 100% certain of their remedy differentiation, but in both instances there is a degree of probability that they’re correct which increases in direct proportion to the number of distinctive and characteristic symptoms evident in the case.
I’m left with the overriding impression that your apparent initial assumption that homeopathy can’t work so it doesn’t is blinding you to the validity of the techniques, processes and reasoning employed in the therapy. No wonder you guys can’t make sense of this. It would all be a lot simpler, as well as far more scientific, if you put aside your prejudices and opinions and examined the actual data and the experience of countless therapists and patients with an open mind before making your interpretations.
So M Simpson, are YOU capable of discerning the distinction between interpretation/opinion and fact?
October 7, 2008 at 11:17 am
gimpy
No, lmso I will not let you distract from gsac’s inability to answer a simple straightforward question. We are simply asking for evidence of gsac’s claim that:
I have already stated that I provide evidence to back up my facts and opinions, you and gsac it seems can’t even manage that. Your circumlocutions would make Sarah Palin blush. Is this the greatest defence homeopaths can manage, your reasoning skills make HMC21 look good.
October 7, 2008 at 12:19 pm
laughingmysocksoff
Gimpy, GSAC speaks for him/herself as I do for me. If you have an issue with GSAC, then I suggest you wait for GSAC to respond. Not all of us have the luxury of paid occupations that allow us to spend all day on blogs.
As both GSAC and I have already stated, there is such a vast amount of evidence to show that symptom y is repeatedly, consistently and predictably cured by remedy x in specific and definable circumstances that it’s a case of where do you start? The entirety of homeopathy is built on the foundations of this basic tenet! 200 years’ worth of case history. There is collated symptom data for around half a million clinically verified individual symptoms and much more yet to be extracted from published case history, around 2,000 individual remedies, with individual symptom records for each remedy ranging from a handful to nigh on 20,000. You’ve been pointed clearly in the direction of some of this voluminous evidence by both of us, so your assertion that it hasn’t been provided is a complete nonsense. Unless, that is, you’re sticking to your indefensible position that, contrary to established practice throughout conventional medicine, case history is inadmissible as ‘evidence’.
Now are you or are you not going to acknowledge that the interpretations and opinions you put forward here and on your own blog are just that: your interpretations and opinions?
October 7, 2008 at 12:27 pm
gimpy
You start with an easily provable and well documented example. Not with waffle and bluster and attempts to distract..
October 7, 2008 at 1:09 pm
laughingmysocksoff
No waffle or bluster Gimpy. Simply a case of time and resources. There’s no plethora of university departments churning out paper after paper of nicely collated and analysed homeopathic research, sponsored by companies with profits well in excess of the GDPs of half the world’s nations, that I have the luxury of referencing for you. There’s just a mountain of raw data, a few thousand practitioners and a handful of dedicated researchers doing what they can with what limited resources they have available (when they’re not being taken off task by the David Colquhouns of this world demanding answers to endless questions). I am not going to spend several hours of my valuable time extracting evidence for you when you’re perfectly capable of doing it yourself. Both GSAC and I have given you references to plenty of raw data that supports what we say.
Your attempts to paint my responses as something they’re not certainly display imagination, but are you or are you not going to acknowledge that the interpretations and opinions you put forward here and on your own blog are just that: your interpretations and opinions?
October 7, 2008 at 1:45 pm
givescienceachance
The problem here, lmso, is a fundamental one of the obsessive who is trying to force you to confirm their preconceptions by denying you terms outside of their delusion.
Gimpy is refusing to recognise the possibility of a principle and is instead demanding a specific case of it in action. This specific case, however, has to be part of a DBRCT if it is not going to be denounced as insufficient and anecdotal. If the request were genuine, there are any number of specific well-documented cases which can be referred to, such as the cure of George VI’s stutter, which is at least one of the reasons why the Queen has her own homeopath, or the cases of treatment in epidemics you have referred to.
At the same time, anyone with a scientific background should know that for something to be “repeatedly, consistently and predictably” the case, it has to be based on a principle, and that if the principle is to be put to the test, you cannot cherry pick the parts you are going to accept as defining the parameters of the experiment.
If gimpy had really studied homeopathy before denouncing it, he would know that the theory evolved precisely out of recognising the significance of specific well-documented cases and deriving a principle which could explain these events, with the principle then being tested in further experiments. In other words, for the first time in history the scientific method was used in the study of the applicability of medicines.
One has to ask gimpy: “What is the knowledge on which you base your attacks? It is not a thorough knowledge of homeopathy; it is not accurate historical knowledge; it is not accurate contemporary knowledge; it lacks a scientific approach; it smacks of unadulterated pre-scientific empiricism; so what is it’s validity?” In the end it is simply opinion, bigoted, obsessive and delusional opinion.
October 7, 2008 at 2:34 pm
gimpy
My interpretations are interpretations, my opinions are my opinions and evidence is evidence, all are clearly as such. Does that answer your increasingly facile questioning?
lmso, gsac. You have both devoted a lot of time and effort here to NOT answering the question so I refuse to believe time and resources is an adequate excuse. lmso, you seem to be admitting that there is no data in Materia Medica supporting your claims as you say that there is no”nicely collated and analysed homeopathic research”. Presumably Materia Medicas are not collated and analysed, which flatly contradicts gsac who claimed that they supported their assertions. So will you retract the claim that there is a
You should if you cannot prove it to be true…..
October 7, 2008 at 4:11 pm
givescienceachance
No, because you seem to confuse them in practice. You seem unable to distinguish between evidence and opinion, or to recognise the importance of a sound basis of knowledge before launching into interpretation. What is more, you seem determined to twist words in order to muddle the issue.
For example, lmso clearly distinguished between present-day medical “research” (using DBRCTs) and the method used by homeopaths, collated in the materia medica. YOU then chose to conflate these into one and the same thing (when they are totally different), and then YOU claim that we are confusing them and being contradictory.
To misrepresent what is said so willfully and blatantly betrays a total contempt for organised and scientific thinking, which is what you claim to support. It also shows that you are not driven by the search for truth, but by the need to defend your prejudices at any cost. That could legitimately be called obsessive.
October 7, 2008 at 6:07 pm
M Simpson
“There is collated symptom data for around half a million clinically verified individual symptoms”
And yet you’re unable to give us one example. You adamantly maintain that: “there is a vast amount of evidence to show that symptom y is repeatedly, consistently and predictably cured by remedy x in specific and definable circumstances”
But you are unable or unwilling to provide even one solitary example. Have you any idea how foolish you look? No, you probably don’t.
A vast amount of available data doesn’t make it harder to give a single example, it makes it easier.
October 7, 2008 at 6:57 pm
Andy
wriggle wriggle
October 7, 2008 at 7:44 pm
jeff garrington
Chickenpox, “Healthy children generally experience one to two days of fever, sore throat, and malaise approximately two weeks following exposure to VZV. Within 24 hours of these symptoms, a characteristic rash develops initially on the torso and then spreads over the next seven to 10 days outward to the head, arms, and legs. The rash progresses through a predictable evolution from a red papule (“bug bite”) appearance to blister (“vesicle”) to pustule and then scabs over. The vesicle and pustular fluids are highly concentrated with infectious virus particles. New lesions characteristically come in “waves” over the skin surface. The patient may thus have newly formed papules, middle-aged vesicles and pustules, and crusted lesions all at the same time. At the peak of the disease, a patient may have over 300 skin lesions at one time. Once all lesions are scabbed over, the person is no longer contagious. The lesions rarely cause permanent scarring, unless secondary infection develops (see below). Lesions may commonly be found in the mouth and may also involve the genitalia.
LMSO claims “that you can give Antimonium tartaricum in the first case (or possibly Antimonium crudum since there’s an insufficient level of differentiation in the handful of symptoms I listed) and Rhus toxicodendron in the second case and with a high degree of probability, both children will be over it inside 48 hours with no further complications.”
Am I to understand that the child will not develop the lesions and that the rash will not develop and there is no possibility of complications (eg Shingles)
and all of this information for the treatment is collated in Homeopaths case notes, all showing the same results.
Surely with such a precise treatment, and only two possible variations of Antmonium to be used, or Rhus toxicodendron a trial can be devised that will verify your claims.
A child develops the first symptoms of chickenpox Antmonium is administered and within 48 hrs the child has no fever or lesions or the virus runs its course over 14 days, meaning Homeopathy has no effect on Chickenpox. Repeat with the other two possibilities. Anything wrong with that idea?
October 7, 2008 at 8:11 pm
givescienceachance
M Simpson, I quote again:
and
I have quoted these points because I don’t think you understood them or their significance the first time around or the second time around. The key point is the reference to “the whole context”, and the materia medica is the source for identifying this context. Different patients exhibiting the same specific symptom and requiring the same remedy will exhibit different collections of other symptoms (individuality), which will be contained in the overall symptomatology of the remedy. The only way of defining the context is through the materia medica. Any abbreviated version is liable to error, and the liability to error increases the more abbreviated the version is.
October 7, 2008 at 8:40 pm
M Simpson
GSAC, you can keep repeating that until you’re blue in the face, it doesn’t alter the simple fact that if something is repeated, consistent and predictable, you must be able to say what it is. Otherwise it’s not repeated, consistent and predictable.
Perhaps you could explain what *you* mean by those three terms. In standard English, ‘repeatedly’ means ‘the same thing again and again’, ‘consistently’ means, ah, ‘the same thing again and again’ and ‘predictably’ means that something can be identified beforehand (which can be done if the same thing is happening again and again). But what do *you* mean? Please define those three concepts for us.
One of the basic tents of homeopathy is individualisation – that the same symptom in different patients requires treatment with different remedies because of other factors. This is entirely INcompatible with “Symptom y is repeatedly, consistently and predictably cured by remedy x in specific and definable circumstances.”
If ‘the whole context’ makes remedy x something different for each patient, then there is nothing repeated or consistent.
It doesn’t matter how complex the Materia Medica is, we’re just asking for one example of x, y and z which matches the claim that you and LMSO keep making. We don’t expect to get one, not by this point, but it’s interesting to see to what lengths you will go in order to defend the corner you have painted yourselves into by claiming that black is white.
“Different patients exhibiting the same specific symptom and requiring the same remedy will exhibit different collections of other symptoms (individuality), which will be contained in the overall symptomatology of the remedy.”
What you’re saying there is that if x and y are constant across a group of patients, the ‘circumstances’ won’t be specific but will in fact vary from patient to patient. That is INcompatible with: “Symptom y is repeatedly, consistently and predictably cured by remedy x in specific and definable circumstances.”
You can twist and turn all you want but you’re repeating a claim which is INcompatible with a basic tenet of homeopathy and you’ve no way out without either denying that basic tenet or admitting that your claim is nonsense. So you tread water by keeping on repeating the claim.
It’s very entertaining.
October 7, 2008 at 10:34 pm
laughingmysocksoff
jeff garrington wrote:
Read what I wrote again. You’ve missed some critical details. These remedies were defined as the treatments applicable (all other aspects of the cases agreeing) to two separate and definable symptom pictures potentially manifesting in cases of chicken-pox. They were described in an earlier comment. Specifically,
These are the specific circumstances in which those remedies are applicable. They don’t come anywhere close to representing the entire range of potential chicken-pox manifestations, even if they tend to be relatively common ones. There are around 40 remedies recorded as acting curatively in chicken-pox. You still need to individualise.
You’re right though in focusing on acute epidemic disease as a suitable circumstance in which to trial homeopathy. And it’s been done: not as a deliberate trial of the therapy in limited test conditions, but in widespread practice throughout Europe and the US, all through the 19th and early 20th centuries. Lots of records available, the majority of which show a significant degree of consistency in the results, and in how those results compare to the conventional treatment of the day. As I said above
October 7, 2008 at 11:02 pm
M Simpson
There would be nothing unethical about doing a trial on childhood chicken pox because this is a condition which rapidly cures itself anyway. Children normally receive no ‘remedy’ and just wait out the disease for a week or two, emerging with no long-term effects, so those subjects receiving placebo would not suffer in any way.
And it’s not exactly hard to find subjects – every school and nursery in the land gets its own mini-epidemic of chicken pox on a regular basis.
October 8, 2008 at 7:28 am
jeff garrington
So these forty remedies, act depending upon individualization, as defined by you.
You take your child to a Homeopath with suspected chickenpox, you then take into consideration all of the symptoms as defined by Homeopathy and then begin to eliminate various remedies from the forty. At some stage you arrive at one, and the child within 48 hours shows no sign of developing a rash or other symptoms of chickenpox. You defined three as being suitable for specific circumstances as defined by yourself,” if you have a child with a compromised immune system or other circumstances in which it’s neither prudent nor humane to have them stick it out for 14 days and risk complications, then you can give Antimonium tartaricum in the first case (or possibly Antimonium crudum since there’s an insufficient level of differentiation in the handful of symptoms I listed) and Rhus toxicodendron in the second case and with a high degree of probability, both children will be over it inside 48 hours with no further complications. The degree of probability increases in direct proportion to the number of distinctive and characteristic symptoms of the remedy that are evident in the case, which is consistent with the highly specific and empirically-derived nature of homeopathic treatment.”
I would expect this to be taught on a University Degree course for Homeopathy, if a client exhibits symptoms of Chickenpox this is how we treat them, of course you still have the get out clause that we may not have noted all of the symptoms and as a result the child does develop chickenpox. However you seem confident enough that Homeopathy is effective, confidence derived from the “highly specific and empirically-derived nature of homeopathic treatment.”
What, from your case notes, well documented, as you state, is the percentage success rate in the 48 hour treatment of chickenpox.
October 8, 2008 at 8:29 am
laughingmysocksoff
Aye M Simpson, it’s indeed a dog eat foot world.
It seems to me that the real entertainment here lies in your ability to take what is sound, valid, accepted reasoning and practice in conventional medicine, polarise it beyond all recognition because it comes attached to the word ‘homeopathy’, and twist and turn it into a subject of ridicule!
As I said above, the process homeopaths go through to match a case to a remedy is identical to the process of making a conventional diagnosis. If you see elements of incompatibility and contradiction in the homeopathic process, then you must also presumably see them in conventional diagnostic reasoning. I hope you’re bringing this to the attention of the relevant people.
It’s not necessary for a person to exhibit 100% of the defining signs and symptoms of a named condition for a diagnosis of that condition to be made. One person could have symptoms p,q,t,u,x and y, while another might have r,s,v,w,y and z. What matters for the diagnosis is that, in aggregate, their symptom picture matches the recognised and established pattern for that condition. When GSAC says
it’s exactly the same thing. There’s no inconsistency or incompatibility in two individuals sharing a common symptom y but having a range of other symptoms which are different if those symptoms still conform to observed, recognised and accepted diagnostic criteria for the same condition. Or remedy.
Neither is there any inconsistency or incompatibility with the notion of individualisation or with the principle that symptom y is repeatedly, consistently and predictably cured by remedy x in specific and definable circumstances.
Viz …
Conventionally: symptom y, in the context of other symptoms which together comprise a representative picture of condition a, is repeatedly, consistently and predictably indicative of condition a.
Homeopathically: symptom y, in the context of other symptoms which together comprise a representative picture of remedy x, is repeatedly, consistently and predictably cured by remedy x.
Where’s the problem here?
October 8, 2008 at 12:04 pm
givescienceachance
I would add one point to lmso’s comment.
No system based on arbitrarily excluding information can claim the scientific high ground over another system based on including that information.
Many of the patient’s symptoms may be excluded as irrelevant when making a diagnosis of a condition, whereas ALL the symptoms have validity in identifying the homeopathic remedy. What makes this vast amount of information manageable is that there are principles which allow it to be organised and used. As a result, homeopathy turns the problem of individuality into a means of increasing the accuracy of treatment, and of “repeatedly, consistently and predictably” curing people.
What M Simpson is actually demanding is a laboratory example of the principle in action without any of the complications of individuality. This is impossible, since individuality is at the heart of the principle. You cannot match a symptom with a remedy, but have to compare complex sets of information (from the patient and from the remedies) in order to find the correspondence which indicates the correct remedy for that patient. The more you exclude information from either set, the less likely you are to produce an accurate (that is, a repeatable, consistent and predictable) result.
The DBRCT, as used in drug trials, attempts to deliver what M Simpson wants, but it fails, unable to eliminate side effects, rebound effects, and the whole problem of individuality of symptoms and of reaction.
October 8, 2008 at 1:44 pm
jeff garrington
GSAC, so remedy x is only effective for person y if the required number of symptom boxes are checked. Does it also follow that individual w showing symptoms of chickenpox would require a different remedy from patient y despite checking the same symptom boxes, or is it that the individuality can be overcome in many cases and as a result receive the same remedy as patient y, or is it always paramount.
LMSO suggests a list of 40 potential remedies for chickenpox three of which are more obviously used. From your experience of treating chickenpox, what is your average for selecting the correct remedy, given that all aspects of diagnosis and individuality have to be considered, is it 1 chance in forty, if wrong select another, or is it 1 chance in 3.
I presume this information is readily available to any Homeopath and that it isn’t relying simply on your experience, or opinion, but rather a collective body of, for want of a better word, evidence.
October 8, 2008 at 9:02 pm
givescienceachance
I’m sorry, jeff, but homeopathy is not “tick-box” medicine. It is orthodox diagnosis of a condition which is based on the “required number of symptoms” being identified. In one condition this means 6 out of 12 symptoms, so two patients with the same illness may not have any recognised symptoms the same.
The individuality evident in a case is seen not in the common symptoms, but in the those peculiar to the individual – as lmso pointed out. Just as they are peculiar to individuals, so they are also peculiar to remedies. A patient only exhibiting the common symptoms of a condition has a much poorer prognosis than one exhibiting many peculiarly individual symptoms, apart from the fact that finding the individual remedy is almost impossible. In general it is not quantity (total number of symptoms) that matters but quality (individuality of symptoms).
I see no purpose in providing unverifiable statistics which will only be denounced as anecdotal anyway. I can recommend “Homoeopathy for the First Aider” by Dr. Dorothy Shepherd as a source of such experience. She was an orthodox doctor who tried homeopathy and found that people got well very much more quickly with homeopathic treatment than they had with orthodox treatment.
October 8, 2008 at 10:06 pm
jeff garrington
So one remedy is not applicable for any condition as exhibited by different individuals. I’m confused, LMSO seemed quite definite as to how chickenpox can be treated within 48hrs.
I suggested a required number of symptoms boxes be checked, you disagreed, then suggested 6 out of 12. I wasn’t suggesting the same boxes be ticked, rather a, required grouping, that leads you to choose the correct remedy.
For example two children arrive with what would be seen as the onset of chickenpox, (symptoms as defined by regular medicine) Are you suggesting that each child would require a different remedy, and that each child, never the less, would recover in 48 hrs. Correct me if I’m wrong.
Moving on you mentioned in an earlier post the use of Homeopathy in first aid, “PS The answer to Andy’s question about undergraduate experiments is the use of homeopathy in first aid situations.”
Obviously you have to arrive at a remedy extremely quickly, do these remedies have to be selected using the protocol you outlined above, if not why not, I note that you failed to provide any examples when requested before, would you care to answer this question.
October 9, 2008 at 7:10 am
jeff garrington
Did some digging around on the good old internet.
Rhus Tox appears to be well documented and indicated for the conditions listed below. Am I correct in assuming that these are the symptoms required in order for Rhus Tox to be effective. No mention anywhere of 48 hours for the cure.
Also your quote “A patient only exhibiting the common symptoms of a condition has a much poorer prognosis than one exhibiting many peculiarly individual symptoms, apart from the fact that finding the individual remedy is almost impossible.” Doesn’t seem to hold much hope for the Mother presenting her child to you with Chickenpox. We can try this, if not that this, come back in three days, then we may try this, by then I should have individualized the remedy, 14 days later Homeopathy has cured the child of chickenpox.
Rhus tox. Rhus tox. is to be used in the homeopathic treatment of children afflicted with chicken pox which results in the formation of large vesicles on the skin, these vesicles are surrounded by red, inflamed and swollen tissue and occur all over the body. Physical symptoms experienced are the presence of a burning, itching or prickling feeling in the vesicle. The child also suffers from other conditions like ulcers and the vesicles may produce pus and can infect other children. The vesicles can crust over rapidly when scratched. A psychological symptom that is often prevalent in such children is that of extreme restlessness. Other physical symptoms are aching muscles and stiffness felt all over the body. The child craves food items like milk. The child may also contract a fever and suffers from lethargy. The condition of the child can greatly worsen during the night, on exposure to cold and damp weather, in the periods just after having taken rest, after washing the body and when starting to move after a period of rest, the symptoms can also increase in intensity if the child is given to scratching the vesicles and the sensation in the skin is comparable to ones felt during burns on the skin. The condition of the child can improve on using a hot compress as a topical measure on the skin, the condition of the child also improves if the child is given warmth, and the child can also get better if some rubbing and stretching of the body is carried out gently. The presence of one or more of these symptoms calls for the immediate use of Rhus tox. as a homeopathic remedy in the treatment of the infected child.
RHUS TOX: This is the most common remedy for chickenpox. These children experience intense itching, especially at night and from scratching. They are very restless. © Dana Ullman, M.P.H.
(Excerpted from Homeopathic Medicines for Children and Infants
Published by Tarcher/Putnam)
Rhus toxicodendron
This remedy is useful in cases of chicken pox with tremendous itching that is worse from scratching and relieved by warm baths or applying heat. The child may be very restless, both physically and mentally. The eyes may become inflamed and sticky. Muscles can ache and feel very stiff, also relieved by warmth and gentle motion. (Some homeopathic physicians recommend Rhus tox to people who have been exposed to chicken pox, to help prevent infection.)
October 14, 2008 at 8:50 am
laughingmysocksoff
Well Jeff, since you seem to have at least some genuine desire to try to understand …
Just as the defining diagnostic criteria for any named condition are a generalised assembly of the common symptoms of many individual cases, few of which will exhibit all of them, so it’s the case here. Rhus tox is a remedy with over 13,000 documented symptoms. This is a generalised picture of Rhus tox in cases of chicken pox. It presents a ‘typical’ picture. Individual cases will vary, but for the remedy to act well, they should match the overall Rhus tox pattern.
And no, no mention of 48 hours. Every case is unique and the time taken for the remedy to take full effect depends on a number of variables which can’t be predicted, eg. the general health of the child, the strength of characteristic (as opposed to common) symptoms, or the environment in which they live. However, it’s common enough experience among practitioners to find that where the child is otherwise in vigorous good health, where they don’t live in cold damp housing (aggravating conditions for someone exhibiting Rhus tox symptoms especially), and where the characteristic symptoms of the remedy are very clear, then a response of that order can be confidently anticipated. I gave this as an illustration specifically to underline that there is a marked difference in what happens after administration of a good remedy than would be expected from the ‘normal’ progression of the condition.
You would be extremely unlikely to find a case of chicken pox with no individualising symptoms. If you genuinely had a full blown case of chicken pox with no individualising symptoms whatsoever and no chronic history to take into account, then the remedy is still clear. You would give the nosode — a remedy made from the disease products — since there are no symptoms evidencing any state other than the pure disease state.
What is often hard for many people coming from a conventional mindset to get their heads around is i) the huge number of signs and symptoms that homeopaths take into account in any individual case of illness, ii) their subtlety and high degree of specificity, and iii) the fact that we don’t tend to see named conditions as things-in-themselves.
If you can grasp the full implications of the distinction between seeing chicken pox as a discrete viral entity visiting itself on a child, and seeing the child as the entity who has become a suitable ’soil’ in which the virus can thrive, then you might find the homeopathic perspective easier to understand. If the viral entity perspective alone were valid, then all children would produce symptoms of the disease on their first exposure to the virus. This plainly isn’t the case. This is why homeopathy focuses on changing the condition of the ’soil’, not on annihilating the virus.
Frequently, the biggest hurdle to finding the right remedy is that people haven’t observed themselves or their children carefully enough to be able to provide sufficiently characteristic information. Here the homeopath has to employ a best guess based on their own observations, just as a GP/MD would do (or may even use that very inability to describe the symptoms in any useful detail as a symptom in itself — most people, when carefully questioned, are at least capable of some differentiation). For instance, asking the child to open their mouths and spotting the characteristic Rhus tox red-tipped tongue would be a strong indication to prescribe Rhus tox on, provided all other observable symptoms agreed with that choice of remedy.
Or it may mean trial and error and it may mean that the disease simply follows its natural progression. That’s just how it goes. There are no guarantees in medicine. However, it would be a pretty stupid homeopath who claimed that homeopathy had ‘cured’ the chicken pox in such an instance. The point to take on board here is that where characteristic symptoms of an individual remedy are clearly evident, the ‘normal’ progression of the complaint can be confidently, significantly and consistently shortened. You will find evidence of this in all manner of ‘conditions’ throughout homeopathic case history.
October 14, 2008 at 12:55 pm
jeff garrington
Many thanks for the reply, a few things come to mind.
‘If you can grasp the full implications of the distinction between seeing chicken pox as a discrete viral entity visiting itself on a child, and seeing the child as the entity who has become a suitable ’soil’ in which the virus can thrive, then you might find the homeopathic perspective easier to understand.’
I studied Traditional Chinese Medicine for a while and see your description as being quite similar to an imbalance in energy or Chi. In TCM you would use various means involving touch, smell, questioning of symptoms, observation etc to arrive at the nature of the imbalance and treat accordingly to restore the balance. So I think I understand the Homeopathic perspective, you observe the condition of the “soil” and treat accordingly, if your observations are correct, the patient recovers.
“It’s not necessary for a person to exhibit 100% of the defining signs and symptoms of a named condition for a diagnosis of that condition to be made. One person could have symptoms p,q,t,u,x and y, while another might have r,s,v,w,y and z. What matters for the diagnosis is that, in aggregate, their symptom picture matches the recognised and established pattern for that condition.”
So if you exhibit symptoms p.q.t.u.x and y, or other symptoms that conform to the administering of Rhus Tox. Are you still saying that within 48 hours all symptoms and signs of the “disturbance of the soil”, have gone. “Repeatedly, consistently and predictably”.
GSAC says, “What makes this vast amount of information manageable is that there are principles which allow it to be organised and used. As a result, homeopathy turns the problem of individuality into a means of increasing the accuracy of treatment, and of “repeatedly, consistently and predictably” curing people.”
So if you can accurately define when a treatment is applicable, using your principals. How would the substitution of the remedy for a placebo make a trial and its results unreliable. Since if you observe correctly, the results are predictable, consistent and repeatable.
October 15, 2008 at 1:49 am
ez
Jeff,
Like someone said somewhere else concerning this sort of design of a trial, you’ll be testing the ability of a particular homeopath to select the remedy (along with the propensity of the patient to get treated effectively) – and not the homeopathy as such, have you considered this aspect? Some people (homeopaths) have a better grasp at remedies and ways of assessing the patients than others, so you will obviously obtain almost surely different results in a trial with exactly the same design if you decide to repeat it with a different homeopath (unless the other homeopath is of the same “caliber” as the original one, but how will you select them?), maybe it will be a good measure of homeopath’s abilities, but that’s not what you aim at, is it?
October 15, 2008 at 7:04 am
M Simpson
EZ, if you want to test something which involves an element of skill, you test the people who are best at it.
In any case, it’s not absolute consistency of results in a trial which would demonstrate that homeopathy works, it’s an average result which is consistently better than one would expect if homeopathy didn’t work (ie. placebo). Any homeopath should be able to manage that, otherwise what are people paying them for?
October 15, 2008 at 7:16 am
jeff garrington
EZ surely its a skill, claimed by GSAC and LMSO that all Homeopaths posses, isn’t that why Homeopathy is so effective.
Once again, “What makes this vast amount of information manageable is that there are principles which allow it to be organised and used. As a result, homeopathy turns the problem of individuality into a means of increasing the accuracy of treatment, and of “repeatedly, consistently and predictably” curing people.”
As M Simpson says, we would look for the average. That would cater for the inexperienced Homeopath.
Are you suggesting that a percentage of people are wasting their time visiting Homeopaths, because it can’t be seen to be, repeatable, consistent and predictable.
October 15, 2008 at 1:12 pm
laughingmysocksoff
Many thanks Jeff for a conversation free of gratuitous insults, snide remarks, and insane polarisation, and conducted in what appears to be a genuine desire to understand.
You said
I addressed that one in the post you were replying to. The 48-hour timescale depends on a number of other variables. To repeat — “it’s common enough experience among practitioners to find that where the child is otherwise in vigorous good health, where they don’t live in cold damp housing (aggravating conditions for someone exhibiting Rhus tox symptoms especially), and where the characteristic symptoms of the remedy are very clear, then a response of that order can be confidently anticipated.” I should have said there too that the stage the chicken pox has got to when the remedy is administered is also relevant. Catch something in the earlier stages and the response can be even faster.
This is no more and no less of a statement than any conventional physician could make about any well tried and tested conventional drug. There are simply too many variables involved in individual cases of illness to make predictions in the way you can about closed mechanical systems.
Well this is just the very dilemma, isn’t it? The results we get reliably, consistently and repeatedly in the clinic and in clinical studies are not being repeated in trials.
Hence the two major opposing conclusions. Firstly — the sceptical one — that the whole of homeopathic case history means nothing and the trials are telling the truth. Secondly — the homeopathic position — that the trials are meaningless and case history is where it’s at. Neither of these, IMO anyway, is an appropriate tack to be taking to find a solution to the dilemma this situation poses.
If we assume that the primary data — case history — has at least the validity that it’s normally accorded in conventional medicine, then if we get equivocal results in trials — which, lest the subject of this post is entirely lost, is incontrovertibly the situation we have — we surely have to question the assumptions on which the trials are based? Equivocal results tend to indicate inadequate control of variables more than anything.
As Hahnemann clearly stated right from the word go, homeopathy is based on “immaterial substance”. In other words, there’s nothing material in those sugar pills. He knew this. We know this. You know this. So why the arguments surrounding homeopathy are based on an assumption of material effect and tested as if there is one, when plainly there isn’t one and one has never been claimed, is beyond me. Looks to me as if we’ve all allowed our cultural bias towards an exclusively material focus in our daily lives to muddy our thinking hugely here. On both sides.
Testing one little sugar pill against another little sugar pill is an appropriate test ONLY if the effect of what you’re testing resides wholly and completely within said sugar pill. If the effect is not entirely localised to the sugar pill, then how on earth can you expect any kind of crystal clear result from placebo testing? What you’re going to end up with is exactly what we have. A whole bunch of equivocal results. Look at the percentage of placebo responders in these trials! Doesn’t it tip you off to the possibility that some of the treatment effect is getting to them regardless?
This effect is also evident in conventional trials (as it should be if it’s a genuine phenomenon). We call it “placebo effect” and then seem to lose track of its full implications. What it says to me is that there’s a whole dimension to medical treatment that we’re missing here. The results over and above placebo that have come to be seen as acceptable for the testing of conventional drugs merely reflect the fact that more of their effect is localised to the pill because they’re material treatments. When you’re dealing with an immaterial treatment, then you can’t apply the same criteria. And with the focus always on the drug response rather than the placebo response, we’re overlooking the need to study this effect rigorously to understand what it involves. It’s not all self-delusion.
This is why I’ve argued elsewhere on this blog that the only sort of trial setup I can envisage which would provide an adequate test of homeopathy is where the entire treatment experience is randomised to placebo. In other words, those allocated placebo would go through a dummy consultation with an actor rather than a homeopath.
October 15, 2008 at 5:30 pm
Derrik
laughingmysocksoff
Your reason for rejecting clinical trials would render the consequences of picking the “wrong” remedy for a patient so negligible as to be indiscernible, after all you can’t detect it with a large trial, however, you have evidence that in practice homeopaths frequently decide they have given the wrong remedy, see posts passim, therefore your reason for rejecting clinical trials is inconsistent with current homeopathic practice.
October 15, 2008 at 11:21 pm
givescienceachance
To approach the question from a different angle from LMSO. The point of a randomised trial is to balance unknown factors. The problem is that if the factors are unknown, you cannot be sure that you have balanced them, and neither can you be sure that the sample used is even large enough to enable a balance to be possible. This is why such trials have only statistical results, rather than the clear and definite results of scientific tests.
In a true scientific test the factors are identified and either eliminated or calculated for, so that only a precise unknown factor is studied. If there are variable results, this means that more than one factor is involved, and methods have to be found to separate these factors out so that they can be investigated individually.
When a homeopath decides on a remedy they go through a process of defining the factors leading to the prescription and so performing the latter type of experiment. When the result is unexpected, it means that some factor has been overlooked and the case has to be re-examined to find this crucial factor. In effect, every prescription in homeopathy is a test of the laws governing their actions – a rigorous individual trial of the science. Identifying the salient factors is a skill, and any skill has to be learned and can be improved on, so some homeopaths will be better than others at handling more difficult cases quickly and effectively.
Lastly, RCTs are fine IF they are structured with sufficient rigour, that is so that they test a single factor, since they will then produce the same clarity of result. The trouble is, as I have said, that in medicine they are rarely based on a rigorous analysis of all the factors, but rather on the assumption that the unknown factors will cancel out. The evidence is that this assumption is wrong.
October 16, 2008 at 8:30 am
Derrik
GSAC:
“This is why such trials have only statistical results, rather than the clear and definite results of scientific tests.”
I think this may be where you are miss understanding science. ALL scientific results are statistical results. All decisions to accept or reject hypothesis are made tentatively, on the basis of sadly incomplete information. This is because the world is a complex place where multiple hidden variables effect an experiment and truly random effects in measurement further obscure the picture. Science is about understanding and quantifying the uncertainty around any given measure. Science is about the error bar and the validation, about imagining how things might be other than one first thought. Scientific results are the balance of uncertainty not eternal definite truths.
Single experiments can’t tell us much on their own, they have to be interpreted against the backdrop of all other experiments. This is what gives science its strength. Particular measurements are taken using a number of different approaches, if they are close then we think perhaps we have a reasonable useful estimate of the thing measured. See here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:1000_Year_Temperature_Comparison.png.
for a graph showing different attempts to estimate the historical temperature of the globe. Look how different they are! Picking through such data is the bread and butter of science.
I’ll pinch a comparison from Bertrand Russell. Philosophies, built logically from a few starting premises are strong if the premises are correct, but if one starting premise is wrong the whole thing falls down. I think all three of the starting premises of homeopathy are wrong. Science is the other way around, every part of it is connected by several investigations to the physical world around us. If a part of it turns out to be wrong, as it frequently does, this does not bring the whole edifice down because it is buttressed by so much data. One concept can be slipped out and replace with another neatly and simpley like replaceing a computer on a network with minimal impact on the rest of the system.
By the same token the result of a single experiment can not overturn inferences made on the basis of ten thousand others which is why studying several results in a meta-analysis gives more insight into what’s going on than a single study. This is why if homeopathy were to have a scientific basis it would need not just one or two disjointed positive studies but a proper body of work checking and rechecking every connection that must be made for the homeopathic theory to be accepted. After 200 years with no such body of work I’m inclined to think this body of work doesn’t exist because the theory is not bourn out by the facts.
To return to your post you seem to be mostly talking about experimental design. The idea that you could control every factor in any but the most simple high school demonstration experiment is a forlorn hope. This is why one of the key elements of experimental design goes into making sampling truly random, so that unkown factors will cancel out, as you say. This is difficult and there are many subtle ways that can some common feature can be brought into the groups, introducing bias to an experiment. This potential for the experiment to introduce bias is why methods must be published in articals and why the conclusions made by all papers are open to question. Crucially for homeopathy though, such common features will make the groups more different than they ought to be and hence return an apparent difference between groups that might erroneously be attributed to your intervention. What these unknown factors won’t do, however, is make groups seem more the same than they are in reality, which is what you think is happening in tests of homeopathy.
There is a huge body of work in the statistical literature dealing with randomisation. What evidence, apart from RCT’s failure to detect any effect of homeopathic treatment, do you have that it is wrong?
As an aside, I find your second paragraph quite amusing. A holistic healer making a case for naive reductionism! Whatever next
October 16, 2008 at 2:14 pm
jeff garrington
LMSO says, “As Hahnemann clearly stated right from the word go, homeopathy is based on “immaterial substance”. In other words, there’s nothing material in those sugar pills. He knew this. We know this. You know this. So why the arguments surrounding homeopathy are based on an assumption of material effect and tested as if there is one, when plainly there isn’t one and one has never been claimed, is beyond me.” But surely each pill has its own individual characteristics, its own uniqueness, you are suggesting that this uniqueness is not material. But it can still be altered by dilution and shaking. What is being altered if it’s not material?
Pharmacies caution against exposing the pills to certain solutions or electronic signals etc, suggesting that the active ingredient of the pill can be damaged, doesn’t this suggests something material being altered, or is it the immaterial that is fragile and the immaterial that can be diluted and shaken to increase its potency?
So as I understand it, something material passes through a process that makes it effective as a non material active substance, still retaining the characteristics of the original, (like cures like) these characteristics are only of use providing a Homeopath spots all the required signs that make the pill effective and is administered by a Homeopath.
So I would imagine you would be against the sale of a Homeopathic
Over the counter remedy, “Malaria X is a homeopathic preparation for prevention of malaria and treatment of malaria. Suitable for children. For prevention. Only 1 pill each week before entering, during and after leaving malaria risk areas. For treatment. Take 1 pill every 1-3 hours during a malaria attack. Advantages: These tiny homeopathic sugar-based* pills are easy to take, even children love to take them. Another advantage is that you “stretch” the remedy by using 1 pill to make medicated water. This water would then be taken in sip-doses, once an hour or so. Method: drop 1 pill into a ½ -litre of water. Shake vigourously up-and-down 10 times. You can now use this homeopathically-medicated water to dispense teaspoon doses to a large number of people for prevention, or alternatively, use it during treatment of an attack by taking teaspoon doses every 1-3 hours, as needed.
Would you LMSO endorse its use.
October 16, 2008 at 3:02 pm
Derrek
“Lastly, RCTs are fine IF they are structured with sufficient rigour, that is so that they test a single factor,”
This is wrong as well, and goes to the heart of why randomisation is a vital part of experimental design. If you try and control all factors you will infact control only those you can think of or already know about, there will inevitably be some you don’t know about. These unkown factors will distort your results. The way to minimise this is to use randomisation. You are right that some random effect, perhaps one a-typical individual, can skew results. This is only a problem if you use nothing more sophisticated than an off the shelf t-test. There are a whole host of clever tools for looking at the structure of data. You can look at the homogenaity of variance for example, you can look for outliers, you can test the normality of your data…
The best thing is to do a pilot study on the system you want to experiment with and study the data returned with no intervention. Then look at the structure of the data, select an apropriate statistical test, do a power calculation and design an experiment with suficient power to see the effect you expect. Your very grand rejections of methods on philosophical grounds don’t really engage with experimental science as it is practiced.
October 16, 2008 at 10:16 pm
BadlyShavedMonkey
“Because an effect from homeopathic treatment has been observed and recorded, consistently, predictably and with replicability, in thousands of cases over the course of 200 years, some mechanism to explain this is required.”
After all the foregoing, I still see no evidence advanced in support of this claim.
What is the term used for an assertion made without regard for its basis in truth? Bullshit.
Please provide some evidence in support of the specific claim or admit it is bullshit.
October 16, 2008 at 11:29 pm
laughingmysocksoff
Derrik wrote
I’m having enormous difficulty trying to make sense of what you’re saying here, so if I don’t address your point, that’s because I haven’t understood it.
Firstly, I’m not rejecting clinical trials. They are what they are, and they have their uses. I’m questioning the interpretation of them, which is another matter entirely. And what I’m saying above is the results are exactly what would be expected if the underlying scenario is as I suggest.
As you so rightly say later on (though just remember that this cuts both ways!)
The results in clinical trials of homeopathy are not negligible. The vast majority show effect, but in aggregate it’s a small effect over and above placebo. But if “placebo” is effectively acting as a lesser dose of the same medicine, then you’re not looking at “no effect”. You’re looking only at a slight additional effect that’s directly attributable to the sugar pill itself. I, for one, would like to see some thorough analysis of the extent of “placebo effect” operating in CAM trials vs conventional trials. If there is a consistent and significant difference, then this needs to be investigated because it means that the uncertainty around the measures being used hasn’t been adequately understood or quantified.
There’s nothing here that seems to me to be remotely inconsistent with current homeopathic practice. You’ll have to spell that bit out for me I’m afraid.
Jeff wrote
Yes. Exactly how this happens, and by what mechanism it retains those characteristics, we have no knowledge (though a lot of different theories). All we know is that it does. This fact was originally discovered by experimentation and has been repeatedly and consistently replicated for the last 200 years.
Kind of. A homeopath doesn’t need to spot all the required signs and symptoms, only enough of the most characteristic ones. If a child is constantly restless, won’t settle in any position, keeps getting out of bed at night plagued by anxieties and an inexplicable sense of foreboding, perspires a lot everywhere except on their face, has a tendency to a nervous kind of shuddering when they get out of bed in the morning, has a triangular red-tip to their tongue, and all their symptoms are much worse in the cold and damp and for getting wet, I don’t need to know they’ve got chicken pox to prescribe Rhus tox. Neither does it need to be a homeopath that administers the remedy. There are some very good self-help manuals for acute prescribing in minor injuries and childhood illnesses and many people have made successful use of them.
No I wouldn’t.
October 17, 2008 at 9:16 am
jeff garrington
I presume you mean, you wouldn’t endorse its use. Why not.
October 17, 2008 at 11:21 am
Derrik
I’m sorry I’m not clear enough. I will try harder.
I am really interested in the reasons you think a placebo arm of a trial should involve actors rather than homeopaths proscribing the pills. Do you think there would be an undetectable difference in outcome for patients proscribed a remedy by a homeopath and receiving one made with the the correct starting material, succession and being proscribed a remedy by a homeopath and being given a pill prepared from deionized water?
October 31, 2008 at 6:00 am
James Pannozzi
laughingmysocksoff stated:
“There are some very good self-help manuals for acute prescribing in minor injuries and childhood illnesses and many people have made successful use of them.”
I’ve been meaning to ask you what Homeopathy books you might suggest, including those regarding acute prescribing,
for both the general reader and for those who wish a wee bit more detail. I’ve been sampling the old Homeopathy books available from Google book search. Some of them are surprisingly detailed and interesting though badly out of date.
thanks.
November 3, 2008 at 12:57 pm
laughingmysocksoff
Sorry for the delay getting back to you folks — been snowed under with work again.
jeff wrote:
Personally speaking, homeoprophylaxis doesn’t make much sense to me. I prefer to work with what’s manifest and which I can prescribe for with a much higher degree of confidence. There are others who specialise in homeoprophylaxis and claim success for their methods. I can’t comment on those as I have no experience of them, and I don’t endorse anything I haven’t checked out and investigated thoroughly for myself.
Homeoprophylaxis doesn’t make much sense to me because homeopathy treats the patient, not the disease. It’s an individualised therapy which is at its most effective when used in response to an individual case of illness with a prescription selected according to the characteristic symptoms displayed by that individual. If you don’t have any symptoms of illness, then you’ve nothing to prescribe on.
Homeoprophylaxis is based on the generalised symptoms of the complaint. Homeopathy is much less effective when prescribed on general rather than characteristic symptoms because you’re not matching the individual with the specifics of their individual case of illness. And even though epidemic diseases have a much more universal and limited range of symptom expression compared to chronic complaints, there is invariably more than one remedy applicable. Which one would you prescribe prophylactically? You could get lucky, but it’s all a bit too hit and miss for my liking.
November 3, 2008 at 1:25 pm
laughingmysocksoff
Derrik wrote:
Because there has been a kind of ‘field effect’ noted repeatedly with homeopathic provings whereby people peripherally involved with the proving, but who haven’t taken the remedy themselves, produce unusual and distinctive symptoms which are characteristic of the proving. Patients have also frequently reported experiencing a marked improvement in their symptoms from a distinct point in time which occurs before they take the remedy. The start of this improvement frequently correlates with the moment when the homeopath decides which remedy they’re going to prescribe.
So if there is a non-local treatment effect operating in homeopathy (which is presently lumped in with ‘placebo’) then it needs to be adequately controlled for if you are conducting a trial to test the effectiveness of homeopathy as a therapy.
(See Harald Walach’s work, eg. The Efficacy Paradox in Randomized Controlled Trials of CAM and Elsewhere: Beware of the Placebo Trap. The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine. June 2001: 213-218.
Generalized Entanglement: A New Theoretical Model for Understanding the Effects of Complementary and Alternative Medicine. The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine. June 2005: 549-559.)
November 3, 2008 at 1:48 pm
laughingmysocksoff
James wrote:
Don’t dismiss the old books! They may be lacking the modern remedies and some modern scientific terminology, but illness is illness and even if we change the way we describe it or model it in different ways, it is what it is. What worked well for homeopaths 150 years ago in acute situations continues to work just as well today. The old authors were often brilliant observers of the fine distinctions between remedy states, so they’re well worth reading. It’s a skill that’s not so common these days with our tendency to focus on the labels, quick fixes and a one-size-fits-all approach to medicine, but immersing yourself in these old books is a very good way to sharpen your own abilities to perceive these subtle differentiations.
For modern self-help manuals, personally I don’t think you can do much better than Miranda Castro’s “The Complete Homeopathy Handbook”. It’s a very good basic introduction to the therapy as well.
And if you want the real nuts and bolts, then go to the source — Hahnemann’s Organon of Medicine 6th edition. It’s available online.
November 3, 2008 at 4:53 pm
jeff garrington
A number of points:
“Patients have also frequently reported experiencing a marked improvement in their symptoms from a distinct point in time which occurs before they take the remedy. The start of this improvement frequently correlates with the moment when the homeopath decides which remedy they’re going to prescribe.”
Is it not possible that the patient is getting better any way?
Also, I presume you now understand why people are alarmed about Homeopathy being used in Africa for Malaria and the lack of control by various societies over their members, life threatening, activities.
Finally a link to a discussion about the papers referenced by you.
http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=112312
In particular: “Walach’s contribution to the debate actually makes a lot of sense. His key point is that our “debate” is not about data, but about beliefs and world views. This is certainly true. ”
Any comments?
November 4, 2008 at 9:38 am
jeff garrington
Sorry one more point,
“Milgrom still doesn’t get it: the double slit experiment stops working as soon as it becomes possible to know which slit the particle went through whether or not anyone actually knows it [37]. In a DBRCT, the person in charge always has the key regarding who got verum and who got placebo. From the point of view of the patient and practitioner the key might be like a set of “hidden variables” and entanglement should not occur anyway [27,29]. (I’m indebted to this comment for pointing this out.) You can’t get all post-modern about knowledge when experiments [28,29,37] make it this clear.” http://shpalman.livejournal.com/11213.html
I take this to mean that if you have the possibility of knowing the correct remedy, then entanglement cannot happen.
Again any comments.
November 5, 2008 at 3:06 pm
James Pannozzi
To laughingmysocksoff:
Many thanks for your book suggestions.
I continue to explore the vast treasure of old Homeopathy books in google book search. Several books mentioned by Dr. Margaret Tyler in her wonderful “Homeopathic Drug Pictures” (I don’t think that one is available in Google), such as “Cyclopeida of Drug Pathogenesy” by Allens (4 volumes) and Constantine Herring’s Materia Medica (about 10 volumes), are all sitting there on the google servers waiting to be downloaded or read.
I have also discoverd Burnett, Kent and others – they are starting to become familiar friends for spare time reading and yes there is an enormous wealth of medical wisdom waiting for any who wish to learn.
December 2, 2008 at 9:37 pm
paul
Having been looking around various blogs i have found these at Mr Bob Leckeridge.
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/extract/337/oct30_1/a2281
http://www.politics.co.uk/opinion-formers/press-releases/royal-college-physicians-sir-michael-rawlins-attacks-traditional-ways-assessing-evidence-$1245035$365674.htm
Bothese articles would appear to bring into doubt the value of conventional trials and also add that increased value should be placed upon other forms of evidence. Mmmmmm, interesting. Isn’t this what homeopaths have been trying to say all along.
Also James with regard to books my recommendation would be to get to know the works of Hahnemann, Kent, Dudgeon, Close, Roberts etc. They will give you a firm foundation in what is described as classical homeopathy. Read these beforer the more modern additions.
Regards