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."

Comments

Umm, what?

[Penguinisto]

"largely settled matters"... in 1404, a flat Earth was a "largely settled matter"

Honestly, as long as it doesn't interfere with other scientific endeavors, I see no problems with such things as homeopathy. They may even stumble across something that is heretofore unknown, actually contributing to science in the process. Even in this case, competent MDs certainly don't discount human willpower and mindset, especially in matters such as healing times and recovery from sickness or injury.

Sneer all you like folks, but even the fundamentalist creationist types have a chance (small as it may be) at accidentally discovering something along the way that "real science" may have ignored or discounted, or in asking a question (or posing a challenge) whose answer might lead to something useful in science itself -- if a scientist here or there takes the time to tackle them.

It's kind of how we've gotten as far as we have.

/P

Re:Umm, what?

[Vellmont]

I see no problems with such things as homeopathy.

The problem is really people are wasting a lot of money, and potentially harming themselves from not seeking treatments that actually work. You might say "who cares?", but eventually those people are likely to wind up in the normal health care system when the snake-oil treatments fail to do anything, and in worse shape than they would have if they had sought "conventional" treatments. That winds up increasing premiums for everyone else.

Re:Umm, what?

[FreelanceWizard]

The problem is not so much that people are doing research in this field -- people still do research into parapsychology and memetics, for example. The problem is asserting that your theoretical framework is true and correct in the face of serious competition and disconfirmatory evidence. Homeopathy's principle claims are not supported by evidence. As a theoretical framework, it doesn't buy us anything in terms of explanatory power over its primary competitor, the placebo effect. The placebo effect is even more predictive, because it can explain results such as "red and purple liquids, colored by a biologically non-reactive dye, have greater treatment effects than clear ones." How does homeopathy address that? Even clinically, homeopathy fails; its results are on par with what you'd predict from placebo.

I don't mind if people spend time looking for results they may never find. It's true that they might stumble upon something, though the evidence so far suggests that they most likely won't. Given the results thus far, we should definitely consider research into homeopathy very risky, and be mindful of spending money on it. That's an issue of efficient resource allocation, however.

My major problems with researchers into homeopathy is that they often violate the epistemological underpinnings and conventions of science (no special pleading, peer review of results, full disclosure of methods, falsifiable theories and hypotheses, etc.), and that they often make assertions that go far beyond, or run completely counter to, the results of their studies. Those two problems cut to the core of why it's a pseudoscience: it claims to be a science, and sometimes even puts on the airs and trappings of scientific pursuits, but it doesn't follow the same epistemological rules and therefore is *not* science.

Re:Umm, what?

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you feel about three-card Monty?

There's a difference between people doing research, and outright fraud based on "homeopathic cures".

Yes. There's also a difference between people doing scientific research and people doing homeopathic research. I know this is slashdot, but read the article: it's quite enlightening. Example: one homeopathic researcher simply discarded "long runs" of negative results, presuming that the measurement apparatus was defective. If you throw out the negatives, all you're left with are positives, but that doesn't mean you've tested your hypothesis. Example: one investigator found that certain individuals were able to 'sense' the remedy, where other individuals were not. Rather than admit that this might mean there is nothing in the remedy to be detected, the investigator decides that certain people are sensitive to the remedy and other are refractory to it. You might as well suggest that certain people are good at flipping heads on a coin.

The homeopathic researchers may not be committing intentional fraud, but they don't appear to be committing research, either.

Re:Uncontroversial? Hardly.

[Vellmont]

Homeopathy is controversial, in that some people actually believe it and loudly proclaim its wonders.

"Some people" also claim the holocaust never happened, but I don't think anyone would seriously claim that the holocaust is controversial.

I'm sure if you looked hard enough, you could find someone that still believes in geo-centrism as well.

There's always a few nuts around that will believe crap. The existence of those nuts doesn't mean something is controversial. If anything I'd say it's the percentage of the nuts in the general populace. Even for homeopathy, I'd say that percentage is quite low.

The truth about doing nothing

[netsavior]

Diluting something to the point that it is nothing and admistering it as medicine is not a great testament to Homeopathy in my mind. It is a testament against "western medicine". I think it is very true that often doing nothing is better than doing whatever western medicine says. Example: US has one of the most medicalized Birth process of any country, and one of the worst infant mortality rates of any modern world country. The US also feeds babies medicine(infant "formula") instead of food (breastmilk), cuts off functional parts of the male anatomy at birth out of tradition and ignorance.

All this unnecessary medicalization happens in the first few seconds of life a large percentage of US born babies. Setting that precident, imagine all the rediculious medicalization the "western world" faces and it is not hard to see why backing the *eff* off and using some kind of placebo voodoo water (assuming homeopathy is false) would be popular and even relieving to the bodies of people who have been abused by their own thirst for "medicine".

I am not saying western medicine gives us nothing, or that homeopathy gives us something, but I am saying that psychological response is perhaps more important than chemicals and surgery, and maybe a psudo science of placebo is a nice way to wean lemmings off of "just gimme an antibiotic so I can feel better".

Re:The truth about doing nothing

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

The problem is that the things you are complaining about have little to do with modern medicine.

The consensus is that breastfeeding is good, and circumcision isn't beneficial.

Medicine screws up, sometimes, but you're damn glad it's there when you need it.

Mod parent up

[hedwards]

Seeing as this is /. I'm in no way surprised that this was modded troll. Moderators hear seem to lack the funny gene. Still pretty damn funny though.

It is a good thing, when one is trying to heal, it is a good idea to know as much as possible about the treatment protocols involved. One of the reasons why acupuncture is being given an increased role in medicine around here is the serious amount of study that the Chinese government in particular has put into it over the last 50 years or so. Up until the middle of last century things were much more empirical than they are now.

Any legitimate medical treatment should go through great pains to at least do no harm. If it can't do that at least, then it isn't something which has any right to be considered legitimate. The next step is that it should help ease the symptoms or cure the disease outright. That's where things tend to get a bit more difficult.

The big issue I'm seeing with the article is stated in there, if one wishes for the result to be a specific result, then one really has to be careful about contaminating the study. There's a reason why, despite the inconvenience, that double blind studies are so common. Believe me they aren't doing them because they're fun, they do them to try and keep the observations normative.

The root issue

[Tlosk]

Something few people seem to recognize is there are two separable elements to most of homeopathy. The first is the treatment itself, and the second is the explanation for how it works. For whatever reason people aren't satisfied to know that something works, they also need to know why it works. And unfortunately if there isn't a self-evident explanation one will be invented. And it doesn't end there, the invented rationale is then usually extended to develop other treatments (which don't work of course because what they are based on isn't true).

Take acupuncture. Twirling small needles in the top layer of the skin has a variety of benefits. But why? Traditions tell the story that it balances the energy flows, etc etc. A recent study examined three groups, one with no acupuncture, one with acupuncture in the traditionally prescribed locations, and one with acupuncture in random locations. Both of the latter two groups were better than the first (no treatment), but interestingly they weren't different from each other.

So yes acupuncture has some effect, but the traditional explanation has nothing to do with why it works.

So two of the big problems with homeopathy are first that most people get hung up on the far out explanations for why the treatments supposedly work and miss out on stuff that could actually help them. And second that lots of homeopathic treatments are developed that don't do anything to help because they are logical extensions of faulty premises.

Alternative medicine also suffers from the fact that once a treatment becomes well accepted and is supported by empirical research it magically leaves the realm of alternative medicine. So by definition alternative treatments will always be those that haven't yet been supported by scientific research, even though many of them do in fact work.

I've talked to a number of homeopaths and in my limited experience they seem to take it like an all or nothing religion, where you have to accept it all or none of it, and you have to accept the wacky explanations to the letter. It would be nice if they didn't feel so burned by the modern medical machine that they reject as a matter of principle empirically based testing.

Where is your gumption?

[rumblin'rabbit]

I am amazed at how tolerant doctors are of alternative medicines. Years ago I had a letter published in the local newspaper where I protested their gullible coverage of an obviously bogus medical claim. I was surprized that my letter was the only one that appeared. This was in a big city - where were the letters from the medical doctors?

Why do so few doctors speak out? Where is their courage? Where is their integrity?

Some day we may have a public who is completely unable to differentiate between true medical doctors practising evidence-based medicine, and a vast array of charlatans and witch doctors, and the doctors will wonder what happened.

Your tepid and spineless response to alternative medicine is what happened.

Here's VERY simple proof it's a fraud

[A nonymous Coward]

The claim is that if you dilute a substance X to the ratio of one part X to 10***120 parts pure water, you will then have no X left in the pure water, only the memory of X, and this will now cure whatever illness X caused in the first place.

Now ask yourself, where did you get the pure water for the dilution, since all water has the memory of all substances that it has ever been in contact with?

How do you remove the memory of X from water so the water can become pure again and suitable for another round of dilution with substance Y?

Re:Here's VERY simple proof it's a fraud

[Hal_Porter]

That sounds good, except that you can't tell if a medical treatment will work or not by logical argument since we don't know all the rules. Maybe there is some weird reason why homeopathy works that no one understands yet.

The only way to do it is by a double blind test.

Having said that, double blind tests have shown that homepathy is bogus too.

My point is that making reasoned arguments why some treatment will or not work is basically pointless. Even if you had infinitely good science that knows every possible physical law and understands every metabolic pathway to the extent that we could design drugs it still wouldn't be safe to use that science to decide which untested drug to use, because the rules might interact in an unexpected way.

It's a bit like software really. You can understand a programming environment pretty well - i.e. know all the rules, but you still get some nasty surprises when you actually test something because of some interaction between the rules that you didn't think of.

Or the weather - in principle humans understand all the necessary physics to predict it, but in practice chaotic effects mean that we cannot.

I don't disagree with you about homeopathy though, my point is just that even though the theory behind it is clearly nonsense, there's a slim possibility it did work but just for a different reason so you still need to test it.

There have been cases of this - e.g. Chinese medicine uses Artemisinin to treat malaria. Now I'm sure the Chinese medical theory as to why it works would be nonsense. But it does work pretty well in double blind trials (unlike homepathy) and there's a plausible scientific explanantion why it does.

Re:So Slashdot joins the anti-homeopathy conspirac

[Anti_Climax]

Did it produce "reactions" at a higher rate than those expected for a pure placebo?
If so, were the testing methods determined to be sound upon peer review and was it reproduced by others?

Unless you answered yes on all counts, passing it off as a valid treatment *is* fraud

Re:Uncontroversial? Hardly.

[Nursie]

It's a shame that in most people's minds homeopathy has become mixed up with "natural remedies", some of which do contain useful compounds.

Herbalism and natural remedies aren't suitable for everything, but some of them can help and have been proven to. Some of them are the source of things like aspirin.

Homeopathy on the other hand is total quackery.

Re:Too bad this isn't a controversy

[SQL Error]

Something you might not have noticed: Water is a liquid.

Re:%75 as effective as a prescription 3% the price

[Hebbinator]

Placebo effect is very important, especially in things like depression, anxiety, and agitation (its a real clinical status, look it up!) where behavioral therapy may improve symptoms. I'll let it slide that homeopathy for these things is hard to justify, what with the "like cures like" and all (can we get a 100000x dilution of sad juice?), and stick to the placebo effect which I think is your main point.

Also, we can pretty much write off Prozac because it has become the Ritalin of middle-age. By that I mean that a wide array of causes, behavioral, social, or chemical, are causing a problem, and instead of resolving it (through behavioral therapy or psychological analysis) the doc is just writing for the same treatment. Bobby is loud, give him Adderall. Bobby is sad, give him Prozac. Some people really need the chemically altering action of Prozac to be happy- some people just want to buy a month's worth of 10mg Problem Solver from CVS... i digress..

When administering or justifying a placebo as a treatment, take care not disregard the importance of real medicine. Placebo effect is significantly less present with things like hypertension, electrolyte imbalance, heart problems, diabetes, kidney and liver diseases, obesity, hypercholesterolemia, and other more corporal diseases. There is no "I think this will resolve my congestive heart failure" placebo effect that stands on its own.

As far as "sugar pills have no side effects" is concerned, look at and drug study that reports side effect profiles - placebos can have many of the same adverse effects as the "medicine" medicine. People will report dry mouth, sweating, fatigue, headaches, sleeping problems, and even sexual problems because ordinary people will have all of these things randomly on a day to day basis. The only thing thats different is that the FDA makes them report every single thing as a "possible side effect" if it occurs during a trial. ..So, if you wake up and feel tired (who does that??), you are experiencing possible drug-related fatigue..

If you wanted to market sugar pills as an FDA approved drug, your drug monograph would be as bleak as that of any other drug with regard to side effects. I'm not trying to say that pharmaceutical compounds dont have side effects, but the same effect that makes people feel better regardless of drug action can also make them feel worse.

Homeopathic drugs will never be superior to prescriptions because they are just water. Literally, in some formulations there is actually NO drug - just the solvent, because they have diluted it to such a degree that you could have an entire lot without a single molecule of the effective chemical. It would be nice if all of our healthcare issues could be resolved by just "thinking and feeling as though one is receiving a cure," but almost every time, this is not the case. People who have needs for medicinal intervention can not afford to be distracted by things like this at a cost of delaying real medicine. Real medicine and real doctors and real pharmacists who make people better through real science.

Re:All UK ciizens should be angry about this!

[Valdrax]

Why? It's probably a lot cheaper than the other hospitals. Not to mention that at the very least it gives people a placebo effect and probably teaches them some reasonable lessons about respecting their body and respecting nature, which are valuable lessons.

The same exact thing could be said for tribal medicine men and other shamans.
Should your government fund them as part of their healthcare system too?

Re:Uncontroversial? Hardly.

[rossifer]

It's always nice to hear a positive story from a chiropractic patient on a forum such as this.

Chiropractors provide many things. Human touch. Warmth. Massage. Stretching. Advice on posture.

Those are all very good things for the human body. They lead to relaxation, reduced stress, reduced physical tension.

Which are further very good things for the human body. All together and individually, these actions and effects are known to be good for you, promote wellness and improve health.

The rest is mostly innocent quackery. Except for "adjusting" infants. That's dangerous quackery.

Colloidal Silver? Probably not a good idea.

Dangerous quackery.

Magnetic Healing? Probably something to it.

Probably something that can be sold for a profit. Fraudulent but harmless quackery.

Acupuncture? Definitely does something, but I don't think we know exactly what.

It pokes holes in you and irritates tissues normally protected by your skin. Other than that, lots of nearly untestable placebo effect.

Homeopathy? I've never been to a practitioner, but I'm honestly not too confident in the concepts.

The word you're searching for is "bullshit". Homeopathic medicine has lots of well-diluted bullshit and will be more than happy to sell you not-really tainted water at a price that makes bottled water vendors blush.

Homeopathy though? I continue to doubt.

That's a great start. Keep it up. Skepticism can be tiring, but is incredibly rewarding.

Regards,
Ross

Re:Uncontroversial? Hardly.

[Mr2001]

Herbalism and natural remedies aren't suitable for everything, but some of them can help and have been proven to. Some of them are the source of things like aspirin. Agreed, but looking for something "natural" as an end in itself is foolish. If you want a natural headache cure, you can use salicylic acid from willow bark, but the side effects will be a lot milder if you process it into aspirin first. The people who go looking for "natural remedies" usually just suffer from the superstition that synthetic chemicals are automatically more dangerous than ground-up leaves.

Also, the term "natural" doesn't really have much meaning in this situation. At one end of the spectrum, you could say that everything is natural, since it's made from atoms that were found here on earth. At the other end, you could say it's only natural if you're taking a bite out of a plant or animal that you found in the wild, without even cooking it or washing off the natural dirt and bacteria. Most people draw an arbitrary line somewhere in the middle: some amount of processing is OK, but any more than that and it's suddenly "unnatural".

What's amusing to me

[Sycraft-fu]

Is that everyone I know who believes in homeopathy also believes that the climate is getting warmer and humans are the cause of that. When asked why they believe in global warming the answer is, invariably, "Because science has proven it." More questioning leads to the point that the consensus of scientists is that global warming is real, and human caused. Fair enough, they lack the education and/or will to investigate it themselves, so they rely on the prevailing expert opinion.

However you then confront them that the prevailing expert opinion is that homeopathy is junk and they start twisting things, calling up studies of dissenters, distrusting scientists, and so on.

In other words, they like the "scientific consensus" explanation when it supports their views, but don't when it doesn't. Unfortunately, I think this is extremely common with most people. They just buy whatever explains their world view, they don't apply the rigor they sometimes like to pretend.

Re:%75 as effective as a prescription 3% the price

[Lane.exe]

Acupuncture is stress-relieving because it stimulates the release of endorphins, which is a quaint way of saying it gets you high. Less stress is, incidentally, better for your health. But it's nothing special about acupuncture. It's something special about stress-relieving activity. You could spend an hour sitting in a peaceful place reading a good book and get the same benefit.

Re:%75 as effective as a prescription 3% the price

[cp.tar]

How exactly does behavioral therapy or physiological analysis "resolve" a problem? If your wife left you, will therapy bring her back? No, only the way you feel can be addressed. The fundamental problem will never be resolved. I would be thoughtful before taking a drug like Prozac, but I'm not swayed by the unscientific protestant-ethic-based theory that solving a problem should be hard or time-consuming.

If your wife left you, that is no longer a problem.
The way you feel about it is the problem. The way you act because of that is the problem.

Whatever problems you had before she left you are gone.
Well, you're probably still broke, or even more broke because she also took all your money when she left, and have probably lost a friend or a gardener as well, but I digress.

Anyway, therapy (which I consider only a substitute for friends who'll talk to you - and, more importantly, listen to you; I've had both and friends are both better and cheaper) resolves a problem by first showing you it is not the immediate problem at all.
"Fundamental" problems tend to occupy your attention, so you don't see the real, immediate problems. Problem is (I'm using that word way too much now), if suddenly your fundamental problem was resolved, i.e. your wife came back, your immediate problems would seem to have disappeared altogether. However, whatever led to her leaving in the first place remains unresolved, and your new feelings for her would never be the same anyway.
Basically, save for foing back in time and preventing certain things to happen, there is no solving those fundamental problems.
There's just dealing with the consequences.

Problems are only solved in maths. In life, they are dealt with.