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Science vs. Homeopathy
Mr. E writes "Ars Technica has an interesting look at pseudoscience as it applies to homeopathy. While most discussions about what science is get derailed by the larger controversies surrounding them, Ars chose a relatively uncontroversial pseudo-science to examine so that they could examine the factors which make homeopathy a psuedo-science: ignoring settled issues in science, misapplication of real science, rejection of scientific standards, claims of suppression, large gaps between the conclusion and evidence, and a focus only on the fringes of what we currently understand."
Your tax money goes to fund an NHS homeopathy hospital in London, whilst other local health trusts are desperate for cash.
James Randi has often spoke brilliantly on the topic of homeopathy, in this authors@google video he speaks on it, among other things. http://youtube.com/watch?v=MTPj9VlNzQ0
Homeopathy is a terrible scam and I know too many people that have been sucked in to it due to lack of education, and the ability for critical thought.
Free software, free thought, free society.
Yeah, many slashdotters are opposed to Homeopathy, Scientology, and many other varieties of fraud.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
>
> "Evian: apply it directly to the gullible"
"Evian: apply directly to the naive."
Fixed it for ya. I always wondered if having your product be "Naive" spelled backwards was an inside joke on the part of some marketroid.
With that out of the way, my go-to site for debunking quack medicine is Quackwatch. Debunks all the health scams from homeopathy to ear candling to colloidal silver to chiropracty, all on one convinient page.
Honestly, as long as it doesn't interfere with other scientific endeavors, I see no problems with such things as homeopathy.
How do you feel about three-card Monty?
They may even stumble across something that is heretofore unknown, actually contributing to science in the process.
Nope. Not a chance.
Sneer all you like folks, but even the fundamentalist creationist types have a chance
Even less of a chance, since they do no work at all in any field of scientific inquiry. They just write up ever more long-winded versions of "nu-uh" to science.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
That's what every Phase II drug trial ever done has tested: "Is this medicine more effective than a placebo?"
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Same.
Unfortunately I disagree with this statement. While most homeopathists generally don't do harm I have seen plenty who have. Things that I've personally seen:
1) Patients who are struggling with money spending more than they can afford on bogus treatments. Depriving them on money they could have spent on other things.
2) Patients refusing or delaying treatment to see try homeopathy. While people have the right to chose their own treatment, a faith heeler and homeopathest misled people by saying that their treatment works. One case springs to mind of a patient in their mid 30 with Duke's A bowel cancer. This should have had a good chance for cure, but after 12 months of "trying the homeopathy first" the cancer had disseminated (liver/retro-peritoneum etc).
3) I've also seen direct harm based on dangerous advice. When I was a house surgeon we had a patient come in with seizures due to a low serum sodium. It turned out that her homeopathists had advise her to drink about 5-7L of water per day. The little old lady did this and essentially diluted herself with excess water until she almost died. (BTW drinking so much water that you do this is REALLY HARD. It requires a lot of will power to drink much beyond your thirst.)
So, while its nice to say homeopathists etc do no harm, its simply not true. I suggest reading this article on quack watch.
elivs
Ennis's work appears to be identical to that of Jacques Benveniste. Benveniste also showed positive results for ultra-dilute solutions - until James Randi adjusted the experimental protocol to exclude confirmation bias, whereupon the results disappeared.
As the Wikipedia article states, when Ennis's tests are repeated with a proper protocol in place, the results likewise disappear. The conclusion is straightforward: Ennis is a sloppy experimenter - probably honest, but incompetent.
Yes, but that's not what homeopathy means. No doctor claims that natural, so-called alternative medicines don't work. Modern medicine acknowledges that aspirin came from willow bark, for example. The term "homeopathy" implies more than just herbal cures; read the rest of the thread for info.
Breakfast served all day!
You set up a clear straw man argument. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man We don't disagree at all.
> 1) Patients who are struggling with money spending more than they can afford on bogus treatments. Depriving them on money they could have spent on other things.
From my OP:
>you wouldn't believe the people that adhere to homeopathic remedies and spend hundreds of dollars on these cure-alls, yet still "struggle" to afford the copay on the drugs that are actually keeping them alive.
Appreciate you bringing up the second and third dangerous anecdotes -- however, from my original post, I said it is difficult to tell somebody to do something that is NOT harmful, and clearly instilling polydipsia (excessive drinking) to the point of seizures from hyponatremia (low sodium) IS harmful. I stay involved with my patients that desire homeopathic remedies, and ask them what they have been doing in this regard. They *know* how I feel about the practice, (waste of time and money, largely,) but I don't beat them over the head with it. Clearly if they told me that they were spending large amounts of money or drinking themselves to death, I would step in with appropriate force.
Think of an analogy to religion. The vast majority of medical doctors tolerate if not support religion, with similar benefits that I eluded to earlier. Would you then disagree with this and come out with the counterarguments:
"I've seen somebody who prayed to their god instead of seeking a doctor!!! They died of infection instead of just coming in."
Clearly homeopaths can do harm. This is quite a different statement than what I was saying though.
Slashdotter, ID #101. UIDs are in binary, right?
Vibration. You assume the whole mass would oscillate/vibrate at some frequency. I'm extremely curious as to why you would believe that. Are you under the impression that typical molecules vibrate in funny patterns?
Physically, water molecules in the liquid form experience Brownian motion, true, random motion due to heat. It's chaotic, though, certainly not regular, doesn't really have a measurable frequency (an intensity, sure, in Temperature). Furthermore, supposing there was a regular vibration of some physical sort in water, and the energy of such vibration were somehow to remain in the water instead of dissipating like most vibrations do (try ringing a bell and then putting it down on a table, eh?) it would be readily disturbed and dwarfed when someone sloshed it around or drank it. It certainly could not be expected to persist in the body beyond the esophagus and, if it did somehow maintain this vibrational quality after that, it is sufficiently weakly-interacting that it oughtn't have any effect on the body. (There are plenty of little quantum states which one could maybe possibly call "vibration" if you were feeling poetic, but they're largely irrelevant at super-atomic scales, or else - like magnetism and electron spins - pretty trivial in effect compared to the effects of fields orders of magnitude more intense.)
If there's any sort of "vibration" left, it's a metaphysical pseudospiritual "vibration".
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