WHO Lays the Smack Down on Homeopathy
August 22nd, 2009
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Finally, the World Health Organization has made a very clear statement on their position when it comes to homeopathy, and it seems they’ve chosen the correct one! The statement by the WHO was apparently prompted by a letter from the Voice of Young Science Network asking the WHO to “condemn the promotion of homeopathy for treating TB, infant diarrhea, influenza, malaria and HIV.”
In a letter to the WHO in June, the medics from the UK and Africa said: “We are calling on the WHO to condemn the promotion of homeopathy for treating TB, infant diarrhoea, influenza, malaria and HIV.
“Homeopathy does not protect people from, or treat, these diseases.
“Those of us working with the most rural and impoverished people of the world already struggle to deliver the medical help that is needed.
“When homeopathy stands in place of effective treatment, lives are lost.”
Dr Robert Hagan is a researcher in biomolecular science at the University of St Andrews and a member of Voice of Young Science Network, which is part of the charity Sense About Science campaigning for “evidence-based” care.
He said: “We need governments around the world to recognise the dangers of promoting homeopathy for life-threatening illnesses.
“We hope that by raising awareness of the WHO’s position on homeopathy we will be supporting those people who are taking a stand against these potentially disastrous practices.”
Dr Mario Raviglione, director of the Stop TB department at the WHO, said: “Our evidence-based WHO TB treatment/management guidelines, as well as the International Standards of Tuberculosis Care do not recommend use of homeopathy.”
The doctors had also complained that homeopathy was being promoted as a treatment for diarrhoea in children.
But a spokesman for the WHO department of child and adolescent health and development said: “We have found no evidence to date that homeopathy would bring any benefit.
“Homeopathy does not focus on the treatment and prevention of dehydration – in total contradiction with the scientific basis and our recommendations for the management of diarrhoea.”
Well, it’s about damn time!
The World Health Organization is the medical branch of the UN and is responsible for promoting good science-based medicine around the world. One of the biggest concerns of the WHO has long been the conditions in third world countries, where local health authorities range from ineffective to non-existent. In many of these areas, quackery is a huge problem and dishonest practitioners and snake oil pushers will take the few pennies that the poorest can scrape together.
Areas like rural India have become infested with quacks and traveling scam artists. The combination of desperation and lack of education and well established medical systems can make such areas especially attractive to homeopaths. These scammers do not only defraud the poor, they also have undermined efforts to improve medical care by international groups like the WHO. The homeopathy movement has allied itself, in many circumstances, with movements like the anti-vaccine interests. The spread of superstition and false claims of dangers from modern science-based medicine has turned out to be one of the biggest hurdles that groups like the WHO face. Indeed, vaccine fears and claims of alternative methods of treatment have managed to set back progress in the worldwide effort to eradicate polio considerably.
Not surprisingly, there is a response from one of the liars in question:
However Paula Ross, chief executive of the Society of Homeopaths, said it was right to raise concerns about promotion of homeopathy as a cure for TB, malaria or HIV and Aids.
But she added: “This is just another poorly wrapped attempt to discredit homeopathy by Sense About Science.
“The irony is that in their efforts to promote evidence in medicine, they have failed to do their own homework.
“There is a strong and growing evidence base for homeopathy and most notably, this also includes childhood diarrhoea.”
The UK’s Faculty of Homeopathy added that there was also evidence homeopathy could help people with seasonal flu.
Dr Sara Eames, president of the faculty, said people should not be deprived of effective conventional medicines for serious disease.
But she added: “Millions die each year as those affected have no access to these drugs.
“It therefore seems reasonable to consider what beneficial role homeopathy could play. What is needed is further research and investment into homeopathy.”
So there is evidence? Well lets see it! (remember, just citing the existence of evidence or “studies” doesn’t cut it here. You actually have to name the names of the studies and not make vague statements that they’re out there.)
One thing that the WHO would probably not disagree with Eames on is that there is indeed a worldwide problem with getting the proper drugs and treatments to everyone who needs them. However, homeopathy offers no benefit, and can make this effort more difficult. Every dime spent on homeopathy is one that is not spent on good science-based medicine and even worse, those who are lead to believe there is anything to homeopathy may not seek out legitimate medicine, believing they are receiving effective treatment.
There may be some circumstances where using old standby treatments or traditional remedies may have some value. For example, traditionally the chemical quinine was used to treat malaria. Quinine is derived from the bark of the cinchona plant and was used for malaria treatment well into the 1960’s. Today it is no longer considered the best treatment for malaria and the WHO no longer recommends it as the primary treatment method if other drugs such as artemisinin are avaliable. However, it is still fairly effective in most cases and certainly better than nothing, so if you’re stuck in the badlands with malaria and quinine is all you have to treat it, you certainly should use it.
But this is not the case with homeopathy. Unlike other treatments which may be obsolete in much of the world, but still of some value if they are all that is avaliable, homeopathy is 100% useless. It has no redeeming qualities and can do no good. It can only make the efforts to save lives and bring better medical care more difficult. No remedy or treatment should ever be sanctioned in any way unless it is at least better than doing nothing.
(also, homeopathy isn’t even traditional or natural. It was invented circa 1800 by a German guy.)
This entry was posted on Saturday, August 22nd, 2009 at 9:36 pm and is filed under Bad Science, Good Science, History, Paranormal, Quackery. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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August 24th, 2009 at 2:26 am
L337135 said:
quite a lot. Homeopathy is a fairly modern invention out of the early age of science and industry. The same erra that brought us such astounding successes as phrenology, mesmerism, running electric current through people and the like. It is essentially a survivor of that erra of science where all kinds of strange ideas were thrown at the wall to see what stuck.
Dr. Buzzo has several good articles on this site regarding homeopathy and what it is and why it ultimately is a complete farce as a medical treatment.
The “traditional” and/or “nature derived” treatments have a degree of validity but even there the way the get used in the modern world tends to ruin any value they may once have had. For example you can treat a headache or acheing back with willow bark tea or you can take an aspirin. The tea has a distinct problem of quality control. First how much active ingredient is actually in your tea? What pesticides or other negative things are you getting from the bark as well? How old is the sample? natural ingredients do not generally age well. For most natural methods fresh plants have more active ingredient. So in the end it comes down to do you want control of your dose of acetalsalacylic acid or not?
You can also treat heart conditions with foxglove or you can take digitalis which is derived from the plant. The problem again is variability of the dose when using the plant. And with the plant that can be very lethal since it can kill you if you overdose. All of the other problems with age of the plant, quality control, long term storage and viability remain true.
Folk medicine is all fine and good and there are some real very effective techniques buried in it. The problem is that for much of it there are better ways to achieve the same effect. And these ways have the advantage of repeatability and quality control.
The next problem with these nonstandard techniques is variability of the practicioners. In pretty much every case there isn’t a board overseeing their training and skill. If you read a book on folk medicine you can set yourself up as a ‘natural practitioner’ all on you own say so. So here you can have a person who has years of knowledge and knows when a folk type treatment would be effective and when to send the person to a doctor to see if it is more serious, or you might get someone who read a couple books or took a class on natural healing and is now selling their services. You can’t know which you are getting.
Last there is another element which all of these partake of. That is a certain degree of the placebo effect. The good traditional practitioners limit them selves to treating the soul/spirit and then send their patient to a doctor to be certain. You see this a lot more in third world countries. Here in the US entire industries have sprung up claiming that you don’t need doctors. Anyway by doing that split it helps the patients mental state which is something modern medicine has learned does have an impact on healing and recovery.
So the best use is to calm your own or anothers spirit so they can heal better with modern medical treatment. And to provide handy folk cures for getting into the poison ivy, or a bible bump, or any of a number of minor type ailments that mainly time and good sanitary care will actually help with.
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August 24th, 2009 at 2:27 am
L337135 said:
Homeopathy is not just “natural medicine” or “herbal” or “traditional”
That is what many people think it is, but it is actually based on diluting things until they are not even present in the final mixture. It’s a wacked out belief in magic water. Either use the search feature on this site or hit up something like Wikipedia to get the definition.
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August 24th, 2009 at 3:09 am
As others have said, some herbs do work, and in some cases they maybe work but not enough study has been done to prove it. Even profitable big pharmaceuticals like anti-depressents sometimes require large studies to show statistically significant results – however such studies are not done for natural herbel compounds which cannot be patented. It is encouraging, to see that the WHO takes a stand on Homeopathy, hopefully more focus can be put on researching traditional herbel remedies in a scientific way, even if they can’t be patented and profited from, instead of homeopathy.
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August 24th, 2009 at 4:44 am
Speaking of homeopathy and such… let me point you Dara O’Briain, comedian.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIaV8swc-fo
“Get in the fookin’ sack” is my new skeptic warcry, along with the Dunning-Kruger effect!
Other golden quotes:
“Well science knows it doesn’t everything or otherwise if’d stop!”.
“Just because science doesn’t know everything doesn’t mean you can fill in the gaps with whatever fairy tale most appeals to you!”
” ‘Herbal medicine has been around for thousands of years’. Indeed it has, and then we tested it all, and the stuff that worked became medicine! And the rest it just some nice bowl of soup and some potpourri, so know yourself out”.
The full show is still available on YouTube. Search for “Dara OBriain Talks Funny 2008 Part”. There he gives it to psychics as well.
/Michael
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August 24th, 2009 at 6:56 am
That show is absolutely hilarious. My favourite bit was about the Gilette Fusion Power Stealth.
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August 24th, 2009 at 7:33 am
Josh said:
Sweet Isaac Newton’s dropping testicles… tell me about it. Advertising for men is downright insulting because I feel they actually expect me to fall for that kind of BS! Talk about insulting my ability to think.
/Michael
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August 24th, 2009 at 10:16 am
Those of you who really are interested in rational discussion and scientific understanding of Homeopathy, (not “Gordon” obviously, whose comments were unworthy of response) should look to some of the following web sites for real information, from real scientsts:
For speculation and papers on water molecule clustering, Professor Emeritus Dr. Rustum Roy, author of a world famous textbook on crystalline chemistry, see his web site:
http://www.rustumroy.com/
He is very “controversial” but is fun to read and has the erudition to back up his opinions and ideas.
He claims to have refuted the “it’s just water” attacks against Homeopathy by stating that Diamond and Graphite have very different properties, one very hard, the other soft – but “it’s JUST CARBON”!! Roy correctly states that it is structure, not just composition, that determines properties.
For an EXCELLENT overview of current Homeopathy research by a genuine scientist, Dr. Iris Bell, MD, PhD,
see her presentation at a superb debate on Homeopathy held at UConn a while back. Actually, search out both the pro and the con – both sides have good arguments. Dr. Roy had a presentation at that one too.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYO6nNQGe1M
A list of some of the peer reviewed scientific journals, many of them are non-Homeopathy journals for those of you whose bias prevents reading them, used by Bell can be found here:
http://nationalcenterforhomeopathy.org/articles/view,173
Last but not least, HERE is a quote from a genuine scientist and Nobel prize winner, Dr. Brian Josephson, regarding Homeopathy:
Responding to an article in the New Scientist (October 18, 1997), he wrote:
“Regarding your comments on claims made for homeopathy: criticisms centered around the vanishingly small number of solute molecules present in a solution after it has been repeatedly diluted are beside the point, since advocates of homeopathic remedies attribute their effects not to molecules present in the water, but to modifications of the water’s structure.”
“Simple-minded analysis may suggest that water, being a fluid, cannot have a structure of the kind that such a picture would demand. But cases such as that of liquid crystals, which while flowing like an ordinary fluid can maintain an ordered structure over macroscopic distances, show the limitations of such ways of thinking. There have not, to the best of my knowledge, been any refutations of homeopathy that remain valid after this particular point is taken into account.”
Perhaps “Gordon” feels that Dr. Josephson is engaging in fraud or in a lie? But the rest of you, probably not.
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August 24th, 2009 at 10:54 am
Perhaps “Gordon” feels that Dr. Josephson is engaging in fraud or in a lie? But the rest of you, probably not.
If you were expecting us to go all goo-goo eyes just because a Nobel Prize laureate said it may be true, and that we’d immediately agree that homeopathy has any real effect, you are sorely mistaken.
You are attempting what is known as Appeal To Authority, which is a useless argument for many reasons. The essential one is that anyone in authority may be wrong. It’s not the title, award or past history that decides whether or not someone is right… but whether his claims are falsible, repeatable, and verifiable.
In this case, dr Josephson’s claims has been proven false… and here is the article that does that, published in Nature 2005.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15758995
This article strikes down dr Josephsons 1997 claim because water does not retain any structure. Within 50 femtoseconds… that is one 50 millionths of a billionth of a second, any structure water had is lost.
Josephson is not the first scientist, even among the reputable ones, that have gone down the wrong path. The most famous one in this area being Jacques Benveniste.
/Michael
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August 24th, 2009 at 3:16 pm
James Pannozzi said:
Oh god, not Rustum Roy again. Yeah, we all know there are different allotrope of the same elements. This guy is just waxing on about something totally irrelevant. This in no way applies to homeopathy.
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August 25th, 2009 at 11:04 am
>If you were expecting us to go all goo-goo eyes just because a Nobel Prize laureate said it may be true, and that we’d immediately agree that homeopathy has any real effect, you are sorely mistaken.
I’m not expecting anything of anyone, just stating my opinion. That’s all anyone else has in this blog….OPINION, nothing more.
>You are attempting what is known as Appeal To Authority, which is a useless argument for many reasons. The essential one is that anyone in authority may be wrong. It’s not the title, award or past history that decides whether or not someone is right… but whether his claims are falsible, repeatable, and verifiable.
Nope, I’m just pointing out the possibility of alternative viewpoints on Homeopathy, some of them optimistic.
>In this case, dr Josephson’s claims has been proven false… and here is the article that does that, published in Nature 2005.
No, his claims were NOT proven false. One of the problems of the anti-Homeopathist scientism-ists is that they automatically assume veracity for their position and automatically assume impossibility for the opposing position.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15758995
>This article strikes down dr Josephsons 1997 claim because water does not retain any structure. Within 50 femtoseconds… that is one 50 millionths of a billionth of a second, any structure water had is lost.
This is an argument typically used against water structure theories. It is quite specious as the following rough analogy will show. Do you deny that clouds exist because water molecules are condensing and evaporating in a time scale far smaller than the existence of the cloud? Of course not. It is the same with water structures.
In addition, recent research without adequate theoretical explanation has indicated a tendency for greater rather than less clustering as dilutions are increased – you are well aware of the 2001 Korean research reports, or would you like a cite?
The situation is sufficiently equivocal to require much more research before any definitive conclusion can be made.
>Josephson is not the first scientist, even among the reputable ones, that have gone down the wrong path. The most famous one in this area being Jacques Benveniste.
Your sweeping conclusions, both regarding the import of a single article in Nature, and regarding whether or not a Nobel prize winning scientist (oops appeal to authority!!!) has gone down the “wrong” path, are completely inappropriate. You would need far greater amounts of research to reach any conclusion at all.
In addition, your failure to even dare MENTION the Ennis experiments, which HAVE been repeated with the same results as she got, and which suggest interpretations quite the opposite of the Nature article, indicate, again, the necessity of more research and a theoretical breakthrough to reconcile the experimental results.
I must conclude that the peremptory dismissal of Homeopathy is premature, inappropriate and unscientific in the extreme.
I repeat that had such attacks been made against Barry Marshall’s research, it might have held up or even blocked his discovery. That unreasoning scepticism OF THE SAME KIND as has been used against Homeopathy was a hindrance to him can be seen from his final extraordinary action, after publishing research which was STILL being challenged, of EATING some of the bacteria himself and then demonstrating clear early signs of a pyloric ulcer which finally silenced the sceptics. Even at that, it was some YEARS before the medical community accepted the discovery and started altering the treatment methods – it did not happen overnight. THIS is the danger of premature, excessive and unreasoning scepticism as opposed to good solid rational scepticism which is a good thing.
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August 25th, 2009 at 11:37 am
James… homeopaths have had 200 years to prove their case in a consistent, repeatable manner. They have failed, miserably, every time. Once in a while someone will pop up and claim they have the proof… but as soon as proper scientific obeserving conditions are adhered, the claims evaporate and adds to the ever growing pile marked “FAILED”.
Now go bark up someone elses’s tree.
/Michael
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August 25th, 2009 at 12:26 pm
Michael Karnerfors said:
Exactly. Homeopathy has never stood up to testing and succeeded. The problem is non repeatability of results. Which pretty clearly puts its “successes” in the placebo effect category. Here is the thing. The human mind can have a tremendous ability to influence our own health. Sometimes merely thinking the treatment will help is what helps. Given that treatments can’t be successfully replicated any successes most likely fall completely in this category of the mind healing the body and not the treatment having any positive effect.
The impact of the mind on the body and health is poorly understood because it is so very subjective and hard to test. We know it happens, but we don’t know how it happens. And just as the mind can help heal the body it can do the opposite. If you believe that X will make you sick then you will get sick and experience symptoms from X even if there is no provable coloration. Ie I have a friend who was recovering from allergies. Some things this person would react to even when not aware of it in the environment. But other types of things like some cleaners would only be reacted to when visually seen by this person. If it was used in range of them but out of direct sight they wouldn’t react. But use it across the room with the airflow away from them but in visual range and they would get sick.
That was a very vivid example of the mind making the person sick.
Homeopathy is bad because it is one of the surviving failed paths of medical research from the 18th century. It has never stood up to actual testing of results and so is really and truly just quackery. The problem is that it is dressed up in very good sounding scientific language.
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August 25th, 2009 at 1:15 pm
Michael, it’s a blog, people post opinions, some opinions DISAGREE with yours. Get used to it.
And what’s this? NO MENTION of ENNIS, eh?
Understandable.
And now we’re on to a new mythology. THIS time it’s that the Homeopaths have had 200 years to prove their
ideas and that they’ve failed every time.
Really? You’ve actually viewed all of the research clearly showing Homeopathy successes, performance well above placebo effect, EVEN PRO HOMEOPATHY RESEARCH appearing in the well regarded Cochrane database??
And you DISCOUNT ALL of this?
The reader will note the constantly shifting context by the anti-Homeopathist. First it was that the thing was impossible because of some physics article. Just one observation from a prominent physicist challenged that idea. Then it might be that nothing has been proven. When positive results are shown clearly acknowledging the curative effects, it is disregarded and dismissed as “placebo”. When research disproving that, such as recently appeared in the Journal of Clincial Epidemiology is shown, there will be some other context shift.
In addition, the reader will note that the same “standards” of “evaluation” would fail even standard medicine, for which a British Journal of Medicine indicates that has 46% of its treatments to be of unknown effectiveness. A certain percentage were determined to be demonstrably harmful.
It’s fine to be sceptical of Homeopathy – that opinion is just fine with me, I was initially of the same opinion until I looked a little deeper. There are books out there by MD’s who were just as sceptical, just as incredulous but then tried it and eventually embraced it devotedly. It is the totality of the clinical and case experience and their reports, genuine MD’s and other medical professionals, that convinced me and by God they are not quacks, not liars nor frauds – many of them mainstream medical people.
And when you come right down to it, in my opinion, this bull**** about “evidence” based medicine is just a fiction designed to disparage alternative medicine because the actual practice of medicine is really based on the clinical observations, training, case studies and experience of the MD’s and Homeopaths who study and practice it on…get this, real live patients.
There is NO single thing that “refutes” Homeopathy and makes it go “away”. Sorry Michael but your opinions in opposition to it are still welcome and are still as good as my opinions in its favor. Just opinions.
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August 25th, 2009 at 1:35 pm
James Pannozzi said:
It’s even broader than that. Not only would we need to dispense of modern medical theory to assume the efficacy of homeopathy, but everything else we know about physics and chemistry as well. Unfortunately for those supporting homeopathy many of those ideas are both foundational and very well established and while homeopathy can hide behind the placebo effect to claim its techniques have some clinical validity, there is no possible way that any explanations based on theories about water retaining some structure through “potentization” via “succussion” are valid. These phenomena, were they to exist, would be observable directly and would not have to be assumed indirectly from biological effects.
The impact of the existence of these effects (if they existed) would reach far beyond biochemistry and render almost all modern chemical theory invalid, however since there is absolutely no evidence at all that this is so, and modern chemistry is provably effective at explaining and controlling complex molecular systems we are forced to come to the conclusion that homeopathic theory is in grave error.
To put it in parallel terms should someone claim that some viral infection can only effect a Baptist, and not effect a Catholic, a Jew, or any other religious subgroup, we would reject such claims out of hand. We would reject them because it violates what we know about viral infections, and this would remain true even if there were a group of Baptists that were manifesting symptoms without any evidence of a pathogen present. We would forced to conclude that we were observing a case of mass hysteria, a well documented phenomena. To believe otherwise would require that we reject as invalid everything known to date about viral epidemiology despite the fact that in all other cases that body of theory has proven effective in understanding and controlling viral infections.
So its not a question of being premature at all, but being sufficiently aware to see that the impact of homeopathic theory being correct would perforce invalidate a much larger and well proven body of theory that by its repeated proven effectiveness cannot possibly be that wrong. Science is not practiced by leaping a every proffered idea, but by seeing it holistically as it should fit into the broader picture we have of the universe and if it is in too much disagreement with proven theory and established fact, demanding a great deal of proof before accepting it. Consequently your accusation of our rejection as being inappropriate and unscientific in the extreme is unwarranted, in fact it is quite the opposite: this is exactly how science is practiced.
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August 25th, 2009 at 3:46 pm
“We’ve learned from experience that the truth will come out. Other experimenters will repeat your experiment and find out whether you were wrong or right. Nature’s phenomena will agree or they’ll disagree with your theory. And, although you may gain some temporary fame and excitement, you will not gain a good reputation as a scientist if you haven’t tried to be very careful in this kind of work. And it’s this type of integrity, this kind of care not to fool yourself, that is missing to a large extent in much of the research in cargo cult science.”
– Richard Feynman, 1974
Ennis published her results, but even she admits that she cannot explain them. Jumping to the conclusion that these experiments offer some sort of “proof” of water memory or homeopathy is simply irresponsible.
This is why it is so difficult to take the claims of homeopathy seriously: the proponents shamelessly bend over backwards again and again to demonstrate any plausibility — any at all — and hungrily jump on every shred of evidence that even slightly supports their theory. In doing this, they give themselves away. Take Rustum Roy’s example “it’s just carbon.” That “argument” carries no weight with anyone who has even a rudimentary training in material science. It’s offered solely to confuse the layman, and that is one of the hallmarks of cargo cult science.
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August 25th, 2009 at 5:33 pm
@BMS et al:
“Ennis published her results, but even she admits that she cannot explain them. Jumping to the conclusion that these experiments offer some sort of “proof” of water memory or homeopathy is simply irresponsible.”
Gentlemen, I could not agree more. The Ennis experiments in no way constitute a “proof” of Homeopathy and she rightly remains a sceptic. I believe if you examine my comments, all I am saying is that experiments such as hers demand continued experimentation rather than premature dismissal as “impossible”. I do hope my comments will not be misconstrued to support an assertion of “proof” based on the Ennis experiments.
Nor does the possibility that some portion of established science need to be recast in a new theory upon a successful experimentally confirmed theory of Homeopathy constitute any kind of a “proof” of the impossibility of Homeopathy. Such an attitude would bring all of science progress to a halt, in my opinion.
Regarding Dr. Roy. His papers seem to be eminently scientific and well reasoned. and hardly “cargo cult” science.
Indeed, it is just such a fundamental principle of materials that is being ignored in the rash attempt to dismiss water memory based on the “it’s just water” argument, ignoring or attempting to ignore structure and wrongly focus exclusively on composition. The “femtosecond” impossibility argument is a variant of this, in my opinion.
But those observations in no way constitute the conferring of veracity on any part of Roy’s ideas – I believe they are speculative and, once again (must I say it?) only indicative of the necessity for more research and most certainly not a proof. In addition, I’ve seen some rather odd ideas about Homeopathic curative effects explained by, supposedly, Quantum Mechanics operative at a macro level. I consider this absurd even though the possibilities are quite fun to entertain at a speculative level.
Thanks for entertaining my humble positions. I found several of the responses quite thought provoking and good and shall continue my reading in this area.
JP
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August 25th, 2009 at 6:05 pm
If you have run head first into a wall 100 times and nearly busted your skull every time, do you think that just because David Copperfield creates the illusion that he walked through the Great Chinese Wall that you should try it 100 more times to see if it happens this time?
Why should we keep wasting time on it? Why do you expect us to follow up on a work that in all likelyhood is an error on her part? Why should we waste time, money and resources on something that is not the least bit likely to give us any new knowledge at all but instead just end up as another addition on “Failed”-pile? Why should we?!
Why not dig up other old theories… like flogiston or phrenology? Maybe theories about the four elements.
No?! Why do you think not?
Because they Do Not Work!
Homeopathy has tried… failed… thankyouverymuchforplaying, now get the hell off the stage and join the other losers.
Sooner or later we come to a stage where we say “Enough already!”. For homeopathy, that moment has come and gone. Live with it and move on, for cryin’ out loud!
/Michael
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August 25th, 2009 at 6:43 pm
James Pannozzi said:
Pannozzi, this is the typical cry of the true crank: I’m right, therefor all that passed before is wrong.
You have got it absolutely backwards; the fact that these suggested mechanisms would violate such a large body of established knowledge, and would require such an major change in the standard model to accommodate them, that it would be impossible that any valid predictions could have ever been made with such a deficient understanding. This is not a question of some fine-tuning you understand, but a complete overhaul of such magnitude, that nothing done with the concept we now have of physics and chemistry would be valid. Yet over and over this standard view has been used successfully to predict the behavior of large complex systems in both the lab and industry for so long, and so well that we are forced to reject these explanations by homeopathy without much greater evidence that what has been provided. This is particularly true in this case because there are perfectly reasonable explanations for many of these supposed effects that do not require massive violations of the standard models and Occam (if nothing else) suggests that these are the more probable explanations.
What you are doing is falling into the fallacy of argumentum ad ignorantiam which is this case is to assert that a proposition is true simply on the basis that it has not been proven false. All scientific theory is expected to be rigorous about key premises and empirical foundations and simply claiming that an explanation may be valid, without these bases covered because it has not proven false, is considered fallacious in every branch of legitimate science. In fact it is almost a touchstone of pseudoscience that the final defense of some particular, thoroughly discredited theory is to demand that it must be still be considered in the absence of hard proof that it is wrong.
Unfortunately for you, many of us here are not only skeptics, but are trained in the science as well. Such an argument carry no weight with us. It would be better for you, that you ground yourself in the basic sciences before launching into a defense of a theory with implications far beyond what you understand. Otherwise you simply look like an ignoramus.
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August 25th, 2009 at 8:49 pm
James Pannozzi said:
His “work” is almost the definition of cargo cult science. Here’s how Feynman put it:
“They’re doing everything right. The form is perfect. It looks exactly the way it looked before. But it doesn’t work. No airplanes land. So I call these things cargo cult science, because they follow all the apparent precepts and forms of scientific investigation, but they’re missing something essential, because the planes don’t land.”
And it’s the same with Dr. Roy’s claims — the apparent form might be right, but the planes don’t land.
Exactly what “fundamental principle of materials” is being ignored? That solids can have different crystal lattice structures?
I fail to see how this is relevant when discussing water in liquid form.
Got any more apples that you want to try to sell us as oranges?
Michael Karnerfors said:
Well, considering that homeopathy apparently was originally intended to be an improvement over the medical theory of illness that was based on an imbalance of Aristotle’s Four Humors, you’re not far off of the mark.
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August 26th, 2009 at 12:52 am
Even i was surprised by this news. Me, my parents used to depend on homeopathy. WHO has stated that those person suffering from diseases like HIV, tuberculosis, influenza, child diarrhoea and malaria must not depend on homeopathy for effectual cure. Also doctors have protested homeopathy treatment for infant diarrhoea.
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August 26th, 2009 at 10:22 am
Homeopathy never ceases to amaze me. In the 3 hours that I’ve been awake today I’ve already managed to disprove it’s claims.
I woke up, had a pee and flushed the toilet. Upon reaching the sewers the pee was greatly diluted by a factor of several thousand. By now it’s probly floating in a giant retention pond somewhere being futher diluted by 10’s of millions. By tomorrow that same amount of pee will be dispersed into Lake Ontario diluting it firmly into homeopathic territory. If homepathic theory is correct the water that I pee’d into this morning will have remembered the vibrations of the molecules of my pee and is now more potent than when it left my system… multiply this effect by the 10 million other people that flushed into Lake Ontario and drink from the same lake! We’re all drinking homeopathic dillutions of pee!!!! Everyday!
I made some juice last week from frozen concentrate. I tasted some of it straight from the can it was quite strong and way too sweet. So I diluted it with 3 cans of water as per directions and tasted it again. Wow it was even sweeter! So I diluted it even more! Damn near curled my toes! So I diluted it more and more and more and more. until it was homeopathic and dropped a few drops on my tongue! But me staight into a diabetic coma it was so sweet! Wait…. What? That’s not reality at all….
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August 26th, 2009 at 10:41 am
BE said:
Shouldn’t diluting a sugary drink actually cure diabetic coma? I mean, if like heals like and all…
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August 26th, 2009 at 2:22 pm
The Curtains said:
Yeah, like cures like so in reality something does the opposite. People seem to get confused on that one.
A homeopathic cure for heartburn would be based on something like citric acid or vinegar, because acidic foods cause heartburn. (of course diluted down to nothing)
Homeopathic sleep aids are made from stimulants (diluted down to nothing) – for example, caffeine, because that makes it more difficult to sleep. Therefore, a homeopathic alertness aid would actually have depressants as the active ingredient.
Homeopathic itch relief products could use an extract of poison ivy.
One thing that is also worth noting in homeopathy: Only the symptom matters. “like cures like” even if the cause is different. They try to downplay this and say it treats the whole person, but it’s really the opposite.
In science-based medicine, the symptom is often not nearly as important as the condition that caused it. Lets say, for example, a person goes into a hospital complaining of chest pains. The first thing they’ll try to do is determine if it is a heart attack, because that is one thing that causes chest pains. If the person does not seem to be having a heart attack, it could be something else: Acute angina, severe indigestion, a lung problems or even a cracked rib.
Those are all much much different things. You don’t treat a broken rib the same way you treat a heart attack. In fact, some things you do for a heart attack could be downright dangerous if the person has a different condition, like a heart arithmetic, but not a heart attack.
Homeopathic treatment doesn’t care what the problem is, only the symptom. You treat chest pain with a substance that normally would tend to cause chest pain. You treat an itchy rash with something that causes itches – regardless if the rash is caused by an allergic reaction, an irritating chemical, a bacterial infection, a fungal infection, damage to the skin surface – it doesn’t matter. All you need is something that would produce the same general symptom.
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September 14th, 2009 at 2:27 am
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luc_Montagnier#Electromagnetic_signals_from_bacterial_DNA
O dear pl stop this person, might end up discovering HOW HOMEOPATHY WORKS and all you guys will end up putting your head in a bowl of ****. (Not diluted though)
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September 14th, 2009 at 3:00 am
Nisha Singh said:
Nisha… the day I am shown evidence that has gained widespread consensus to be valid outside the homeopathic community, I will personally come see you, say to you “I was wrong”, and on my own volition dunk my head in a huge barrel of stinking feces.
Are you willing to make the same kind of commitment if in, for instance, 10 years no solid evidence for the efficacy of homeopathy, accepted by the medical community at large, has surfaced?
/Michael
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September 14th, 2009 at 4:08 pm
Nisha Singh said:
That’s not going to happen. Sorry.
Nisha Singh said:
I’m not too worried about that ever happening.
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September 15th, 2009 at 1:49 am
Michael I make that commitment to you n all. Even more I am ready to get beheaded if homeopathy doesn’t works. I am not saying that because of any anecdote, I am saying that because of solid proof. I will pass it to you. Give me email ID. Patient was not responding to conventional medicine. He was constantly losing weight and had developed many complications. He was put on homeopathy (only homeopathy, no other medicine or therapy). In three months apart from improvement in symptoms (which I know you will call placebo effect) there was significant rise in CD4 count. It would be criminal if you still say that homeopathy doesnt work. Fulfill your commitment honestly when u see those reports. I wont be there but God must be watching you.
AND Mr Buzz0 I know you cant do anything. You ability of inability to do anything is clearly visible. Be sure in coming years you are going to become more n more blind because you wont be able to tolerate the growth of homeopathy. You will for sure deny all proofs. This scientist has not shown about homeopathy but has shown that with dilutions along with shaking (thats what homeopathy says) there remains energy and this can be neutralized by equal opposite and similar energy (another homeopathy principle). So Mr Buzz0 (i wont call you a dr as a person who is so insensitive to human suffering and is so blind to possibilities of science CANT be a dr. Shame on you all who are against homeopathy for your petty motives. And this WHO warning is not against homeopathy as projected by you guys but it says that no huge claims should be made about cure of certain diseases and this applies equally to homeopathy and conventional medicine.
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September 15th, 2009 at 2:24 am
Nisha Singh said:
There is no scientific proof this nonsense works and you are not suppling any by tossing out anecdotes. They don’t mean anything because they are just so much ink on paper if its not constantly repeatable under controlled clinical conditions. You are not presenting evidence, you will not be taken seriously here until you do, and your insults – given that they are coming from someone we consider a fraud and a quack – carry no weight here ether.
Please go to Hell. Go directly to Hell. Do not pass GO. Do not collect $200.
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September 15th, 2009 at 2:46 am
Nisha Singh said:
What a foolish statement. Scientific fact and reality is based on provable, measurable data and on empirical observations. Religion may involve conflicts of ideas where people are beheaded, but when there is a scientific disagreement, it is solved by examination of the data, not violence.
The point being: an individuals commitment to something does not make something true. You’d be beheaded if homeopathy is wrong? Well, then I could say I’ll up that and say I’d be willing to be tortured and then beheaded if it is right. See? It makes no difference. We can go back and forth with who will put more on the line to prove their faith. Faith is irrelevant.
Nisha Singh said:
My email is on the contact page, I’ll gladly look at any reports.
This story (which I am skeptical is even true) is not an example of valid data. Even if it is true, it means nothing. Diseases of many kinds, even severe cancer has been known to vanish. In cancer it is called spontaneous remission. In the case of someone “constantly losing weight” the prognosis is even more unsure, since there’s no actual diagnosis.
Someone getting better all of a sudden can be a number of things. It can be that the diagnosis was wrong to begin with. It could be a case of spontaneous remission. It could be that a pathogen was finally eliminated by the immune system.
Evaluating data is never based on a single case. There are freak incidence and there is never certainty as to whether it is really a causal relationship. In clinical trials they always use a large number of subjects – the larger the better. They follow them closely and assure there are good demographic controls and no outside influences could skew things.
Nisha Singh said:
Feel free to report me to your local law enforcement agency.
Nisha Singh said:
No.. that is not how the human body works. You put a substance into the human body and it does not do something because it is “energized” with some kind of magical influence. The reason substances have an effect on the human body is because they have biochemical properties that create an effect.
Antacids don’t work because they are “charged with the opposite energy” they work because they’re alkelines and simple high school chemistry tells you that they react with stomach acid. Stimulants don’t produce alertness because they contain energy. They produce alertness because they bind to chemical receptors in the nervous system. Pain killers don’t contain energy either, they either block nerve impulses or act on some other process to reduce pain.
There’s no magic hocus-pocus involved with spiritual energies being transferred. We’re biochemical entities and altering our processes is accomplished by biochemistry. Water has its chemical properties. Two hydrogens and an oxygen. You can shake it all you want.
Nisha Singh said:
Call me Mr if you want or call me Doc or Buzz or Buzzo or Steve or Stephen.
You want to know why I have that name? It’s not to deceive anyone. I never said I was a doctor. The reason I have it is that has been my screen name since I was about 13 and I use it for everything I sign up for: AIM, Yahoo IM, Google Talk, Skype, all the forums I’m on etc etc. It’s an issue of interpolability. I use it because it’s consistent and it makes it easy for my friends to find me. If I have a service I use that name for it.
I used it for this page because a lot of people in online communities know me by that handle and because I wanted my friends to find this page.
Quite honestly, I’m thinking of dropping that name (from this page) if I can figure out a way to re-write all my comments with my real name (Which is Steve)
If I had realized this would be such a big deal, I would have put more thought into this back in 1994-1995 when I came up with the name that would hence-forth be my general purpose internet handle.
By the way: I’m also not a professional research scientist. I love science, I write about it, I use it every day and I have plenty of professional scientist and doctors who I know and have consulted with and who generally tend to support my side on science-based issues.
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September 15th, 2009 at 4:02 am
Nivah, what I meant was not that I don’t think I could ever be wrong, but rather that I am fully prepared to accept I might be wrong and take some, in this case humiliating, consequences.
You on the other hand don’t even seem to entertain the notion that you might be wrong… because I seriously doubt that you are really willing to lose your life over such a thing as being proved wrong.
Apart from that I have nothing to add after Steve’s excellent post here. His post mirrors my sentiments very well.
/Michael
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September 15th, 2009 at 4:23 am
I used to think homeopathic products might have some value or might be effective in some cases. That was because I used to think homeopathic meant something like natural or herbal or traditional. Lots of products say homeopathic and its quite a buzz word, but they never actually tell you waht it means. I just assumed it was something like that.
Once I actually learned the definition of the word, I was pretty shocked that any product based on something that ridiculous would even be considered. I was almost in disbelief that they really are based on that and that this is not just a word attached to them. Point of fact, they are indeed based on diluting otherwise harmful substances down to the point of non existence.
Their secret seems to be to keep the actual theory behind this on the down low. I think most people would have enough of a brain to realize how crazy the whole concept is if they knew the real facts. I hope they would at least.
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September 15th, 2009 at 9:44 am
Great. Diseases start to go into remission on mere sight of homeopathy. What a contrast. Then may be all those patients getting better after administration of conventional medicine might also be a cases of spontaneous remission. Why not because millions die in hospitals even after loads of conventional medicine. And what a wonder. In HIV patient if CD4 count improves it is a case of remission. Great Logic Great Sccience. You guys are nothing else but pseudo scientist who do not know basic facts about science. And that is look for facts with open mind.
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September 15th, 2009 at 9:59 am
Nisha, now you’re rambling.
If you have nothing more to contribute to this debate other than lashing out with nonsensical rants, I suggest you go bark up someone else’s tree because the monkeys in this one are getting bored.
/Michael
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September 15th, 2009 at 10:29 am
Nisha Singh said:
No. Diseases sometimes heal themselves and things like cancer go into spontaneous remission on rare occasions with or without homeopathy.
If you cherry pick the case examples there will surely be a handful who went into remission around the time of starting homeopathy. They would have gone into remission anyway, homeopathy or not. You can do the same with prayer or anything. Pray for thousands to get well, when one does, use that as proof and ignore the fact that everyone else died.
Nisha Singh said:
“all those patients” no. One or two? yes. That is why we do not use anecdotes in evaluating medicine. We use case control studies. Large numbers of people and controls. We demonstrate that the medicine has a signifficantly better probability of success than doing nothing, even if the doing nothing approach has a success rate higher than zero.
Nisha Singh said:
No doctor or scientist will claim that even the best of modern medicine can cure everyone of everything. We are bound to reality and fact, and the unfortunate fact is that many diseases are not curable or have a cure rate that is pretty low. The human body is complex and not all damages it sustains are reversible.
Modern medicine does not have a 100% success rate. It never will. It has a very high success rate and it is getting higher.
Eventually we all die. That’s not something that can be completely removed.
Homeopaths can tell us that they can cure everything, because they lie. Show me a 200 year old homeopath. If homeopathy could really cure everything then they could live forever because any health problem would be eliminated as soon as it cropped up.
Nisha Singh said:
It could be. It could be that their immune system suddenly started to fight and reject the retrovirus. It has happened. One single person counts for nothing. Two or three don’t count either. This is especially true because you don’t give verifiable details. Were they on other treatments?
Provide a proper clinical case control studies and I will listen. My mind is open. You must have the same on both sides of the study except for the one variable. If other treatments are used, then both the control group and the study group must receive identical treatments with the exception of homeopathy. It does not need to be the only treatment as long as all others are identical. That proves it is the variable that makes the difference.
Show me one study that documents this and I will listen. Show me two and I will be even more interested. Show me three and I’ll start to consider that I might be wrong.
That is another important factor – repeatability and confirmation. This is especially true with extraordinary claims.
Does this seem to make sense to anyone else?
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September 15th, 2009 at 11:40 am
Nisha Singh is not going to be convinced because she is a believer, not a scientist. We are arguing religion with this type of commenter, and like all who believe in faith healing, it is the few accidental remissions that count, not the majority of cases that fail.
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September 15th, 2009 at 3:22 pm
DV82XL said:
While I know what you’re saying, just a nitpick on the terminology: It’s not necessary to be a scientist to be science literate. We live in a society where people are free to make their own medical decisions. Doctors can advise people, but so can quacks and ultimately it’s generally the patient’s decision as to what course of treatment to go with.
Not to mention the fact that policy is controlled by a combination of voters opinions and the marketplace.
It would be unrealistic to think that we could ever reach the point where the general public understands the finer points of clinical studies and is well versed in all the statistical mathematics that goes into them. However, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to think that the general public could be taught to at least realize that clinical studies are important and that anecdotes are not. I don’t think it’s unrealistic to think that the average person could comprehend the reasoning behind the scientific method and why its important.
Also, I think there is some failure here. I graduated high school without hearing a single teacher ever utter the word “Placebo effect” and that’s just not acceptable. There was some instruction in experimental controls, but only in a very narrow context.
These concepts are really not that complicated. They take some getting used to, because it’s not how humans naturally think, but once you get a basic understanding it all makes sense.
There is no focus at all here and it’s critical. You can invest all the time and money in the world on training world class physicians and equipping hospitals with the best technology. None of that can do any good to the person who says “I don’t think I’m going to go to the alopathic doctors and big corporations. My friend’s cousin’s fiance’s sister went to an acupuncturist and she swears it cured her in one session.”
If people had even the most basic understanding of how important the scientific method is and how worthless anicdotes are and if they have any knowledge of the extent to which we go to test and evaluate drugs and procedures, I don’t think we’d have the issues with vaccine rejection and preventable outbreaks that we do
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September 15th, 2009 at 3:51 pm
drbuzz0 said:
There is huge amount of truth in what you say, the current state of science education in K-12 is criminal in the West at this point in time. In fact many of the topics we rail about here (in fact almost all of them) are rooted in this gap in public education. Why this is so is beyond me.
If I were a card-carrying member of the conspiracy crowd, I would be forced to say this has been done on purpose to keep the population ignorant and thus pliable. However I am not, so I will put it down to the terminal indifference that seems to have infected those in public education.
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September 16th, 2009 at 12:46 am
Nisha Singh said:
I do not know how old you are or what your education is, but if you honestly believe this, then I can see why you might. Anicdotal evidence can be convincing especially when it is dramatic. The idea that there is some kind of “energy” to substances or to life forms is a common theme in many belief systems, but medicine has not shown it to be valid.
Mainstreem medicine has improved a lot and is always getting better. We can’t help everyone but we can help most. Things are getting better through science and research. Homeopathy is not part of the modern scientific approach because it has been shown ineffective.
If you are willing to open your mind and consider some things you will be better off and will lead a healthier life and your knowledge will help others. Are you willing to consider learning about evidence based treatment and science?
I do not ask that you believe anything you are told or read from the pro-science side, only that you listen and consider it. Once you have given it thought, it becomes apparent that it all makes sense and is perfectly reasonable and almost self-evident.
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September 16th, 2009 at 1:52 am
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19672601?ordinalpos=12&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DefaultReportPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19647211?ordinalpos=18&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DefaultReportPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19647210?ordinalpos=19&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DefaultReportPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19647209?ordinalpos=20&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DefaultReportPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19647208?ordinalpos=21&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DefaultReportPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19647207?ordinalpos=22&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DefaultReportPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19647206?ordinalpos=23&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DefaultReportPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19617203?ordinalpos=27&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DefaultReportPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19474239?ordinalpos=41&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DefaultReportPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19468651?ordinalpos=42&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DefaultReportPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19420956?ordinalpos=51&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DefaultReportPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum
there are millions more and not the least
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luc_Montagnier#Electromagnetic_signals_from_bacterial_DNA
(No wonder no body replied to this)
Its not that research is not there. Its not that WHO and others have not seen benefits of homeopathy. Benefits are homeopathy are well established and research is going on to find exact mode of action.
Its only that some dumboz who call themself scientist and pose as open minded are blindly against. May be they are paid for this. Infact you monkeys (as told by michael) are talking nothing else but anecdotes.
See your anecdotes
Research in Conventional Medicine – True
Research in Homeopathy – Become blind to it and keep saying NO No
Succesful cases of Conventional Medicine – True
Succesful cases of Homeopathy – Remission of disease
Failed cases of Conventional Medicine – We are with reality, cant treat 100%
Failed cases of Homeopathy – Told you it cant work
No one can help who are intentionally blind. Remain blind you pseudo scientist monkeys.
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September 16th, 2009 at 9:59 am
Nisha, one of the things that separates a real scientist from someone like you is the capacity to think critically, and the capability to evaluate material of the sort you have linked to. I have those skills and read the abstracts of the items you posted and there is nothing there that even begins to approach a proper clinical trial, in some cases on one patient. Single case reports are never used to draw conclusions of the depth that is attempted here.
Many of these rely on self reporting of undefined improvements by patients that had chosen homeopathic treatment, a huge source of error, among other very poor design elements. These are not scientific studies, they are bad jokes. One claims to detect differences in UV absorption in homeopathic preparations that I happen to know is below the noise floor for the type and model of spectrophotometer that they used.
There is nothing here except very bad research that would never pass in any branch of real science.
Fortunately the wheel is beginning to turn against this nonsense, and all of these quack cures are coming under pressure from the law. You are fighting a loosing battle and no amount of slinging insults and flinging out bad studies is going to save you. We are winning. Get used to it.
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September 16th, 2009 at 11:50 am
Many of those studies either found no real evidence other than homeopathic preparation appear to be “safe” or they found very insignificant differences. Others are from dubious sources. This is out of the thousands of studies that have been done, a few cane up with some shaky results.
It’s very hard to evaluate them given that all that is avaliable is the summary and you have to pay pubmed to get the whole thing. (Sorry, I’m not going to spend my money on downloading homeopathy studies. Perhaps I’ll go to one of the local libraries that has a subscription to some journal archives, but that’s my limit in most cases)
There’s another issue is the fact that although peer reviewed journals are considered the place to find scientific information, the peer review process was never intended to filter out all the deceptive, limited-scope, worthless or otherwise low value studies. The peer review process is generally intended to simply make sure that the studies have a methodology and has a reasonable data set. They look for major flaws and things that are just plain wrong, but science generally thrives on freedom and openness and different journals have different standards.
One has to remember that these journals were founded on the presumption that they were catering to a readership with the sophistication to understand the context of the studies. They may reject outright flawed methods, but if the data indicates something that is a very weak link that could be accounted for by random variation, there’s generally an understanding that their readership is perfectly capable of understanding that and does not need training wheels or someone to hold their hand and explain to them when something is meaningful and when it is not.
This presents a problem when these peer reviewed journal studies are read and reported on by someone without the slightest gumption of how this crap works. It’s not that you need to be an expert in this, but you need to at least understand the terminology and basic theory. It could probably be taught in a weekend course, but all too many reporters and readers of this stuff don’t even have that.
I once saw a report in a major newspaper where they talked about a study and the reporter said that the study “had an error in it, so researchers are not sure of the result.” Looking at the study and the report, it was clear that the reporter had no idea what he was talking about. The study used the word “error” in the context of confidence interval, as in “error bars” or “error region.” The reporter had no idea what they meant when they said “The final analysis had an error of +/- .02″ or something like that.
Another big problem is that in the age of the internet, it’s easy to manufacture a “peer reviewed journal” that exists just to cater to your propaganda and where the only “peers” are a couple of other idiots.
I think a good rule is that if you haven’t ever heard of the journal before, you should look it up and see how long it has been around. Also skim through the past journals and look at the kind of studies it presents. If it is saturated with stuff with sensational titles or that pertains to non-mainstream stuff or something like that, I’d label it a wolf in sheep’s clothing and reject it as a credible source.
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September 16th, 2009 at 8:08 pm
The problems you note are not lost on the journals, and they have tried various things to try to deal with unsophisticated people reading the studies and completely missunderstanding them or the studies being used out of context. A couple tried having some comments on the study and its validity and importance run along side it. These would be written by the reviewers or editors. This was very poorly received and the study authors took some offense to it. They had a point in some cases. If the editor said that the study didn’t prove much of anything, for example. It was also critisized that they jumped the gun by being critical of the study when it was published, therefore prejudicing the readers onto their spin. The more accepted way is to have any critical comments run in the next addition, thus allowing the information to be digested by readers.
Of course, any editorial or other non-study content is lost on anyone who grabs the study off of a database or something. Many peer reviewed journals contain other content besides the peer reviewed content. They may have a section of letters to the editor or of a few news items of interest, although this is always well labeled and not to be confused with the study content. Its often worth reading, if they have that kind of thing, but you have to actually get the journal to get the letters to the editor and not just the study like databases.
The other answer would be to have the news media have some science editors with enough background to know when they’re making mistakes, but that doesn’t help with those who look at it themselves and get confused.
Sir John Maddox, the long time editor of Nature was one of the biggest voices in trying to address the missuse of otherwise valid scientific studies. One thing he did was he enforced a very high standard for the quality of the study abstracts and introductions. He clearly was aware that this is as far as many read and he always made sure that there was nothing that could be taken as an overstatement and things were given in proper context. He probably worked harder than anyone else in this area.
Sir Maddox was able to get with a bit more than many editors could, simply because Nature is so prestigious. Having your writeup rejected or edited by other journals might get some irritated enough to withdraw it and publish it elsewhere. Nature, however, had enough clout that you could get away with that and the authors were still happy just to get it published in the journal.
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September 16th, 2009 at 11:51 pm
Someone said -
We are winning. Get used to it.
Thats it, you guys are vindictive, concerned only with your own motive of eliminating every other therapy and treatment mode except conventional medicine. All can see Your win as win of pharma companies. But fortunately thats not happening. Open your eyes, do not remain blind. Therapies like homeopathy, acupuncture, ayurveda, yoga have grown remarkably and are helping people in living healthy. And remember my battle is for peoples health so I get equally excited about stem cell research. I feel equally happy about vaccine against swine flu and homeopathic prevention of swine flu. And we are successfully doing that. Both prevention and treatment of swine flu cases. So I am not winning. People are winning against prejudice, against selfish business motives. Regarding other comments, I told before Homeopathy research – simply find fault and become blind. So remain blind, pseudo scientists.
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September 17th, 2009 at 12:51 am
Nisha Singh said:
“Conventional Medicine” I assume meaning “Mainstream Medicine” is the kind of medicine that works. Naturally I’d like to see an elimination of the “alternative” methods, as they don’t work.
Basically, there are three kinds of therapies:
Experimental: Based on sound science, but we may not be 100% sure of their effectiveness and safety. They may or may not have reached the point of human trials. The primary reason that we’re not certain is that they’re son new that there is simply not enough data…. yet.
Mainstream Medicine: Therapies and medications that are safe and effective, have been proven safe and effective and are approved for general use and used by competition doctors.
Alternative Medicine: Things for which there is absolutely no data that they work, even in the slightest capacity. Not for lack of trying or data either. These are the therapies that have been studied for years and years and nothing, zip, zilch, nada.
Nisha Singh said:
It’s okay to be prejudice, as long as it’s in an appropriated manner. I’m prejudiced against certain things. I’m not prejudiced against people because of race or ethnicity or background. I’m not prejudiced against ideas based on who formulates them. I am prejudiced against outlandish claims with little or no evidence. I tend to presume them false until proven otherwise. This mindset has served me well.
I don’t view the flat earth side of the argument with equal merit to the round (though not perfectly spherical) one. I am prejudiced against it.
Nisha Singh said:
Oh gawd, not this again.
Look… to cut to the chase, it doesn’t really matter to me what the motivation of a producer of a product is while evaluating its safety and effectiveness.
Boeing is a big profit-driven corporation and has even been accused of heavy handed tactics and dishonest practices on government contracts. Still, I’d gladly fly in one of their airplanes because they’re safe and get you where you want to go. I would not fly in an airplane made out of bubblegum and cardboard and built by a crazy guy who lives under a bridge, even if he was motivated entirely by altruistic intent.
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September 17th, 2009 at 1:35 am
Nisha Singh said:
You don’t get it do you? If homeopathy had passed the trials, that too would have been conventional medicine. It’s not the label that determines… it’s the evidence that it can actualyl do something that matters. And homeopathy fails miserably every time it is scrutinized under proper scientific observing conditions.
So… not it is not conventional medicine. It’s quackery because it does not perform as advertized. Not that we are surprised because already from the onset the “sceince” behind it is clearly ludicrous. It makes claims that has never been observed in any phenomena in physics, chemistry, biochemistry and/or medicial science.
All can see Your win as win of pharma companies.
Companies selling homeopathic preparations isn’t exactly doing bad. Maybe you’re a representative of such a company tyrying to defend your business, hm?
/Michael
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September 17th, 2009 at 1:35 am
Anecdotes again ‘dr’buzz0.
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September 17th, 2009 at 1:37 am
Anecdotes again, Michael.
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September 17th, 2009 at 1:44 am
Michael Karnerfors said:
It’s not like we don’t get those around here on occasion. They get them on Science Based Medicine too and the JREF and basally any other forum or blog that dismisses homeopathy. Eventually one of them will wonder in and try to defend it. Some quack from Delhi tried desperately to defend Homeopathy a while back and also dropped his website address several times in the discussion.
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September 17th, 2009 at 1:48 am
Nisha Singh said:
Nisha Singh said:
Do you even know what that word means?
Nether one of those posters offered up an anecdote, and you’ve just shown the depth of your ignorance by accusing them. But rail on, you’re right – we are vindictive, and we are going to hunt these quacks down and put them out of business for the sake of all the people they have hurt with their frauds. Someone has to protect the ignorant from parasites like these.
That all you can come up with are the equivalent of a school yard taunt of the beaten, is very telling.
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September 17th, 2009 at 2:28 am
Anecdotes Rumbling Denial Blindness – true picture os pseudo scientists. Remain blind that suits you.
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