Corallinus said:
I would suggest that you order the remedy Crotalus Horridus in a 200c potency from Helios. By downing all the tablets in one go is no good, you would need to take three tablets daily for the next three days, that is 6 tablets in total to get an effect.
I could
go to bloody Helios and
collect the bloody stuff. But what good would it do?
Take this, and even you sceptics will be amazed by the (unspecified) effects that will ensue. As I said, we've been there, done that, got the t-shirt. Inevitably, as soon as it begins to be clear that these duplicitous sceptics are reporting no effect at all, the excuses begin.
Maybe you used a dud supplier. Or maybe (to Hans) the posted remedy went through an airport security scanner (here follows long argument between homoeopaths who believe the lore that scanners inactivate remedies versus the more observant ones who say they always let their remedies go through the scanners and have never noticed any difference). Oh, but you shouldn't have been drinking coffee! It will antidote! Even a single cup in a day! (This after the homoeopaths had been specifically asked to say if there were any special precautions to take, and nothing was said about coffee, only about not cleaning one's teeth within 15 minutes of taking the remedy. And of course this is followed by the vitriolic argument between the people who said coffee would antidote, and the people who declare that as ordinary coffee isn't potentised it cannot have any homoeopathic effect.) Or even, just as we ourselves had warned from the start was the obvious flaw, you're so sceptical you're denying the effects or even lying about it.
Thus the test is not a falsifiable one. If nothing happens, this is not evidence against homoeopathy. Pointless to do it one more time, three times is enough already.
This is why we ask the homoeopaths, if it's so unmistakable, take the remedy yourself and show us
you can recognise the effects. The only stipulation is that you don't know in advance whether you got the remedy you chose, or the placebo. And we have to repeat the exercise often enough (using more than one homoeopath if necessary) so that we know it's not just lucky guessing.
Why won't any homoeopath step up and do this?
Never mind the million bucks, what about the pubilcity? What about the enormous boost to homoeopathy's credibility? What about the entire boiling of us here (including Randi by the way) sitting down to enormous helpings of humble pie? You're always saying homoeopathy needs some way to impress itself on mainstream thought. Well, that one would do it, no problem. If it was known that the proving effects of any ultradilute homoeopathic remedy were so striking that homoeopaths could reliably tell it from a placebo just by taking it, the world would be at your feet. (And the million bucks in your bank account, just as a little extra.)
So if it's so easy, why not do it?
I'll tell you why. It's because you know that you can't do it, and unlike the trials you do consent to get involved in (like this one Randi's organising at the moment), a failure would be damning. Oh yes, challenge the sceptics to prove a remedy, fine, you know you have all the excuses ready for when nothing happens. Accept a challenge to show that you can prove the remedy yourself, no way. After all, you've said so often that the effects are really obvious, might be a bit embarrassing when you didn't perform any better than random guesswork.
Rolfe.
