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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."
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.
AccountKiller
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.
AccountKiller
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.
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.
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.
The Freelance Wizard
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.
The homeopathic researchers may not be committing intentional fraud, but they don't appear to be committing research, either.
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?
Infuriate left and right
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
Even people that believe in pre-destiny look both ways before crossing the street.
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.
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.
..So, if you wake up and feel tired (who does that??), you are experiencing possible drug-related fatigue..
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.
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.
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?
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
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.Dangerous quackery.Probably something that can be sold for a profit. Fraudulent but harmless quackery.It pokes holes in you and irritates tissues normally protected by your skin. Other than that, lots of nearly untestable placebo effect.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.That's a great start. Keep it up. Skepticism can be tiring, but is incredibly rewarding.
Regards,
Ross
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".
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
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.
IAALS.