More Fun with Homeopath Dana Ullman, MPH(!)

Hydrogen Cyanide said:
Done... oh, and I took the liberty of checking out some of his other claims, particularly the one on Oscillococcinum. He claims that studies showing it as good for influenza were replicated. I checked, but could not really find them. Edit to add: I did call him dishonest... in fact he is a liar who is posting all over trying to get business over to himself!
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From Dana Ullman's article in FASEB journal.....

He refers to three influenza studies with links to two of the abstracts.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/scienc...serid=10&md5=595be723c5173e8b1cbaa97deb3ea544

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=retrieve&db=pubmed&list_uids=2655683&dopt=Abstract

Linda
 
Hydrogen Cyanide said:
Okay, but I would have preferred he listed them. Also, I don't think the results are as definitive as he says.
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No. The results are barely statistically significant, and there are aspects which are suspicious - they measure a lot of stuff which makes it easier to select (post hoc) those combinations which happen to show the most difference. If correction for multiple comparisons was made to the signficance level, none of the results would be significant. Then when you take into consideration that this is the best they have to show for all of homeopathy, it's underwhelming to say the least.

Linda
 
I think we need to go back to the basis of Randi's challenge. Can anyone, reliably and repeatedly, by any method at all, tell the difference between a homoeopathically-prepared sugar pill and an ordinary sugar pill? Dana Ullman can't do it, in fact nobody can. If there was any real effect that could be measured, that ought to be a pushover.

Rolfe.
 
It is now known publicly that I find Dana Ullman (he with the Masters in Public Health) to be particularly annoying... and really lacking in answers:
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2007/05/doctor_strange_and_the_only_way_to_make.php#comment-442613

(yes, some kind soul who does medical research emailed me some of the full papers Brave Sir Dana was using as "proof"... and then I took off)

Note: Try not to get sick anywhere near the University Hospital in Vienna, or in Graz. Well, Graz is kind of a boring town anyway for tourists... and so was Vienna (even with its monument to the Great Plague)... Salzburg were more satisfying to us on our trip to Austria.
 
For people who are skeptical of homeopathy, it is usually because you are unfamiliar with its body of evidence, including its basic science, its clinical trials, its epidemiology, and its history. In addition to this body of evidence, it may be helpful to understand the physics of water.

The below article was published in the MEDICAL SCIENCE MONITOR by an Italian MD and senior research scientist at the University of Siena:
medscimonit.com/pub/vol_13/no_1/9827.pdf

Because I'm a relative newbie, I may not be able to post a link. If you cannot see it, you can go to this medical journal's website at medscionit.com and look under its January 2007 issue. This is a very impressive article. I am curious if any of you are really brave enough to comment on it.


Your bubble is about the pop. Enjoy it.
 
JamesGully said:
For people who are skeptical of homeopathy, it is usually because you are unfamiliar with its body of evidence, including its basic science, its clinical trials, its epidemiology, and its history. In addition to this body of evidence, it may be helpful to understand the physics of water.

The below article was published in the MEDICAL SCIENCE MONITOR by an Italian MD and senior research scientist at the University of Siena:
medscimonit.com/pub/vol_13/no_1/9827.pdf

Because I'm a relative newbie, I may not be able to post a link. If you cannot see it, you can go to this medical journal's website at medscionit.com and look under its January 2007 issue. This is a very impressive article. I am curious if any of you are really brave enough to comment on it.


Your bubble is about the pop. Enjoy it.
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I'm waiting but nothing's happening. I'll post the link here for you though.
 
JamesGully said:
Your bubble is about the pop. Enjoy it.
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No, my pop is about the bubbles. Nobody likes to drink flat pop.

And the article you gave the link to is crap. The author presents some interesting hand-waving arguments about how water may be able to change its structure (apparently, if carbon can be graphite or diamond, then water obviously can form different phases, right?), but nothing that approaches anything other than the usual homeopathic fantasies and fictions about aqueous memory. Water does not form different phases under ordinary conditions.

I am a chemist with a PhD. I know something about molecular structures and phases. The author of this article does not.
 
JamesGully said:
For people who are skeptical of homeopathy, it is usually because you are unfamiliar with its body of evidence, including its basic science, its clinical trials, its epidemiology, and its history. In addition to this body of evidence, it may be helpful to understand the physics of water.
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You are mistaken if you think ignorance drives the skepticism of myself and many others here. Knowledge and familiarity with the information you list above is what drives my skepticism.

The below article was published in the MEDICAL SCIENCE MONITOR by an Italian MD and senior research scientist at the University of Siena:
medscimonit.com/pub/vol_13/no_1/9827.pdf

Because I'm a relative newbie, I may not be able to post a link. If you cannot see it, you can go to this medical journal's website at medscionit.com and look under its January 2007 issue. This is a very impressive article. I am curious if any of you are really brave enough to comment on it.


Your bubble is about the pop. Enjoy it.
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Yawn. I didn't see a single novel fallacy. How disappointing.

Linda
 
I didn't get past the bit where the author 'defines' science - drawing a good part of his information from answers.com and most of it from a short article in the 'journal of theoretics'. Who referried the paper - and why didn't they tell the author to engage with the philosophy of science literature on what 'science' is, or look at how practising scientists use the word, or at least find some sensible way of addressing the question of 'what is science' - and why was he allowed to reference answers.com...

Does it get any better?
 
JamesGully said:
For people who are skeptical of homeopathy, it is usually because you are unfamiliar with its body of evidence, including its basic science, its clinical trials, its epidemiology, and its history. In addition to this body of evidence, it may be helpful to understand the physics of water.

The below article was published in the MEDICAL SCIENCE MONITOR by an Italian MD and senior research scientist at the University of Siena:
medscimonit.com/pub/vol_13/no_1/9827.pdf

Because I'm a relative newbie, I may not be able to post a link. If you cannot see it, you can go to this medical journal's website at medscionit.com and look under its January 2007 issue. This is a very impressive article. I am curious if any of you are really brave enough to comment on it.


Your bubble is about the pop. Enjoy it.
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JG, what is your background in science and statistics? I ask, because you seem to believe in two sources (by your statements) where the authors demonstrated that either they are not functionally competant in either OR that they are perfectly willing to lie about the actual analyses of both. If, and I do not mean this offensively (I do not use the word ignorant as a perjorative unless the ignorance is by choice), you are functionally ignorant of both fields (based on what you have written and pointed to as your justification) I suggest that you should consider showing articles to people who are trained in analysing and interpreting the data in them before sending us to them - making you look bad.:)
 
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JamesGully said:
...The below article was published in the MEDICAL SCIENCE MONITOR by an Italian MD and senior research scientist at the University of Siena:
medscimonit.com/pub/vol_13/no_1/9827.pdf

....
Your bubble is about the pop. Enjoy it.
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Hello there... so Brave Sir Dana! You made it over here! Welcome, and I hope you stick around.

Sorry I have not gotten back to you, I've been busy with my actual life (and I should have logged off an hour ago). But I'm sure Orac will soon be answering all your questions.

This is in reference to:
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2007/05/doctor_strange_and_the_only_way_to_make.php#comment-456470

Wow...this SILENCE is so loud. It is time to LEARN from homeopathy and be a real scientist.
Read this impressive article published in the MEDICAL SCIENCE MONITOR by an Italian MD and senior research scientist at the University of Siena:
http://www.medscimonit.com/pub/vol_13/no_1/9827.pdf
Your bubble is about the pop. Enjoy it.
Posted by: Dana Ullman, MPH | June 5, 2007 05:25 PM
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I just noticed it, I haven't bothered to even check that blog reference, since I've only looked at Orac's first page. I see others have responded. (goes backs and reads what occured over the past week)... Hmmm... No, you did not answer any of my questions. You did say in this comment
As for Oscillococcinum, it is the 200C potency of the heart and liver of a duck (because ducks are known to be resevoirs of flu viruses...and 3 large clinical trials have confirmed its efficacy).
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But I specifically asked for PERCENTAGES... You do know how to convert 200C to a percentage, right?
 
I do not answer really stupid questions like that. I'm more interest in controlled clinical trials. Are you? Are you or are you not interested in scientific experiments? It is like asking what percentage of matter vs. space is there inside an atomic bomb (that question is NOT the point of it).

And I'm still waiting for your critique of the CHEST study on COPD (the #4 reason that people in the US die).

I'm not as interested in theories as I am in controlled studies.

I'm also interested in the physics of water...and that article referenced above from MEDICAL SCIENCE MONITOR is very intriguing and is worthy of anyone who is serious about science and medicine. His references to the 1,000+ studies on HORMESIS is also important...but I doubt you are really interested in studies or science, but I hope you can prove me wrong. Really. Let's get serious. Avoid the name-calling...and the paternalistic "Sir Dana" stuff. You're embarrassing other people who would like to agree with you.
 
James, I'm new to the homeopathy debate so had a read through the "Modern understanding of homeopathy" at www.homeopathic.com.

Under a section entitled "The Importance of Individualization" it states;

The way homeopaths learn what a homeopathic medicine will cure is through the use of experiments called "drug provings".In these homeopathic drug trials, researchers administer continuual doses of a substance to a healthy individual* until areaction to the substance is achieved.** The subject is asked to keep detailed record books of symptoms; additional symptoms are discovered through an interview process. The subject is encouraged to stop ingesting the substance once any particularly discomforting symptom manifests.
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This statement implies that homeopathic treatments can reliably manifest predictable symptoms in test subjects, which would imply a definitive methodology for distinguishing a homeopathic remedy from a placebo that would satisfy the most ardent sceptic.

If such a test is not definitive, then it undermines the whole "drug proving" methodology and homeopathy itself. (By definitive I mean not having to resort to meta-analysis, and slightly above chance outcomes.)

If homeopaths base their medicines on "proving" then inducing symptoms homoeopathically must be nearly 100% reliable. Why is this not the case?
 
JamesGully said:
I'm also interested in the physics of water...and that article referenced above from MEDICAL SCIENCE MONITOR is very intriguing and is worthy of anyone who is serious about science and medicine.
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No it isn't. It contains absolutely nothing of either science or medicine The entire article is wrong from start to finish. If you are really so interested in studies perhaps you would like to provide some instead of some vague philosophical nonsense from someone who clearly has no understanding of physics, chemistry of biology.
 
Cuddles said:
No it isn't. It contains absolutely nothing of either science or medicine The entire article is wrong from start to finish. If you are really so interested in studies perhaps you would like to provide some instead of some vague philosophical nonsense from someone who clearly has no understanding of physics, chemistry of biology.
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You forgot to mention philosophy - they got that wrong, too :rolleyes:
 
What kind of journal is that article from? It's remarkably unscientific: the second half of the text basically says "Here are lots of things that you don't know everything about... quantum physics, dark matter the basis of the mind etc.. You also don't know how homeopathy works, therefore it's probably works because of one of these things."

It's also misleading in that it suggests that conventional medicine is nothing but placebo.

...a hidden injection of morphine was found to correspond toan open injection of saline solution in full view of the patient (i.e. a placebo!) [46]. It would appear at least bizarre, to an unbiased and sufficiently open mind, that holders of “true science” and supporters of the Avogadro’s number evidence have not yet found an explanation for the singular situation in which the hidden administration of analgesic (i.e. true molecules, true matter) can have no effect at all!
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In fact, the Nature paper quoted (#46) says that application of placebo has the same effect as a specific amount of morphine (8mg). Use more morphine (12mg) and you get greater analgesia than placebo alone, so fusty old conventional medicine does appear to work.

The only interesting part of the article was the reference to hormetic response to drugs since it would be the beginnings of a mechanism for homeopathy. Does anyone have any thoughts/evidence on the validity of the hormetic response and an explanation for why it appears.
 
Hydrogen Cyanide said:
This is in reference to:
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2007/05/doctor_strange_and_the_only_way_to_make.php#comment-456470
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Oh my.

I just read this. I thought that the degree of hubris he was exhibiting indicated at least some understanding of the necessary science. But instead he chooses to beat you over the head with uncontrolled studies on arsenic (hint: you actually have to read the study to see that it was uncontrolled since the authors chose to advertise otherwise (another hint: a control group actually has to be comparable to the treatment group to be considered a control group))? The write-up, particularly in the second study on ANA titres, is almost laughably awful.

Is it really necessary to even bother with this?

Linda
 
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