I didn’t write this article. It’s from the website Suppressed Science. I’m posting it here in the interests of raising public awareness of this increasingly common and rather unpleasant condition. We’re already aware of its non-self-limiting nature — sufferers have clearly demonstrated their incapacity to limit its effects to themselves — and so far there’s no evidence of it being curable.
It should not be confused with scepticaemia, the condition of having doubt in the blood. Scepticaemia is essentially healthy. DD Scientismic fascistitis.
Contributions from other homeopaths on candidates for genus epidemicus remedies are welcome.
[The following article was inspired by an article by Dr. Robert L.Park, a spokesman for the American Physical Society, titled Seven Warning Signs of Bogus Science.]
Seven Warning Signs of Bogus Skepticism
The progress of science depends on a finely tuned balance between open-mindedness and skepticism. Be too open minded, and you’ll accept wrong claims. Be too skeptical, and you’ll reject genuine new discoveries. Proper skepticism must be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Unfortunately, much of what comes out of the “skeptical” community these days is not proper skepticism, but all-out, fundamentalist disbelief. Such skepticism can be called pseudo-skepticism, pathological skepticism or bogus skepticism.
Here are seven major warning signs of bogus skepticism.
1. The Skeptic has reached her skeptical opinion not after careful research and examination of the claim, but simply based on media reports and other forms of second-hand knowledge.
Example: Pathological cold fusion skeptic Robert L. Park revealed in his March 1st 2002 What’s New column that Science was going to publish an article on Sonofusion, and that even though he had not seen the paper, talked to the researchers or conducted any personal research in the area, he already knew that the Sonofusion discovery would turn out to be “a repeat of the cold fusion fiasco”. Park used every bit of influence he had in a behind-the-scenes attempt to kill the paper. Luckily, the Science editor didn’t cave and decided to publish.
2. Making uncontrolled criticisms. A criticism is uncontrolled if the same criticism could equally be applied to accepted science.
For example, Park makes such a criticism in his book Voodoo Science (p.199). In the context of a discussion of an obviously pseudoscientific Good Morning America report on anomalous phenomena (debunkery by association: as if TV shows were the principal outlet for reporting the results of psi research!), Park writes
Why, you may wonder, all this business of random machines? Jahn has studied random number generators, water fountains in which the subject tries to urge drops to greater heights, all sorts of machines. But it is not clear that any of these machines are truly random. Indeed, it is generally believed that there are no truly random machines. It may be, therefore, that the lack of randomness only begins to show up after many trials. Besides, if the mind can influence inanimate objects, why not simply measure the static force the mind can exert? Modern ultramicrobalances can routinely measure a force of much less than a billionth of an ounce. Why not just use your psychokinetic powers to deflect a microbalance? It’s sensitive, simple, even quantitative, with no need for any dubious statistical analysis.
Where does Park’s assessment that effects that are only indirectly detected, by statistical analysis, are suspect, leave conventional science? Deprived of one of its most powerful tools of analysis. The cherished 1992 COBE discovery of minute fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background radiation would have to be thrown out, since it was entirely statistical in nature, and therefore by Park’s argument, ‘dubious’. The most celebrated discoveries of particle physics, such as the 1995 discovery of the top quark, or the results of neutrino detection experiments, or the synthesis of superheavy, extremely short-lived elements, would have to be thrown out, since they, too, are indirect and statistical in nature. Modern medicine would have to be invalidated as well because it relies on statistical analysis (of double- blind trials) to prove the efficacy of drugs.
For comparison: the American Institute of Physics’s Bulletin of Physics News, #216, March 3, 1995 gives the odds against chance for the top quark discovery as a million to one. A 1987 meta-analysis performed by Dean Radin and Roger Nelson of RNG (random number generator) experiments between 1959 and 1987 , on the other hand, shows the existence of an anomalous deviation from chance with odds against chance exceeding one trillion to one (see Radin, The Conscious Universe, p. 140).
Park’s argument is the quintessential uncontrolled criticism: accepted scientific methods that constitute the backbone of modern science suddenly become questionable when they are used on phenomena that don’t fit his ideological predilections.
3. The Pseudoskeptical Catch-22: “unconventional claims have to be proved before they can be investigated!” This way, of course, they will never be investigated or proved.
Parapsychology has been significantly hampered by this pseudoskeptical attitude. Pseudoskeptics complain that effect sizes are not bigger; but at the same time, they scream bloody murder if any grant-making agency even so much considers doing something about it. Radin writes in The Conscious Universe:
The tactics of the extreme skeptics have been more than merely annoying. The professional skeptic’s aggressive public labeling of parapsychology as a “pseudoscience”, implying fraud or incompetence on the part of the researchers, has been instrumental in preventing this research from taking place at all.
A similar situation exists in the new energy field. Pseudoskeptics like Robert L. Park are not content just dismissing things like cold fusion; they put massive pressure on policy makers and government to obstruct efforts to prove them wrong. Park’s successful lobbying of the US patent office to withdraw Randall Mill’s Black Light patent (which had already been approved) comes to mind as an example.
4. Evidence of refutal is anecdotal or otherwise scientifically worthless. Pseudoskeptics tend to accept conventional “explanations” for unconventional phenomena very easily, no matter how weak, contrived or far-fetched. A good historical example is the rejection of the crop circle phenomenon.
Doug Bower and David Chorley claimed in 1991 that they had created all of the British crop circles since 1978 (all 2000 of them). This was an extraordinary claim of the highest order. Two old men claimed that for over a decade, they have been creating circles and geometrical designs whose complexity defies easy geometrical construction in crops, but they were never able to demonstrate that they can do what they claim they could do. Any true skeptic would have rejected Bower’s and Chorley’s claim, since “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”. Yet, the organized skeptics endorsed the claims enthusiastically and denounced the whole crop circle phenomenon a proven hoax.
5. The Skeptic rejects a discovery or invention merely because it has been believed for a long time that such a thing as the claimed discovery or invention is impossible.
This is the sole basis for the pseudoskeptical claim that, for example, a perpetuum mobile of the second kind is impossible. Park, for example, writes the following ignorant tirade in his 9/24/1999 What’s New Column:
PERPETUUM MOBILE: BETTING AGAINST THE LAWS OF THERMODYNAMICS.
Most free energy scams invoke outlandish new physics: cold fusion, hydrinos, zero-point energy, gravity shields, antimatter. But there are also throwbacks to the 19th Century that directly challenge the laws of thermodynamics. Physics Today carried a full-page ad for Entropy Systems, Inc. describing a heat engine that runs off ambient heat. It’s hardly a new idea. Two years ago Better World Technologies was touting the “Fisher engine” that violated the Second Law (WN 18 Jul 97). But it wasn’t new then either–it was the “zero motor,” invented by John Gamgee in 1880. It didn’t work then either, but Gamgee sold it to the U.S. Navy anyway.
Park’s sole argument appears to be that We Have Always Believed The Second Law Is Correct, So It Has To Be. Physicists who actually investigate this question without preconceived notions of what is possible or impossible have reached very different conclusions. D.P. Sheehan, A.R. Putnam and J.H. Wrighty of the University of San Diego write in a recent paper titled A Solid-State Maxwell Demon:
Over the last ten years, an unprecedented number of challenges have been leveled against the absolute status of the second law of thermodynamics. During this period, roughly 40 papers have appeared in the general literature [e.g., 1- 20], representing more than a dozen distinct challenges; the publication rate is increasing. Recently, for the first time, a major scientic press has commissioned a monograph on the the subject and a first international conference has been convened to examine these challenges. (..) The genealogy of the Maxwell demon thus split into those that relied on sentient processes (e.g., intelligent active measurement, calculation, or microscopic manipulation), and those that did not. The former line has largely died out owing to advances in information theory [26], but the latter survived and now poses the most serious threat to the absolute status of the second law.
Future historians of science may well put the second “law” in the same category as “heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible”. An expression of contemporary scientific prejudice and lack of technological sophistication, not an eternal law of nature.
6. The Skeptic claims that the claimed effect contradicts the “laws of nature” (and therefore has to be wrong, since the Skeptic and the scientific community he presumes to represent have of course already complete knowledge of the laws of nature).
For example, in a personal note published on James Randi’s Website, Robert Park makes the following statement about the “Motionless Electromagnetic Generator”, a claimed free energy device:
I’ve been following the MEG claim since Patent 6,362,718 was issued in the spring (What’s New 4 Apr 02). The claim, of course, is preposterous. It is a clear violation of the conservation of energy.
But Park is only demolishing a straw man. The first law of thermodynamics states that the energy of a closed system is conserved. But the inventors of the MEG claim that their device takes energy from the zero-point field of the vacuum, thereby conserving the energy of the total system (which in this case would be the MEG and the surrounding vacuum). Whether it can actually do that is an open question. But the existence of the Casimir force proves that in principle such extraction of energy from the vacuum is possible (even though the energy that can be gained from the Casimir force between two plates is negligible). Therefore, one cannot dismiss claims for free energy devices such as the MEG on a priori grounds of energy conservation. Since Park is a physicists, he could not possibly be unaware of this. By stating that the claimed invention contradicts the law of energy conservation, he intentionally misrepresents the claims of the MEG inventors. They do not claim to have found a way around the first law; they merely claim to have accessed a source of energy not previously accessible to human technology.
7. The Skeptic believes in scientific mob rule. “In Science, the Majority Consensus is Always Right”.
The unfortunate reality is that there is a complex sociology of science. Scientific truth is frequenly not determined by right or wrong, but by ego, prestige, authority of claimants, conflicts of interests and economic agendas. Scientists who propose research that threatens the viability of basic theories on which authorities in the field have built their careers, and governments and corporations have bet lots of money will find themselves out of a job very soon. The list of of great scientists who became scientific outcasts after they published research that contradicts establishment dogma is long, and includes such names as Peter Duesberg, Brian Josephson, Jacques Benveniste, and of course Professors Pons and Fleischmann.
© 2004. This text may be freely copied and/or reposted as long as it is not changed and reproduced in its entirety.
51 comments
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January 9, 2008 at 1:00 pm
Rich Scopie
Where does “The skeptic dismisses claims due to all evidence pointing the outlandishness of that claim, while no evidence is produced to back it up.” fit into this?
January 9, 2008 at 11:41 pm
laughingmysocksoff
Search me Rich. That comment doesn’t apply to homeopathy. There’s a wealth of evidence. Pseudoscepticaemics’ refusal to accept it (for reasons which are logically indefensible) doesn’t make it no evidence.
January 10, 2008 at 2:23 pm
skelliot
No matter what you say if you PROVE something then it’s true. Prove something to the skeptical community and then they will accept it. Until then its up for scrutiny. This is the way of the scientific method.
January 11, 2008 at 12:50 pm
Rich Scopie
Minor point. There’s a wealth of anecdote, but no actual evidence to back up any claim that it has more than a placebo effect. I’m still waiting for properly documented evidence (actual medical records) of homeopathy curing a non-self-limiting condition (cancer or something), and homeopathy being the only possible cure – not being taken alongside chemotherapy or something.
January 11, 2008 at 1:57 pm
openmind
2. Making uncontrolled criticisms. A criticism is uncontrolled if the same criticism could equally be applied to accepted science.
This is irrational. If I were to look into the claims of homeopathy would I not be able to criticise poor trials, just because there are poor trials in ‘accepted science’?
3. The Pseudoskeptical Catch-22: “unconventional claims have to be proved before they can be investigated!” This way, of course, they will never be investigated or proved.
That would be a stupid thing to insist, how do you prove something without investigating it? Interestingly the parapsychology example given is not an example of this so-called Catch 22, it’s merely an example of skeptics criticising experimental procedures.
4. Evidence of refutal is anecdotal or otherwise scientifically worthless. Pseudoskeptics tend to accept conventional “explanations” for unconventional phenomena very easily, no matter how weak, contrived or far-fetched. A good historical example is the rejection of the crop circle phenomenon.
Remarkable claims require remarkable proofs. Occams’ razor. Basic stuff really. What’s weak, far fetched or contrived about believing, on the balance of probabilities and in the absence of any other evidence, that crop circles are man made? I found a pound coin yesterday and it’s prefectly rational to suppose that somebody dropped it. The ‘aliens put it there’ explanantion demands more evidence.
5. The Skeptic rejects a discovery or invention merely because it has been believed for a long time that such a thing as the claimed discovery or invention is impossible.
That would be a bad thing to do. But Park is not doing that. His argument is that on the balance of probabilities it is unlikely that perpetual motion or free energy machines will work because they would have to violate the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. There is no evidence to show that these machines work. If there is proof that they do then the ‘pseudoskeptics’ argument that they are impossible crumbles.
Future historians of science may well put the second “law” in the same category as “heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible”. Until such time as this happens SuSc would be better off using an example that actually demonstrated their point, e.g. a skeptic refusing to believe that planes can fly.
6. The Skeptic claims that the claimed effect contradicts the “laws of nature” (and therefore has to be wrong, since the Skeptic and the scientific community he presumes to represent have of course already complete knowledge of the laws of nature).
All SuSc. have to do is prove that the laws of nature are not immutable.
7. The Skeptic believes in scientific mob rule. “In Science, the Majority Consensus is Always Right”.
This could have made an interesting point but unfortunately, as so often is the case, SuSc muddy their argument with relativism. They say that scientific truth is frequenly not determined by right or wrong, but by ego, prestige, authority of claimants, conflicts of interests and economic agendas.. What they actually mean is that the scientific truth can often be surpressed, distorted or misrepresented for reasons of ego, prestige, authority of claimants, conflicts of interests and economic agendas.
I would concur that these are warning signs of a bogus skeptic. It’s just that I don’t know any skeptic who exhibits any of this spectacularly flawed reasoning and, byu the examples given, nor do SuSc.
January 12, 2008 at 10:04 pm
laughingmysocksoff
There’s a number of published cases, including objective measures, to show homeopathy as sole treatment curing non-self-limiting conditions. You could try looking at Dr Prasanta Banerji’s case studies for starters. The write-up for each isn’t extensive but X-rays/CT scans/histopathology images are provided. Perhaps if you contact the institute, they’ll provide you with more detail. There’s been a fair bit of interest (including conventional) in his methodology and that of Dr A U Ramakrishnan, both of whom have established good reputations for their work now extending beyond India.
January 12, 2008 at 11:13 pm
laughingmysocksoff
Well yes and no. “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” is not suitable as a guiding principle for sound scientific research for the reasons I’ve given elsewhere — we have to continually undermine our knowledge-creation mechanisms to make sure that we’re grounded in pure observation and not engaging in self-referential logic. All evidence, whether it supports accepted metaphors or not, should be given the same level of critical scrutiny.
Just because something seems very plausible and a nice clean Occam shave, it doesn’t mean it is. When Bower and Chorley made the claim that they’d created all of the thousands of crop circles that had appeared in English fields between 1978 and 1991 (some of which had appeared on the same night in different regions of the country), nobody insisted that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”. As long as the claim is one that agrees with what the people have “known” all along, it doesn’t even require ordinary evidence. Bower and Chorley were never able to substantiate their claim, let alone prove it, but the sceptical community accepted it on faith and never even bothered to take a closer look.
There’s no doubt some circles are man-made, and that they’ve been improving in execution over the years. Yet it remains the case that many of the designs are simply too geometrically precise and perfect, the patterns too complex, and ground lays of the crop (often woven into ‘nests’ and layered in different directions) far too intricate to be created by a couple of guys with boards, rollers and ropes stomping around the fields in the dark. The complex geometry in some would take days for surveyors to lay out. On hilly terrain, the lay is adjusted for the terrain so the geometry is perfect when viewed from the air. Delicate lines in some formations have been only 6″ wide — too narrow for a human to walk along, dead straight and with no sign of disturbance to the crop either side. Circles appearing in organic crop (which has no tram lines since it’s not fertilised) show no disturbance to the crop anywhere around them, hence no evidence of access.
Neither does the ‘man-made’ theory account for the lack of physical damage to the crop (no broken stems or board marks — crop is just bent over), the blown nodes which evidence something like microwave radiation, the bent stems in oilseed rape (which are normally too brittle to bend), and the failure to germinate in seeds developing from crop which has recovered and continued to develop after a circle formed in it early in the season. Insects have been found ‘glued’ to plants. Electronic equipment often fails in circles and light anomalies appear in photographs. There have also been over 2 dozen sightings of circles being formed in a matter of minutes in association with fast-moving balls of light, and only one person (and that resulting from a ‘sting’) has been caught in the act of making one.
Scientific truth can not only be suppressed, distorted or misrepresented for these reasons, but people can fail to grasp that truth to begin with for those very same reasons, not to mention just exceedingly poor reasoning. We all see what we want to see if we’re not very very careful to keep an open mind and Occam’s Razor can lead us happily up the garden path of recursive self-reference. Where ego and ambition mean more to an individual scientist that the principles of good science, then there’s no telling what he might come up with … some hare-brained idea that HIV causes AIDS probably, announced in a blaze of publicity before even publishing in a peer-reviewed journal on the subject, let alone ensuring independent replication … and which, two decades later when the theory has failed all its predictions (generally accepted as evidence of a very weak theory), is still accepted as ‘fact’ by biomedical orthodoxy and woe betide anyone who dares question it.
January 13, 2008 at 7:42 pm
openmind
“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” is not suitable as a guiding principle for sound scientific research for the reasons I’ve given elsewhere.
It’s good enough for scientists. I’d be interested to hear your reasons for the deficiency of this approach.
we have to continually undermine our knowledge-creation mechanisms to make sure that we’re grounded in pure observation and not engaging in self-referential logic. All evidence, whether it supports accepted metaphors or not, should be given the same level of critical scrutiny.
If this is a precis of your explanation then I’m not sure what you are gettng at and I’m a bit wary of the relativism implied in ‘accepted metaphors’. Do you mean that we need to continually see if we can come up with a better means than the scientific method to explain phenomena?
When Bower and Chorley made the claim that they’d created all of the thousands of crop circles that had appeared in English fields between 1978 and 1991 (some of which had appeared on the same night in different regions of the country)
Could you supply a reference for this claim? I can only find references to them admitting to 250, e.g:
http://skepdic.com/cropcirc.html
Even if they had created 2000 that one every 2.5 days between two people. It is possible that they could have acted alone at times (hence circles appearing in different areas of the country at the same time difference times) which would reduce that figure, and they coud have done more than one on the same night. What isn’t plausible about that?
Bower and Chorley were never able to substantiate their claim, let alone prove it, but the sceptical community accepted it on faith and never even bothered to take a closer look.
In the absence of good evidence for an alternative theory (aliens, ball lightning, magic pixies) the most plausible is likely to be correct. Of course, if you think making interesting and complex geometric shapes in cereal crops is beyond the ingenuity of the human species (which brought you such wonders as super computing and space travel) then surely you would agree with William of Occam that it would be more unlikely for an extraterrestrial species that has developed the technology to travel such vast distances across space (taking so long that they would probably have to breed on their trip to ensure that their mission could be carried out) only to communicate with us in such a non-communicative way.
Could you please supply references for the claims you make re. crop circles & HIV/AIDS.
Thanks
January 14, 2008 at 2:17 am
DT
Now we’re into the realms of crop circles and AIDS denial, I see. What next – the CIA blew up the twin towers to coverup their role in Diana’s assasination?
And all this in a thread about pseudoscience/pseudoscepticism, too.
January 14, 2008 at 9:01 am
Rich Scopie
There’s a number of published cases, including objective measures, to show homeopathy as sole treatment curing non-self-limiting conditions. You could try looking at Dr Prasanta Banerji’s case studies for starters. The write-up for each isn’t extensive but X-rays/CT scans/histopathology images are provided.
I looked. To summarise:
“A man came in with lung cancer. Here are some x-rays. We treated him. He got better.”
Hardly overwhelming evidence, is it?
I also note with amusement that they use the same image in their website’s header as FairDeal Homeopathy uses.
January 14, 2008 at 1:34 pm
openmind
There’s a number of published cases, including objective measures, to show homeopathy as sole treatment curing non-self-limiting conditions.
But the Banerji cases are self-published on a website, not published in a peer reviewed journal, and do not include objective measures.
Perhaps if you contact the institute, they’ll provide you with more detail.
If they believe that they have cured lung cancer with homeopathy shouldn’t they provide more detail? Perhaps to an oncology journal?
You mentioned that there were a number of published cases of homeopathy curing a non-self limiting disease. I’d be interested to see the details if you can provide them.
January 14, 2008 at 9:17 pm
le canard noir
Ahhh, the Banerji’s. Suppliers of homeopathic remedies to the moon.
http://innerhealth.us/blog2/2007/12/04/homeopathic-medicines-for-health-problems-during-lunar-missions/
Tireless, self-publicists.
January 15, 2008 at 12:46 am
laughingmysocksoff
Good enough for scientists? Well it shouldn’t be. As Martin Chaplin wrote ‘such an attitude may itself be considered unscientific: the same level of supporting evidence should be accepted for all scientific developments. If a lower level of proof is set for hypotheses that fit prior beliefs then we bias our view of science in favour of such beliefs and may be easily misled. That such a process is generally used is self-evident and has resulted in the slow uptake of new ideas and the overly long retention of fallacious concepts’ (Chaplin MF. The memory of water: an overview. Homeopathy 2007; 96: 143–150.)
No. We have to continually question the underlying assumptions that inform our reasoning about the mechanisms operating behind phenomena. Much of so-called ‘scientific’ reasoning accepts certain assumptions as a given without question. These assumptions need to be questioned when we observe phenomena that appear implausible every bit as much as the data does. It’s pure hubris to imagine that we know it all. Empirical evidence trumps the theory. It has to or it’s not the scientific method.
All the reasons I gave above — the degree of precision and complexity exhibited (including woven nests and layers in the crop, and adjusting the ground design for gradient so the design appears perfectly symmetrical when viewed from the air), in the time available, in total darkness, without damaging the crop, without (in some cases) leaving any trace of entry or exit. And that’s without considering the blown nodes and inability of recovered crop to germinate properly when compared to controls from the same field outside the circle. Have you examined any of the better examples of these circles in detail? Have you ever visited one? The idea that even two men could create designs of such intricacy and complexity, let alone one, under such conditions is highly implausible. I don’t think extraterrestrial species are a particularly plausible explanation either, but crop circles warrant a good deal more investigation yet.
As I said, there’s no doubt that a good deal are man-made, but there’s a number that go beyond that. Nobody has yet managed to reproduce a circle featuring elongated apical plant stem nodes, blown nodes or expulsion cavities in the plant stems, and the presence of 10-50 micrometre diameter magnetized iron spheres in the soils, distributed linearly.
The Bower/Chorley claim is a dodgy reference, so I’ll retract that. However, what John Lundberg (circlemakers.org) has to say is perhaps more interesting — “Our work generates response, often from other circlemakers, and can sometimes act to catalyse a wide range of paranormal events. I still believe there is a genuine phenomenon, but I now also believe that we’re a part of it.” I’d agree with him.
For the AIDS references, see Peter Duesberg‘s work. A wider summary of all the various arguments against the HIV hypothesis can be found here.
January 15, 2008 at 12:46 am
laughingmysocksoff
I’m not denying AIDS. I’m merely questioning the hypothesis that it’s caused by the HIV virus. With good reason. See above for references. There’s a ridiculous number of violations of ‘good science’ in the development of this hypothesis which are frankly indefensible. Not to mention that there’s a fundamental mismatch between the nature of the condition and the typical manifestation of a viral illness.
January 15, 2008 at 12:47 am
laughingmysocksoff
One would hope they will.
You’ll need to specify exactly what details you’d consider appropriate. Most homeopaths don’t have access to biomedical test results/scans/X-rays, etc, directly so would be unable to provide these as supporting evidence. Patient reports of test results are often as good as it gets on that score.
January 15, 2008 at 8:17 am
Rich Scopie
“For the AIDS references, see Peter Duesberg’s work. A wider summary of all the various arguments against the HIV hypothesis can be found here.”
And a mountain of information exposing Duesberg as a charlatan, egotist, and homophobe can be found here.
January 15, 2008 at 12:30 pm
colmcq
Hi!
“There’s a ridiculous number of violations of ‘good science’ in the development of this hypothesis which are frankly indefensible.”
**HIV is the best predictor of whether a person will develop AIDS
**In cohort studies, severe immunosuppression and AIDS-defining illnesses occur almost exclusively in individuals who are HIV-infected.
**Drugs that specifically block HIV replication dramatically improve the prognosis for HIV-infected individuals. Such an effect would not be seen if HIV did not have a central role in causing AIDS.
The evidence is unambigous and clear: HIV causes AIDS.
January 15, 2008 at 4:47 pm
laughingmysocksoff
Well of course. That’s par for the course for anyone opposing the orthodoxy on any issue. Play the man not the ball. Doesn’t mean any of it holds water, or that Duesberg is wrong.
January 15, 2008 at 5:57 pm
Rich Scopie
“Well of course. That’s par for the course for anyone opposing the orthodoxy on any issue. Play the man not the ball. Doesn’t mean any of it holds water, or that Duesberg is wrong.”
But there *is* a large amount of evidence on that site debunking the denialist hypotheses – including a fair amount pointing out the gaping holes in Duesberg’s ideas.
January 15, 2008 at 6:22 pm
laughingmysocksoff
If the evidence were unambiguous and clear, there wouldn’t be so many people challenging it.
HIV has never been isolated according to the rules of proper virology. Gallo and Montagnier only detected indirect signs of viral activity and passed this off for isolation of a virus.
From Suppressed Science (as are all other statements below):
As to your individual points:
Naturally. It’s part of the definition of AIDS. The statement is tautological.
Gallo’s original Science papers claimed “isolation” of HIV only in 30.2% of adult AIDS cases with Kaposi’s sarcoma, and 47.6% of adult AIDS cases with opportunistic infection.
No animal “infected with HIV” has ever developed “AIDS”.
Over 20 years after Gallo’s claim to have discovered the virus that causes AIDS, and despite $100 billion in research thrown in that direction, conventional AIDS thinking still cannot explain how HIV supposedly kills CD4 helper cells, meaning that the foundational assumption of the HIV theory of AIDS is still unproven.
“AIDS can be diagnosed “presumptively”, i.e. without “HIV-test”. Acquired Immune Suppression with and without opportunistic infections and with and without abnormal CD4+ cell counts or abnormal CD4/CD8 ratios exists in HIV negative patients, but it is simply labeled differently – “Idiopathic CD4+ T lymphocytopenia”. The medical establishment admits that it has no idea what causes this condition.”
The sharp decline in absolute numbers of AIDS deaths in the mid 1990s was already underway before protease inhibitors were introduced, therefore the drugs did not produce the decline.
Behind this is the CDC’s changing definitions of the disease between 1987 and 1993.
So when statements like this are released to the media:
This obscures the fact that entirely different definitions of the disease are being compared. The comparison is worse than meaningless: it’s blatantly misleading.
For more details see here.
January 15, 2008 at 6:23 pm
openmind
If a lower level of proof is set for hypotheses that fit prior beliefs then we bias our view of science in favour of such beliefs and may be easily misled..
Agreed. But we are not allowing for lower standards of proof to fit prior beliefs, we are building on accumulated knowledge.
‘Extraordinary claims require extraodinary evidence’ is not an issue of scientific methodology or the application of the scientific method. Methodological controls and peer review keep science in check, as does the scientist trying to disprove her own hypothesis. It is just shorthand for ‘if somebody is claiming something implausible then demand proof’. Nobody is suggesting that homeopathy be held to a higher level of proof than biochemistry, as you are well aware. The same level of proof would be just fine. Just show us the good quality randomised double-blind placebo controlled trials that show homeopathy works better than placebo.
Much of so-called ’scientific’ reasoning accepts certain assumptions as a given without question. These assumptions need to be questioned when we observe phenomena that appear implausible every bit as much as the data does.
Why? When one of the free energy guys can give us one example of one of the laws of physics being violated then you have a point. Until then why assume that much of what we have discovered about chemistry and physics is wrong (despite all the evidence to the contrary) in order to fit an implausible hypothesis, such as homeopathy.
It’s pure hubris to imagine that we know it all. Empirical evidence trumps the theory. It has to or it’s not the scientific method.
No contemporary scientists do think we know it all. The search for empirical evidence is the scientific method. We just don’t need to question all of the accumulated empirical evidence all of the time and without reason. We can build on what we know already.
Could you give me some references to the crop circle evidence you cite? Particularly the discovery of the elongated apical plant stem nodes, blown nodes or expulsion cavities in the plant stems, and the presence of 10-50 micrometre diameter magnetized iron spheres in the soils, distributed linearly as this sounds interesting.
I’ve yet to be convinced that mankind is incapable of making complicated geometric patterns in fields. (The computer I’m typing on at the moment is a testament to our ingenuity). As the patterns aren’t random then they’re either man-made or alien-made, as the act of making them demands intelligence. Unless you have another hypothesis? Out of the two I’ve given, my money is on the (earthly) pranksters. If this is fallacious reasoning I’d be interested to know why. It’s just the more likely explanation of the two given the current state of evidence.
Thanks for retracting the Bower/Chorley claim – there are definitely times when we need to question our assumptions!
You’ll need to specify exactly what details you’d consider appropriate. Most homeopaths don’t have access to biomedical test results/scans/X-rays, etc, directly so would be unable to provide these as supporting evidence. Patient reports of test results are often as good as it gets on that score.
I understood that homeopaths referred patients to the NHS for diagnosis and tests, or am I wrong on this? (IIRC from correspondence with a homeopath called Sue Young).
You can surely understand that it’s not enough to take these claims on trust and that good evidence is required? Homeopaths make these claims and, if they are true, then it should not be too difficult for homeopaths to substantiate them.
January 15, 2008 at 7:07 pm
M Simpson
H4H – you believe in homeopathy, crop circles and AIDS-denialism. I’m not being facetious when I ask: is there any alternative/minority view, however outrageous or controversial, to which you are not prepared to give house-room? Is there anything which you and I can agree on as being loony tunes?
Perhaps you could simply answer ‘yes’, ‘no’, ‘probably’ or ‘maybe’ to the following. It really help us all know where we stand.
Is there a monster in Loch Ness?
Does the Yeti and/or Bigfoot exist?
Do aliens from other planets visit Earth on a regular basis?
Does Uri Geller have paranormal powers?
Can psychics such as Sylvia Browne or the late Doris Stokes communicate with the dead?
Can astrology be used to accurately predict people’s personalities?
Were the Apollo Moon landings fake?
Were the events of 9/11 planned by the US Government?
Specifically, were the planes flown into the towers to disguise the fact that the buildings were demolished by controlled demolition?
Is the accepted history of the Holocaust a gross exaggeration perpetuated by Jews?
Were the Cottingly fairies real?
Are the Protocols of the Elders of Zion real?
Were the Hitler diaries real?
These aren’t in any order. It’s impossible for me to say that any one is less likely than any other because my answer to them all would be ‘no’ (apart from the Yeti/Bigfoot which is ‘maybe’ because both supposedly live in very remote, largely unexplored areas so the existence of large hominids is not completely impossible). But if you could give us some idea of where your boundaries of doubt/certainty lie, it would be really, really helpful.
January 15, 2008 at 7:11 pm
M Simpson
Sorry – that was addressed to Laughing! I’ve got so used to dealing with H4H on Gimpy’s blog and Blogging the Organon that I forgot where I was.
Mind, anyone else who wants to give simple yes/no/probably/maybe views on any of these is welcome. I’m NOT trying to start a debate on any of these topics, just establish where we all stand.
January 15, 2008 at 10:53 pm
Rob Hinkley
laughingmysocksoff said “No animal “infected with HIV” has ever developed “AIDS”.”
laughingmysocksoff seems to think this is some kind of evidence that HIV doesn’t cause AIDS. Most people would consider it evidence that HIV induces immune system failure in humans because of some unique interaction it has with the human immune system. Maybe that’s why it’s called the Human Immunodeficiency Virus.
January 16, 2008 at 12:07 am
le canard noir
Damien Thompsons new book ‘Counterknowledge’ explores this very issue, that once you believe in one weird belief, you are likely to believe in others. I think that is why we see so many homeopaths who are also anti-vax (or pro crop circles made by aliens)
Thompson thinks that this is due to the undue prominence given to unexplained anomalies in the face of other overwhelming evidence. For example, the slightest problem in the fossil record is jumped on by creationists, whilst ignoring the vast evidence from the rest of the fossil record. Or that one scientist in the US (Rustum Roy) claims that water has a memory in the face of overwhelming evidence that it does not.
January 16, 2008 at 2:18 am
laughingmysocksoff
Which is largely self-referential …
Ha! Would that they did. There is much evidence to suggest that they don’t. With specific reference to homeopathy, Shang et al and its accompanying editorial say they don’t. Goldacre’s latest comment piece in The Lancet say they don’t.
It is absurd to expect a biochemically-based intervention and an intervention that is plainly not biochemically-based to behave in the same manner.
The validity of homeopathy doesn’t imply that any of these assumptions are wrong, only that they don’t tell the whole story. The assumption that homeopathy invalidates much of what we’ve discovered about chemistry and physics seems to exist only in the minds of people unable to stretch the boundaries of their world view to encompass more than what they already see.
200 years’ worth of empirical evidence says there’s good reason to question the present assumptions. The bias towards the common and biochemical has blinkered biomedicine to a large part of what goes on in a healing intervention. Yes, we can build on what we know already, but first the biases have to be subjected to critical examination.
Plant abnormalities
Magnetic material in soils
Mankind is very capable of making complicated geometric patterns in fields. However, to do this in darkness under threat of discovery, adjusting for topographical anomalies to present perfect symmetry to an aerial perspective, without elaborate surveying equipment, in the space of a few hours, and while at it weaving the crop into elaborate patterns, some of which would be extremely difficult to execute without disturbing the surrounding standing crop, all adds up to a measure of implausibility. Lundberg and his team are good, but they’re not that good.
The act of making the patterns does demand intelligence, but I don’t think it requires little green men in flying saucers to explain it. Personally I think it’s far more likely to involve some collective parapsychological phenomenon. And I think this is what Lundberg means when he says that he’s now part of it.
Yes, you’re correct. Though it’s more often the case that patients come to homeopaths having already received a conventional diagnosis (and unsuccessful treatment). And yes, I can understand your point of view. But surely you can understand that homeopaths’ case records relate to homeopathic diagnostic criteria, not biomedical. We don’t treat our patients with a view to proving homeopathy to sceptics. We treat our patients with a view to improving their health. If you don’t accept homeopathic diagnostic criteria as evidence then perhaps you should be speaking to the medical homeopaths who will presumably have access to conventional test results as well as their case records. Meanwhile it’s hardly appropriate to condemn homeopaths for failing to produce evidence which belongs to a different medical system and to which homeopaths have neither right of access nor right of reproduction.
January 16, 2008 at 2:49 am
laughingmysocksoff
I’ll give house room to any perspective on the world M, no matter how conventional or unconventional, because I believe that only in putting the whole lot together and finding the common threads that run through them all are we likely to approach the truth. It’s a bit like the Indian parable of the blind men and the elephant.
Having spent a fair bit of time with people you’d no doubt regard as ‘loony’, I don’t see their world view as “wrong”. Only different. And much as there’s often large parts I can’t make sense of at all in terms of my own perspective on things, there’s bits of it I can. It’s the same tune, only in a different key with a few interesting modulations thrown in.
As far as scientific opinion goes, I’ll always consider all contributions to the debate. Personally I think it would be foolish not to.
January 16, 2008 at 7:14 am
M Simpson
Thanks for that Laughing (and sorry again about the misnaming – I was distracted by a four-year-old). Can we just be completely clear about this? You are prepared to accept that the Cottingly Fairies, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and the Hitler Diaries might conceivably be real, even though all three have been unequivocally established as hoaxes?
And Holocaust deniers? Careful now. Do you think that the truth about what went on in Auschwitz lies somewhere between what they say (it was just a concentration camp with no gas chambers) and what the the former inmates, the former guards and the impartial military historians all say? I wouldn’t want to misrepresent you on anything and I’m certainly not trying to trick you, but that’s pretty dangerous territory (as I’m sure you appreciate).
January 16, 2008 at 1:36 pm
openmind
Which is largely self-referential …
For the most part it’s referential. Why set out to disprove Newton’s laws of motion every time you build a car when there is no example of these laws ever being violated (on a car scale) or any reason to believe that they could be?
For the most part they do. Scienctists aren’t perfect, some are lazy, some are muddled thinkers, some are downright frauds etc etc. But these examples are in no way representative of all research. But at least research is published in peer reviewed journals for all to see and criticise. Like Benveniste’s in Nature.
If it’s not biochemical (which encompasses biology chemistry & physics & would include the ‘memory of water’ theory) then that doesn’t leave much left to explain how it intervenes. Any ideas? My guess is psychology. The placebo effect.
The view that homeopathy invalidates much of what we’ve discovered about chemistry and physics seems to exist in the minds of people who know about chemistry and physics and is founded on evidence. It’s nice to speculate and imagine and theorise but if you want to be taken seriously you have to come up with some irrefutable evidence of your own.
I disagree. There may be a wealth of anecdotes (which I suppose you could call ’empirical’ in the ‘observable by the senses’ definition) but this is at the very bottom of the scale of evidence. The claims need to be tested. If they can’t be tested then you are taking it them on faith.
So you think that it is more likely that intricate patterns in crops were made by collective psychokinesis than by men with tools? Bearing in mind that psychokinesis has never been demonstrated to actually exist and there are no plausible mechanisms by which it might.
As homeopaths are making the claim for efficacy then it is up to them to provide the evidence. The FoH should be awash with good quality evidence. Why aren’t you all demanding that it be submitted for peer reviwe to shut the skeptics up once and for all?
January 16, 2008 at 5:54 pm
openmind
Apologies LMSO if the above is difficult to follow, I quoted your original text but it did not format when published.
January 16, 2008 at 5:57 pm
openmind
Agreed. But we are not allowing for lower standards of proof to fit prior beliefs, we are building on accumulated knowledge.
Which is largely self-referential …
For the most part it’s referential. Why set out to disprove Newton’s laws of motion every time you build a car when there is no example of these laws ever being violated (on a car scale) or any reason to believe that they could be?
Methodological controls and peer review keep science in check
Ha! Would that they did. There is much evidence to suggest that they don’t. With specific reference to homeopathy, Shang et al and its accompanying editorial say they don’t. Goldacre’s latest comment piece in The Lancet say they don’t
For the most part they do. Scienctists aren’t perfect, some are lazy, some are muddled thinkers, some are downright frauds etc etc. But these examples are in no way representative of all research. But at least research is published in peer reviewed journals for all to see and criticise. Like Benveniste’s in Nature.
It is absurd to expect a biochemically-based intervention and an intervention that is plainly not biochemically-based to behave in the same manner
If it’s not biochemical (which encompasses biology chemistry & physics & would include the ‘memory of water’ theory) then that doesn’t leave much left to explain how it intervenes. Any ideas? My guess is psychology. The placebo effect.
The assumption that homeopathy invalidates much of what we’ve discovered about chemistry and physics seems to exist only in the minds of people unable to stretch the boundaries of their world view to encompass more than what they already see.
The view that homeopathy invalidates much of what we’ve discovered about chemistry and physics seems to exist in the minds of people who know about chemistry and physics and is founded on evidence. It’s nice to speculate and imagine and theorise but if you want to be taken seriously you have to come up with some irrefutable evidence of your own.
200 years’ worth of empirical evidence says there’s good reason to question the present assumptions.
I disagree. There may be a wealth of anecdotes (which I suppose you could call ‘empirical’ in the ‘observable by the senses’ definition) but this is at the very bottom of the scale of evidence. The claims need to be tested. If they can’t be tested then you are taking it them on faith.
I think it’s far more likely to involve some collective parapsychological phenomenon. And I think this is what Lundberg means when he says that he’s now part of it.
So you think that it is more likely that intricate patterns in crops were made by collective psychokinesis than by men with tools? Bearing in mind that psychokinesis has never been demonstrated to actually exist and there are no plausible mechanisms by which it might.
If you don’t accept homeopathic diagnostic criteria as evidence then perhaps you should be speaking to the medical homeopaths who will presumably have access to conventional test results as well as their case records.
As homeopaths are making the claim for efficacy then it is up to them to provide the evidence. The FoH should be awash with good quality evidence. Why aren’t you all demanding that it be submitted for peer review to shut the skeptics up once and for all?
January 16, 2008 at 8:06 pm
laughingmysocksoff
Or perhaps it’s just that having got past the limitations of the conventional world view, people are able to perceive the potential plausibility of a variety of other viewpoints, and that ultimately we all have a large hand in creating the nature of our own ‘reality’ via the self-referential recursive nature — the feedback loop — of any belief system, ‘science’ included.
Well perhaps we’ve all just been reading too much Popper. Jorge Luis Borges puts it somewhat more poetically though …
“Let us admit what all idealists admit – the hallucinatory nature of the world. Let us do what no idealist has done – let us search for unrealities that confirm that nature. I believe we shall find them in the antinomies of Kant and in the dialectic of Zeno . . . ‘The greatest wizard (Novalis writes memorably) would be the one who bewitched himself to the point of accepting his own phantasmagorias as autonomous apparitions. Wouldn’t that be our case.’ I surmise it is so. We (that indivisible divinity that operates in us) have dreamed the world. We have dreamed it as enduring, mysterious, visible, omnipresent in space and stable in time; but we have consented to tenuous and eternal intervals of illogicalness in its architecture that we might know it is false.”
One scientist? I think there’s rather more than one working on this line of enquiry. Martin Chaplin for starters. If you check out the 48 references in this paper, you’ll find plenty of others who’ve published on the subject amongst them. Neither is the evidence against the idea “overwhelming”.
Do I take it by the sudden adoption of your pseudonym here that you’re “ducking” my questions about your proposed experiment Andy?
January 16, 2008 at 9:19 pm
laughingmysocksoff
Here we go with the black and white again … So you think if someone says that they don’t think an idea is “loony tunes” that must mean they think it’s the absolute opposite do you? Wow. I struggle to imagine what it must be like to live with such a polarised attitude to everything. Has it never occurred to you that there are many things which people simply don’t hold true/false right/wrong opinions on?
M just because I say I give all kinds of ideas house room doesn’t mean I subscribe to them! You asked is there anything which you and I can agree on as being loony tunes? I said I don’t look on any ideas that way. I consider them to see whether they represent a plausible metaphor and try to understand the mindset of the person who takes them as ‘real’. That doesn’t mean I take them for ‘real’.
It should be abundantly clear from other comments I’ve made here exactly what attitude I have to all metaphors. That includes homeopathic theory. As an explanation for the phenomena we observe when we follow the therapy’s treatment protocol, it’s pretty congruent, but that doesn’t mean I take the theory for ‘true’. The phenomena are real enough. The best explanation for them is still up for grabs. Ditto the various theories about AIDS causation, and the explanations for crop circles. There are congruent and incongruent elements in all explanations, and I remain presently unconvinced that the orthodox viewpoint has sufficient weight of probability.
As for actual occurrences that have been widely reported, recorded, and attested to by people who experienced them directly, that’s a different matter. I could no more deny the Holocaust than the evidence for homeopathy. I’ve never come across the Cottingly Fairies, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and the Hitler Diaries, so can’t comment on any of them.
January 16, 2008 at 11:41 pm
laughingmysocksoff
I don’t think it’s a matter of setting out to disprove Newton’s laws. Nobody’s disputing their congruence with the phenomena they describe, so they’ll remain valid, no matter how contingently valid that turns out to be as our knowledge expands. Rather it’s a case of keeping in mind that they’re a metaphor, which is an effective way of preventing the likelihood of mistaking the map for the territory or “I”dentifying ourselves in them so we form an emotional attachment to them. It’s those attachments which result in the overly long retention of outgrown concepts.
Nobody’s perfect. There’s more too. There’s the role of the pharmaceutical industry in biomedical science to consider. There’s the fact that a vast number of people are far too busy to read scientific articles in depth and simply take them at face value, trusting to the peer review process to sort the wheat from the chaff. When that process breaks down, as it did in respect of Shang et al, this results in false assertions being taken on board by the majority as “true”. And there’s the fact that the underlying, and questionable, assumptions on which the whole edifice is built are simply taken for granted.
I agree that for the most part, it probably functions reasonably well. Yet it creates a substantial illusion of an objective, deterministically predictable and absolute “truth” that has come to marginalise and denigrate anything remotely subjective, while its supposed ‘objectivity’ is only relative and contingent at best. Personally I think this has got to the stage of being quite ludicrous and results in vast amounts of time and money being expended on “proving” stuff we already know, and which, if you take Popper’s view (that scientific theory, and human knowledge generally, is irreducibly conjectural or hypothetical, and that no number of positive outcomes at the level of experimental testing can confirm a scientific theory) is essentially unprovable anyway. Our intuitive associative faculties are perfectly designed for pattern matching and non-linear, process-oriented thinking. Our logical faculties can do the same job, but it’s infinitely more time-consuming and tortuous and doesn’t necessarily yield any more reliable conclusions than the ‘unreliable’ instant subjective approach.
Yes and no. There is a demonstrable material effect, but it’s not as substantial as the effect produced by pharmaceutical interventions. There’s a large non-material component, but I don’t think it’s ‘placebo effect’ as that term is presently defined and understood. I’ve been through this one in the previous post, so I’ll not rehash it here. My guess is that a far better metaphor will be found in quantum consciousness theory.
Again, it’s not a case of invalidating the metaphors we’re already demonstrated as congruent within the parameters in which we’re working. This is analogous to Newtonian physics in the context of quantum theory, and the reaction to homeopathy now is very similar to the initial reaction to quantum theory. People jump to the conclusion the new theory invalidates the old. It doesn’t. It merely shows it to be an approximation limited to certain sets of circumstances.
Again, I’ve addressed this elsewhere, but perhaps you’d like to explain exactly how a carefully recorded case history, which of course is taken as “observable by the senses”, differs from carefully recorded trial data, which is no less “observable by the senses”. Both a case history and a trial require human observers, all of whose observation skills may be selective and all of whom may be working from any number of a priori assumptions and preconceptions in relation to the data they’re gathering. This distinction between the value of case history and trial data as evidence seems to me to be largely artificial and vastly over emphasised.
I think it more likely for those circles for which a men-with-tools explanation is unlikely for reasons I’ve already given. As for your assertion that “psychokinesis has never been demonstrated to actually exist” …
and
Finally
I expect because all the effort up until this point has gone into running trials since that is what has been demanded. Case histories are, after all, anecdotal and hence ‘invallid’. As to shutting the sceptics up once and for all, I very much doubt whether one published case, one good positive trial or even one Andy Lewis experiment will succeed in doing that. Those who don’t want to accept homeopathy won’t, no matter what evidence is provided, and will always find some other explanation for the results.
January 17, 2008 at 12:25 am
M Simpson
Laughing, you may be surprised to find that many things in this world ARE simple black and white. Some people say that Thing X happened, other people say that thing X never happened. That’s a simple, binary concept and there’s no room for shades of grey. It can’t have ‘happened a bit’.
Either there were gas chambers in Auschwitz or there weren’t. If there was even one gas chamber, the Holocaust deniers are wrong. If there were no gas chambers, they’re right. There can’t have been half a gas chamber. Just like the Moon landings can’t have been half-faked – either astronauts walked on the Moon or they never walked on the Moon. It is black and white.
In any case, despite what you say you don’t seem to shun ‘black and white’ but simply plump for the minority view every time.
Either homeopathy works or it doesn’t. If it only works slightly in certain circumstances – it still works. It’s a black and white thing and you have nailed your colours firmly to the ‘works’ mast.
Either crop circles are all man-made or some of them are not man-made. You don’t sit on the fence here because there’s no fence to sit on, it’s a yes/no thing. and you say yes, some of them are not man-made.
Either HIV causes AIDS or it doesn’t. If it only causes it a little bit sometimes, it’s still a cause. Another yes/no situation. You haven’t hedged your bets, you’ve stated that it doesn’t.
So you can say:
[quote]Has it never occurred to you that there are many things which people simply don’t hold true/false right/wrong opinions on?[/quote]
…but on these three examples you do hold a clear true/false opinion. You have clearly stated that you believe it’s true that homeopathy works, true that some crop circles are not made-made and false that HIV causes AIDS. You have even stated in the past that absolutely nothing would convince you that homeopathy works. How much more black/white can you get?
Not that I expect this to bother you because we have already established that you believe something can be both true and false at the same time.
January 17, 2008 at 12:27 am
M Simpson
Ah, that should be “You have even stated in the past that absolutely nothing would convince you that homeopathy DOESN’T work.” of course. It’s late…
January 17, 2008 at 2:12 pm
openmind
I can see what you you are saying here:
But I’ve really got no idea what you mean by this:
I can almost grasp why you might call natural laws ‘metaphors’ but I have no idea how understanding them and using them as the basis for further enquiry or experiment is forming an emotional attachment to them and blinding yourself to progress.
I think that using a form of medical treatment that has no plausible mechanism, no proven efficacy above placebo and is based on a 200 year old theory of disease that has been demonstrated to be wrong is a good example of forming an emotional attachment whilst disregarding evidence.
Haven’t you made a leap here from using the Shang et al editorial to support your argument that it’s not only CAM trials that can be poor (“bias in the conduct and reporting of trials is a possible explanation for positive findings of trials of both homoeopathy and conventional medicine”) to saying that the peer review process broke down in Shang et al. What are your specific problems with Shang? (Except for the outcome obviously).
The probability of the laws of motion (confirmed by experiment) being violated is infinitisimal. They can’t be proved in the Popperian sense but it does not really matter. Homeopathy isn’t working in the realms of these minute probabilities. It operates in the areas of the mundane (like cures like, smaller amounts are more powerful) & easily tested (analysis of remedies, trials).
That’s why camouflage works so well. It’s easy to be fooled by patterns.
Absolutely no. Intuititive notions are just ideas. You need to test ideas using logic. You seem to be dispensing with the need for critical faculties. Doesn’t that just make people credulous and accepting of anything? Have you ever come across an exmaple of something being counter-intuitive?
What evidence are you referring to? I assume it is trials, as many (most?) homeopaths claim that homeopathy is far superior to medicine and they have a 70-80% success rates. Of course if you’ve changed your mind and think that anecdotes aren’t good evidence and that RCBTs are better….
If it’s based on quantum principles it should be easy to demonstrate and prove mathematically (well, not easy but perfectly possible). If I were the SoH or FoH I’d be funding research as we speak. (I probably wouldn’t be using Milgrom though) And if it could be demonstrated to work through this mechanism I’d speculate that at this point you’d be referring to it as proof rather than metaphor!
The analogy is a bad once. There is no evidence base in homeopathy that even approaches that of quantum mechanics. Homeopathy has had 200 years and there is no good evidence that it works above placebo. QM has had just over 100 years and has led to our understanding of the fundamentals of matter.
The only shortcoming of QM is that it is so difficult to comprehend that it is too easy to use it as a metaphor for non-quantum events.
Of course. Trials are established to test a hypothesis (there is no hypothesis in a case study) they can be blinded to rule out observer bias (case studies can’t be blinded) they can be double blinded to rule out experimenter bias (case studies can’t be double blinded) they can be randomised to remove observer and experimenter bias (case studies can’t be randomised) they can be controlled so that the results can be compared with a dummy group (case studies can’t be controlled) and they are carried out on samples of people to test whether the results are due to what could be called chance, i.e. regression to the mean, spontaneous remission etc (cases studies are based on single histories).
Neither of your quotes demostrate any proof of psi. If there is any evidence I’d be interested in seeing it.
No reason not to try though is it? If you had a good evidence base then you could get it intergrated into the NHS. If it’s so good you are depriving people of its benefits.
January 18, 2008 at 7:08 pm
le canard noir
Uh, not too regular here. What questions about my experiment did you have? I appear to have missed them???
January 19, 2008 at 11:46 am
laughingmysocksoff
M what I wrote was in the specific context of the question you asked me and the assumptions you made as the result of my answer. Generalising from that to imply I was saying nothing is black and white is a bit of a stretch!
However, on a general note, binary concepts which are dependent on a large number of other variables are not so black and white as you paint them I think. If x causes y only in set of circumstances for which there’s a million to one chance against, then I don’t think you’d be shouting that x causes y from the rooftops. And you’d be justified in asking whether, in those circumstances, x truly ’caused’ y or whether it was just the straw that broke the camel’s back. Many situations, particularly those involving living things, are multifactorial and codependent and don’t analyse well according to the strictly linear and binary model you seem to favour.
According to your logic, you’d have to admit that homeopathy works, because in certain circumstances it clearly does, even in DBRCTs.
January 19, 2008 at 3:33 pm
laughingmysocksoff
I think you’ve maybe read my sentence in a different way to how I intended it to come across. (This concept of belief-system-as-metaphor is getting aired on this thread as well as a previous one, so it might be a bit clearer if you look at the responses on that one too.) What I was trying to get across is that keeping in mind the fact that all our theories and beliefs are no more than metaphors, analogies, for making sense of the uniquely human experience of reality can help us stop any metaphor from becoming seen as incontrovertible ‘fact’ which is then taken for granted as ‘true’.
The nub of my argument has been that:
i) all our explanations for the way the world works are metaphors, and subjective ones at that, since ultimately we can only experience existence through human senses. In other words, as Kant said, “we see things not as they are but as we are”.
ii) all these metaphors are recursively self-referential and generate their own proof systems, not just subjectively but ‘objectively’ too,
iii) because of i) and ii), it’s necessary to get right down to the very foundational assumptions of any metaphor, indeed to the whole way we construct our “knowledge”, if we want to avoid circular logic.
Well for me this is where your argument falls apart. The “no proven efficacy above placebo” is quite simply factually incorrect. The majority of trials of homeopathy show an effect beyond placebo, a fact evident even from the supporting documents eventually published to accompany Shang et al’s meta-analysis. And Shang et al is the only one of 6 (not 5 as Goldacre asserts) meta-analyses performed on homeopathic trials to come to this conclusion (and that conclusion based on just 8 unidentified trials!). The trial data suffers from a certain degree of inconsistency and problems with replicability, but this is a long long way from saying there is “no proven efficacy”. Inconsistency and lack of replicability usually indicate a lack of understanding and adequate control of variables, which is what I’ve been suggesting is the case.
Your assertion that homeopathy is “based on a 200 year old theory of disease that has been demonstrated to be wrong” is also questionable. What’s your basis for saying Hahnemann’s theories have been demonstrated to be wrong?
No. Not at all. The peer review process broke down. The study should have been rejected for lack of transparency alone — the 8 trials on which the paper’s conclusions were based were not identified — but leaving aside all deeper philsophical objections for a moment, Shang et al fails on a number of counts. See Put a sock in it, Mr Goldacre … item 5. Not only that, but the management group of the Swiss PEK program, funding source of the Shang study, according to Reilly “offered significant criticisms of the work, noting that other studies performed as part of the PEK program showed that homeopathic treatment is cheaper than conventional treatment and that patients treated with homeopathy show greater improvement than after conventional treatment with less side effects and less hospitalisation”. (Reilly’s reference is no longer accessible)
“Just” ideas? Intuitive notions are very often the spark of genius that forms the basis of new theories and without them we’d probably still be living in caves. Yes they need to be tested logically as well — I’m not arguing for the dispensing of critical faculties, only that they aren’t advocated to the exclusion of everything else. There needs to be a balance here. What seems to be happening at the moment is that science is indulging in an elaborate self-deception. It imagines for much of the time that it’s operating entirely objectively and logically while still employing (because it’s impossible not to) all our subjective intuitive associative pattern-matching faculties in the area of interpretation. Yes, it is easy to be fooled by camouflage!!
Personally I think it’s time to acknowledge that we’re never going to obtain the level of absolute proof we seek in order to be ‘objectively’ certain about something, and adopt a more pragmatic and multifaceted approach to our investigations, dealing in probabilities and degrees rather than binary true/untrue statements.
As far as homeopathy is concerned, it’s not as if we’re dealing with something for which there’s no proof at all. We have substantial case history and clinical studies showing efficacy, and trial data that shows efficacy with reservations. Put the two together and the balance is far more positive than negative. This is a simple fact. The only way you can argue differently is to deny that some of the evidence is evidence, and that’s unscientific.
Look. I’m not saying any evidence is “better” than any other. It’s all evidence, and it all has its various problems as well as any ability it has to support an assertion. As far as I’m concerned the entire evidence base should be evaluated as a whole (the “evidence mosaic” that I quoted Reilly as proposing elsewhere).
The sceptic (or rather pseudosceptic) position relies on denying a large part of that mosaic and accepting only the trial data that suggest no effect beyond placebo. Most of my arguments here have been about demonstrating the incongruence of that position in relation to the whole picture.
This is exactly what Shang et al (or should we say Egger et al) did when they set out with the foregone conclusion that any positive effect of homeopathy in trials could either be put down to methodological inadequacy or bias. Looking at the somewhat tortuous process they went through to get the conclusion they wanted, it looks suspiciously like they had a lot more difficulty doing that than they thought they were going to have.
I’m sure the SoH/FoH would love to know how they’re supposed to finance such a project! These are membership organisations which rely on members’ annual fees for the vast majority of their operating revenue and a lot of voluntary effort on top of that to cover all the bases they need to. Meanwhile pseudosceptics like Goldacre and Colquhoun are doing their level best to remove all sources of public funding from the profession and undermine public confidence in it.
If quantum principles can be used to demonstrate that homeopathy works through this mechanism, then they’ll also concurrently demonstrate that any metaphor is capable of generating its own proof system, which is what I’ve been saying on this and the previous thread, so I’d be referring to it as both proof and metaphor 🙂 … wave and particle …
This entire line of reasoning is circular and based on a priori assumptions which are open to question. I’ve dealt with this more extensively in the previous thread.
They weren’t intended to demonstrate proof. Only to highlight that general ‘scientific’ attitudes to psi phenomena are incongruent with general experience and that present theory (and hence practice) is inadequate. A similar state of affairs to homeopathy really.
Sigh … What do you think homeopathy has been doing for the last few decades? Homeopathy is a part of the NHS and has been since 1948. It’s been steadily winning converts amongst both patients and medical practitioners until by the 90s (again according to Reilly), “an interprofessional postgraduate education programme in homeopathy (ADHOM The Academic Departments of GHH) became the most popular postgraduate medical course in the UK, orthodox or otherwise. In a decade around 20% of Scottish GPs completed basic level training, and according to one survey’s findings, two years after attending this foundation course 78% were still integrating elements of homeopathy in their NHS.” Outside the NHS, homeopathy is now available to study at university degree level and the largest registering organisation, the SoH, has over 1,500 homeopaths on its register.
This is hardly the mark of a therapy with “no proven efficacy”, unless you’re intimating that GPs are every bit as stupid and self-deluded as the majority of ‘sceptics’ appear to think non-medically-qualified homeopaths are. Do you honestly think a movement on this sort of scale would have managed to grow and gain support unless something in homeopathy were actually working?!
January 19, 2008 at 4:10 pm
laughingmysocksoff
Last paragraph here, and final quote and last two paragraphs here.
January 19, 2008 at 11:10 pm
le canard noir
Ah yes – sorry – quite a lot to get through.
About my challenge then,
First of all, it is great that you think this might be worth ‘giving it a go’. If you are serious about exploring this then why not start a new post where it can be discussed. There are, though, a few things that you do not look too clear about.
Firstly, yes I know you will distrust me. I am not really happy to be the ‘third party’. If you pass the test then the other sceptics will trust me – good for you, but if you do not pass then everyone will be convinced I cheated.
Secondly, I intend to play no role in the actual test. It will be your test to prove to sceptics that what homeopaths say is real. I only suggest that you involve sceptics in discussing the details so that you can be confident they will accept your result should you pass.
Thirdly, yes – there are not too many details because I want to give you the best chance possible of winning. I do not want to put unneccesary hurdles in the way. All I really ask is that sufficient precautions are taken to ensure blinding and that you publicise in advance that you are doing the test and what you intend to do.
As for choosing the third party, I have not named one as that will depend on the homeopath(s) doing the test. A recommend someone who has a professional standing – a teacher perhaps – understand the importance of blinding and has no vested interests in the outcome .The third party should be able to verify what they did and how – after the trial.
January 20, 2008 at 12:27 pm
laughingmysocksoff
And if you don’t take part in this and I do pass the test then all the sceptics will be convinced I cheated. Where does that leave us? If I’m going to step up to the plate and put my metaphor and reputation on the line, then it seems only fair that you do the same.
So not only do you want homeopaths to take part in your test, but you want them to organise it all for you too?! So that if they pass then you can all have fun shooting the methodology to pieces and accusing everyone involved of fraud? Looks to me like the sceptics not only want their cake and eat it but aren’t prepared to put their money where their mouth is.
Changing your minds is your prerogative and responsibility, not mine. I started this blog to help put the record straight about the lies and disinformation being spread about homeopathy in the name of ‘science’, not to try and change minds that have no interest in changing. Everyone’s entitled to their own views and their own choices in life. I’m happy with mine. Presumably you’re reasonably content with yours. I’m prepared to meet you half way on this, but I’m damned if, in addition to going through the necessary pain and discomfort involved in identifying the remedies, I’m going to organise the thing and take all the risk on it as well. You’ll have to do better than that, Andy.
January 20, 2008 at 6:28 pm
le canard noir
laughing – I am not sure what you are asking me to do. The challenge is mine in that it is the sort of experiment that would make me change my mind. I think that is a key differentiator between sceptics and homeopaths. Sceptics can be quite clear about what sort of thing would show they are wrong. I have yet to hear a homeopath articulate the sort of evidence that might be reasonably collected and make them think again. I think this is the difference between being ‘open minded’ and ‘close minded.’
I do not want to take part for the sole reason that mere participation would mean that most homeopaths would be too distrustful. I would take part if I thought the result could stand on its own merits. This would require trust that I do not think is there and so the only way out is for me not to take part.
The result of the test would not be picked to bits if the protocol was agreed in advance. That is why I say that the test must be public and be clear in its aims and methods before the test is carried out. The most obvious source of problems is in blinding, so that is why selecting a mutually acceptable trustworthy third party is so important. Do the test right and there can be no post-test nit picking.
You can of course hide behinds the false shield of pretending you do not have to prove anything to anyone. But that is exactly what your critics are accusing you of. When taking into your care customers with potentially serious illnesses, your critics are saying you should be doing that with a robust evidence base behind you, especially when your mode of treatment appears to be so implausible. This test is a tiny step forward in showing that you do appreciate evidence.
January 21, 2008 at 5:35 am
Humber
John Lundburg says:
“Our work generates response, often from other circlemakers, and can sometimes act to catalyse a wide range of paranormal events. I still believe there is a genuine phenomenon, but I now also believe that we’re a part of it.” I’d agree with him.”
Lmso, he’s a prankster. What he says thrice is true!
To M Simpson you wrote:
“M just because I say I give all kinds of ideas house room doesn’t mean I subscribe to them! You asked is there anything which you and I can agree on as being loony tunes?”
No, you can take on all ideas that you wish. The arguments posted in support of an idea may be questioned without taking any prior stance, or believing you to be an idiot.
“The patterns are too precise…..On hilly terrain, the lay is adjusted for the terrain so the geometry is perfect when viewed from the air.”
…….lines in some formations have been only 6″ wide — too narrow for a human to walk along”
The degree of wonder goes to the observer’s technical knowledge. Recently, I saw a pavement artist preparing an image, which from a distance, looked three-dimensional. He used a grid on the pavement to map pre-distorted, computer-generated images.
It would not be difficult to do something similar in a cornfield. GPS could provide the few critical co-ordinates, and string the remainder. The measurement and production process could be engineered to minimize the time.
Tightrope walkers are evidence that narrow paths are no obstacle. A little practice with a balancing pole, (probably useful for other purposes) and the problem is solved.
Science does not need to test its underlying assumptions to explain or solve such trivial problems.
The reason for the escalation in design is prosaic. Originally, hoaxers were content to make the circles and say nothing, but that wore a bit thin. They decided to confess, knowing this admission would result in an explosion of copycats.
The next step was to rekindle the idea of mystical origins by making a few anomalous circles that would stand out against the background, thus attracting the attention of researchers. There is nothing more attractive to alt.science than the exception.
New features, such as apparently unnecessary complex folds, are are introduced. Imagination and speculation does the rest.
The formation of spurious elements such as odd bends and twists are always arguable, but I can suppose how they could be made.
It is not necessary to do everything in one night as the hoaxers lead their quarry to believe.
In the early summer, when nobody is watching and the corn is still growing, selected areas of corn could be scarred or otherwise manipulated so as to produce an otherwise inexplicable effect when fully grown or folded.
Trying to reverse engineer crop-circles is like trying to unravel a magician’s trick by observing only the end result.
Many of David Copperfield’s grand illusions exploit a very simple idea. The audience does not see the trick, and David Copperfield KNOWS that they probably won’t. Hoaxers know well their prey.
Before Bower and Chorley’s admission, crop-circle researchers did not even consider the idea that “such complexity” could have been produced with a board and rope.
“The act of making the patterns does demand intelligence….”
Snowflakes 🙂
January 24, 2008 at 10:06 am
laughingmysocksoff
You can’t have been reading very thoroughly then (though I guess you can be forgiven for that — I do go on a bit!). But I’ll say it again just to be clear. The sort of evidence that would induce me to think again about the evidence, as opposed to the theory explaining the evidence, would be for the times when homeopathy produces instantaneous, dramatic, complete and permanent cessation of all symptoms of a serious, even life-threatening, condition to cease to occur. As Walach says, “These are sometimes so quick and strong that only the blind and intransigent could attribute them to chance, placebo, wishful thinking, or deceit. ” These reactions don’t occur in every case, but they occur often enough to be well beyond the bounds of any kind of ‘coincidence’.
Well I could say exactly the same thing Andy. If you don’t take part, then no matter what protocol is initially agreed, if the results were positive then the apparent consensus sceptic opinion that all homeopaths are basically frauds would prevail. Where does that leave us? Where’s this mythical “mutually trustworthy third party” going to come from?
There has to be trust in the process for the results to be accepted. Implying fraud is the easy way out. It allows anyone to preserve their metaphor at the expense of the evidence … which is exactly what’s been going on in respect of the evidence base for homeopathy anyway.
There is no hiding going on here because there is a robust evidence base for homeopathy! Just because a small minority of fundamentalist scientists refuse to countenance the validity of any evidence that’s not a clinical trial doesn’t mean there’s no evidence. The trial data are not negative either. Only one out of 6 (not 5 as Goldacre asserts) meta-analyses have concluded no effect beyond placebo and that study is severely flawed. The trial data are equivocal — usually taken to be a sign that there is insufficient understanding or control of the variables — and taken in the context of the wider evidence base, would indicate only that the full effect of the therapy doesn’t reside solely in the remedy.
The trial data only appear to support the null hypothesis if you assume that the therapy’s ‘implausibility’ by current standards of theory means it’s impossible, but that’s putting the theory before the evidence.
January 24, 2008 at 10:35 am
laughingmysocksoff
Humber we could continue arguing the toss about crop circles ad nauseam and never be any the wiser. The human circlemakers are never going to reveal all the ones they made for fear of prosecution for damages and trespass, so we’re never going to know. The whole scene is so full of bluff and counter-bluff that discerning what’s really going on underneath it all is well nigh impossible.
The reason I remain confident for the present that there is a ‘genuine’ phenomenon amidst all the increasing human ingenuity in creating these designs is that there are effects which have not been satisfactorily explained, some of which I experienced first hand in the first circle I visited with no foreknowledge of these effects. I subsequently learned that what I and others in my family experienced are common observations. I’ve visited other circles expecting to experience the same again, and had nothing happen at all, so I hardly think those effects were all my own creation.
Direct experience of an unexplained phenomenon is usually sufficient to make most people question an accepted rationale that precludes any such possibility, particularly if they experience it in a variety of different circumstances which lead them to reject other suggested rationales. It’s the same with homeopathy. The effects we witness in homeopathy are not amenable to the suggestion that there’s nothing in the method capable of producing results which can sometimes seem little short of miraculous. I guess you’ve just got to experience it for yourself to appreciate what I mean.
January 24, 2008 at 10:52 am
le canard noir
I am not sure what you are saying here. I am asking what would change your mind. That is, what sort of evidence would suggest to that homeopathy was just a placebo?
As for finding a trusted third party, it ought to be fairly easy. Good grief. If the reason you do not want to take part is because you cannot get in contact with a priest, a teacher, a policeman, councillor or some other figure we can mutually agree is unlikely to cheat then you have a very cynical view of the world. All you have to do is find someone who is less likely to cheat than the experiment giving a false positive. Not too hard.
January 28, 2008 at 3:27 am
Humber
I agree that there is no point in discussing crop-circles. I think hoaxing is banal.
My intention was to show that what was “highly unlikely” to you, was to me, but a technical matter. I can add that the stems could be burst with a microwave device that could be built on the kitchen table. The soil or roots could be treated in the same way. Not too difficult.
Perhaps to say “There are more things ON THIS earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy”
Suppressed Science uses an interesting mixture of whining and bluster to attack science. It is a museum of false arguments.
From Dennett,
“In the first stage, you create the strawman, and “refute” it (everybody knows that trick). Second (this is the stroke of genius), you yourself draw attention to the evidence that you have taken the first step–the evidence that your opponents don’t in fact hold the view you have attributed to them–but interpret these citations as their grudging concessions to your attack!” (Dennett, 1993, p43)
Suppressed Science’s variation is to caricature science, and then note as ‘uncharacteristic’ the evidence that exposes that caricature. It is its best weapon.
February 3, 2008 at 6:29 pm
laughingmysocksoff
That’s certainly plausible, though experiments to replicate these effects have evidently not been too successful so far, even with a temporary lab on-site and time to plan the execution of the circle. But it begs the question why. If all crop circles are man-made and you already have a gullible captive audience who can never discover the truth of the matter so long as you keep your mouth shut, why over-complicate things by introducing a whole series of anomalies that require you to lug around several pieces of additional equipment and spend more time risking discovery creating them? And do that consistently for at least 15 years in order to perpetuate the myth?
Well I’d say that was a subjective judgement which relies on a certain set of questionable foundational beliefs in order to support its conclusions. I wouldn’t say Suppressed Science caricatured science. Merely presented alternative rationales to conventional lines of reasoning which, based on the data, are no less plausible. It’s all in the eyes of the beholder.
Essentially any argument involving circular self-referential logic can be made to look like a straw man. Since all arguments are to some extent circular and self-referential, it’s arguably as redundant an argument as the straw man is in the first place. We may as well just go dance in a crop circle with a bunch of scarecrows for all the good it does.
February 3, 2008 at 11:24 pm
laughingmysocksoff
First define placebo. I’ve argued elsewhere that a significant measure of homeopathy’s efficacy falls into the realms of what’s presently defined somewhat dismissively as ‘placebo’, but that what’s presently defined as placebo fails to recognise and accommodate potentially highly effective mechanisms of healing that are non-specific in action.
But for the sake of argument, let’s suppose that what you mean by ‘placebo’ is essentially a non-treatment. Something which by any current theoretical understanding, whether or not scientifically ‘proven’, conventional or otherwise, can in no way imaginable impact the course of pathology. Let’s say it’s represented by a plain and simple lactose tablet, unmedicated by any homeopathic potency and which, in the practitioner’s mind, has no imputed correlation whatsoever with anything else: no intent, no feeling, no understanding of any medicinal substance. It’s nothing more or less than what it is: a plain and simple lactose tablet.
For me to change my mind, it would be necessary for you to demonstrate that such a plain and simple lactose tablet is capable of producing identical reactions to those I’ve described — immediate, dramatic and permanent cessation of all symptoms of a complaint — with equivalent frequency to that observed in homeopathic practice. You would need to demonstrate this effect in acute life-threatening circumstances where the situation is worsening by the moment and this is the only treatment applied, You would also need to demonstrate it in chronic conditions of many years’ duration which have so far failed to respond to any other treatment. Then I would accept that homeopathic treatment is equivalent to placebo.
You evidence a surprising degree of naïve trust in the power of a professional label to guarantee honesty in its practitioners Andy. Hmmm … that pegs you as a bit older (or maybe more old-fashioned) than I took you for. My personal experience (and numerous media reports would seem to confirm it) is that nowadays practitioners of these professions evidence no greater degree of incorruptibility on average than any other. Be that as it may, it wasn’t really my point.
This is about establishing a level playing field. You’ve issued this ‘challenge’ to homeopaths directly and personally, stating that you and other sceptics would find it more convincing than all the trial data, clinical data and case history out there. You may feel, out of some self-righteous belief that your vision of reality justifies it, that homeopaths ‘owe’ you some kind of demonstration of ‘proof’ and that therefore they should make all the concessions, take all the risks and do all the work. I’m afraid I don’t see it that way. I’m largely satisfied with the evidence base for homeopathy, although much work still needs to be done to find out how it works. Frankly, in the light of the fact that 90% of pharmaceutical drugs which successfully pass clinical trials only work for 30-50% of people they’re prescribed for, and that 20% of them have to be subsequently recalled on safety grounds, I find your faith in the quality of evidence produced by clinical trials intriguing to say the least. All very nice in theory, but in (clinical) practice real life doesn’t seem to conform to those expectations or support those conclusions. Ooops.
So as far as I’m concerned, this personal challenge is just that. Personal. And having made it such, I think it’s only fair for you to be in the same position any homeopath who takes part is going to be in. It puts your ‘scepticism’ on the line just as much as my ability to distinguish one homeopathic remedy from another, and all the issues of trust that go along with it. I’ve said I’ll meet you half way. If you take part, I will. Are you up for this? Or not?