Here was what Dana has to say, in response to my blog (http://secularstudentslb.wordpress.com/2007/02/27/homeopathy-revisited/):
So, what do you think, Skeptics? Has Dana proven homeopathy? Oh my!
It is EASY to assume that homeopathic medicines are akin to placebos if one has a superficial understanding of what homeopathy is and what good research has been conducted to evaluate it.
I actually think that skeptics of alternative medicine can and should separately understand and evaluate homeopathy if you wish to honor good scientific thinking. Mixing various subjects together is just sloppy, and I know that skeptics don't like or honor such undisciplined thinking.
Further, it is necessary for skeptics of homeopathy to do their homework on the subject. I am amazed to have debated skeptics of homeopathy who know virtually nothing about it and have only a very superficial knowledge of the basic science and clinical science research on the subject. Such sloppiness is common amongst people who think of themselves as defenders of "science." There is more than a tad amount of irony here. The references to the 200+ clinical studies and the several hundred basic science studies are at my website (www.homeopathic.com) and in the ebook that I've written...as well as some of the high quality books on homeopathic research that we sell (i.e. one by Drs. Bellavite and Signorini as well as Dr. Michael Dean are good examples).
If you don't want to spend a dime, you can read the article at my website called " Why Homeopathy Makes Sense and Works." I will be curious if those of you who choose to be skeptical of homeopathy even know much about what it is.
Some new research on the silicates in water provide some very provocative possibilities on how the structure in water can change and how these nano-sized "silica chips" and the nano-bubbles can influence the water. I can tell you that later this week a new study on homeopathy and water will be published by two internationally respected professors of material sciences: Rustom Roy, PhD (of Penn State University) and Bill Tiller, PhD (former head of material sciences at Stanford). If any of your fellow skeptics can claim greater understanding of water than these two gentlemen, please publish your work.
I will be the first to acknowledge that not all of homeopathic research has positive results, though most meta-analyses show that there is more evidence that the "placebo explanation" for homeopathy is inadequate. Please also know that the 2005 comparison of homeopathic and conventional studies that was published in the Lancet was embarrassingly bad science. Here's a short review/critique of it:
In 2005, the representatives of World Health Organization (WHO) were working on a report on homeopathic medicine, and one of the skeptics of homeopathy who was asked to review this report for comment complained bitterly about it because it was too “positive” towards homeopathy. He then leaked it to other skeptics and to the Lancet, a usually highly respected medical journal. In response to the potentially positive report on homeopathy from WHO, the Lancet published an article attacking this “report” that had not even been completed or published (Critics, 2005), and further, the Lancet rushed to publication a “study” that compared homeopathic and conventional medical treatment (Shang, et al, 2005).
The idea for comparing clinical studies of homeopathic and conventional medicine is certainly a good one, but actually doing so in a fair and accurate way is more challenging than it may seem. The lead author of this comparative study, however, was not the ideal physician or scientist to evaluate homeopathy objectively. Dr. M. Egger is a Swiss physician who is notoriously and actively anti-homeopathy. Before he completed his study, he informed the editors at the Lancet that he had planned to submit his study to them and that he fully expected the results to show that homeopathic medicines didn’t work.
Egger and his team first found 110 placebo-controlled trials evaluating the efficacy of homeopathic medicine. Next, they selected 110 “matched” placebo-controlled trials. Finding “matched” trials usually means finding experiments that sought to treat people with a similar disease, in a similar population, and who were treated for a similar period of time, but the researchers never explained how or why they included or excluded any of the conventional medical trials. And needless to say, finding matched experiments is much more difficult than it sounds. Although it is easy to question if these researchers found matched experiments or not, let’s give them the benefit of the doubt and say that they were successful in doing so.
Next, the researchers choose to evaluate the “quality of research design” and how each trial was conducted. The researchers determined that only 21 of the homeopathic studies were of a “high quality,” and yet, ironically, they found only 9 (!) of the conventional medical studies to be of a similar high quality.[1] Then, without adequate explanation, the researchers decided to only evaluate those studies that were both “high quality” and had large numbers of patients in each trial. The researchers found 8 homeopathic studies that fit these characteristics and only 6 conventional medical studies. Only two of the eight homeopathic studies used homeopathic medicines that were individualized to each patient, with the remaining studies giving the same medicine to everyone (this method may make research easier, but it is not necessarily a good test of the homeopathic methodology).
Of the remaining 8 homeopathic studies and 6 conventional medical studies, the studies were not matched in any way. How or why the researchers would or could claim that these studies were comparable requires “creative thinking” and logic (or illogic). Further, the researchers never provided the analysis of the results of the 21 “high quality” homeopathic studies as compared with the 9 conventional studies.
What is also interesting is the fact that the researchers acknowledged that they found eight homeopathic studies in the treatment of people with acute respiratory tract infections and that these studies found “substantial beneficial effect” and that this effect was “robust.” However, without adequate evidence or explanation, the researchers asserted that these studies could not be “trusted” and that eight trials is simply not enough to provide an adequate analysis. And yet, these same researchers evaluated 8 other homeopathic trials and concluded that they showed no obvious better treatment than the 6 conventional studies.
If the above concerns were not enough to lead readers to the conclusion that this is “garbage in, garbage out” type of comparative research, there are still even more concerns about this study. For instance, the researchers did not even reveal which studies were selected until many months later. And when the studies were finally announced, it was shocking to note that they had selected a study testing a single homeopathic medicine in the treatment of “weight-loss” (this study bordered on the preposterous because homeopaths assert that there is no one single remedy to augment weight-loss), another study evaluated the use of a homeopathic formula in the prevention of influenza (while there have been at least three large studies verifying the efficacy of homeopathic medicines in the treatment of influenza, only one of these three large studies was selected, while the study that evaluated its prevention was selected even though it was simply an exploratory investigation, not one that homeopaths necessarily expected to have a positive outcome).
As for some good studies in homeopathy...
COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) is the #4 reason that people in the US die. A study conducted at the University of Vienna Hospital found "substantially significant" results from a double-blind placebo-controlled trial using homeopathic doses of potassium dichromate. This study was published in the most respected journal in medical respiratory health, CHEST.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?CMD=search&DB=pubmed
50% (!) of people in hospitals who experience severe sepsis die, and yet, the below study found that there was a 50% reduction in these deaths in those people with severe sepsis who were individually prescribed homeopathic medicines, as compared with those patients who underwent the same homeopathic interview process but who were given a placebo. There study was also double-blind, placebo controlled and randomized.
Adjunctive homeopathic treatment in patients with severe sepsis: a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial in an intensive care unit.
When skeptics of homeopathy assert that there is "nothing" in homeopathic medicines, they seem to
assume that they know everything there is to know about the physics of water. I want to remind skeptics that good and serious scientists maintain a high level of HUMILITY about what they know and what they don't know. I am proud of my humility of what I know and what I don't know.
I am perfectly familiar with Mr. Randi's silly offer. He was involved in the intellectually dishonest study conducted by ABC's 20/20 program. If Randi was serious about science, he would have supported my critique of Mr. Stossel's junk science. For details about this junk journalism/science, go to: http://homeopathic.com/articles/media/index.php
I honor conventional medicine for its integrity to consistently and repeatedly disprove itself. What treatments have lasted 50 or more years? That's consistency! Homeopaths have expanded considerably its use of various medicines, but we have maintained the use of our past medicines too because 200 years of clinical experience has verified it.
Dana Ullman, MPH
So, what do you think, Skeptics? Has Dana proven homeopathy? Oh my!
