I appreciate good skeptical thinking, and yet, am I the only one who thinks that no one responded to the numerous basic science and clinical studies that Dana Ullman referenced?
Am I the only one who think that Ullman also gave a good, solid critique of that questionably done "meta-analysis" that sought to compare 110 homeopathic and allopathic studies? Am I the only one who is surprised that even the skeptics who did this study found that the homeopathic studies had a larger number of higher percentage of higher quality studies than the allopathic studies (by THEIR own definition of high quality studies).
At first blush, homeopathy seems weird to me too, but heck, nature is full of mysteries. Humility is a healthy scientific attitude.
I attempted to respond to the critique of the metanalysis (thanks for pointing that out Mashuna). I don't think that I would call it a "good, solid critique" as many of the criticisms were not valid or were irrelevant. For example, no meaningful conclusions can be drawn about differences in the percentage of high quality studies, since two different methods were used to obtain that number. For the homeopathy group it is a population value (i.e. all the homeopathy studies of that type were included) and for the conventional medicine group it is a sample value. Since the sample was not drawn randomly, but rather selected, it is a biased sample on that value and cannot be used to make general predictions about the percentage of high quality studies among conventional medicine trials. Also, the measures of quality were fairly gross and only really differed on one measure (concealment of allocation) - it more likely represented a variation in whether it was
reported, than in the actual performance.
Ullman's critique would be relevant if one were talking about disproving homeopathy. The analysis does not exclude the possibility that there is a real effect. However, since homeopathy is without supporting evidence independent of the results of clinical trials, it is sufficient to point out that there are alternate explanations for those results. And the support for those alternate explanations does not need to be robust, it simply needs to be plausible - a standard the meta-analysis easily acheives.
Ullman also makes the common mistake of thinking that individual trials demonstrating the effects of a "special" water provides support for homeopathy. At best, all it can demonstrate is that a particular water may have a therapeutic effect in a particular condition. But it doesn't tell us why. The analogy I have used in the past is "alfabetopathy". If I choose a drug that starts with the same letter as the condition it is meant to treat and a clinical trial shows that the drug is effective, that doesn't mean that I have proven that drugs can be chosen on the basis of their initial letters.
It is true that many people who are skeptical of homeopathy are ignorant of the details, but that is true of anything in science - no one person has adequate knowledge, but collectively we do. The skepticism is based on trust in the process of the objective evaluation from those in the field, rather than based on the wishful thinking of individuals. I think the comments in this thread have been directed at evaluating those things that we are competent to evaluate, such as whether appeals to longevity are valid or whether it is "silly" to perform studies that remove/reduce the effects of chance and bias.
I agree that humility is important, but why assume skepticism reflects a lack of humility? It seems to me that it is the skeptics, who realize that we are
all subject to cognitive biases and therefore need to actively avoid their effects, who demonstrate humility. It is the homeopaths who somehow seem to think they are immune from bias and can trust their "clinical experience" who suffer from a lack of humility.
Linda
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