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MRC_Hans said:
Rustrum Roy is the new hero of the homeopathic community, so we'd better wade through his stuff and get the debunkery ready, because this is not the last we're gonna hear about it.

Hi Murthy, btw.

Hans
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Hi Hans

I really woud like to hear about the short comings in this study, if any, in a scientific way, ofcourse.

Are there any material science specialists here?

Murthy
 
wollery said:
Of course, it doesn't say what these super peer review procedures actually are.
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It does on this page:
Super peer review is based on reviewing the authors, not the particular piece of work. Moreover, that review can be done easily and on objective criteria. What is the major criterion? That the author (at least one) shall have published in the open, often peer-reviewed (!!) literature, a large (30-50 papers) body of work.
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It's more usually called "appeal to authority".
 
Taffer said:
It's a lecture. What's your point?
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wollery said:
I see no mention of a peer reviewed paper or double blinding procedures.
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MRC_Hans said:
Rustrum Roy is the new hero of the homeopathic community, so we'd better wade through his stuff and get the debunkery ready, because this is not the last we're gonna hear about it.
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The paper referenced on page 5 of the powerpoint lecture notes Murthy linked to can be found here: The Structure of Liquid Water; Novel Insights from Materials Research; Potential Relevance to Homeopathy.
 
Mojo said:
It does on this page:

Super peer review is based on reviewing the authors, not the particular piece of work. Moreover, that review can be done easily and on objective criteria. What is the major criterion? That the author (at least one) shall have published in the open, often peer-reviewed (!!) literature, a large (30-50 papers) body of work.
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It's more usually called "appeal to authority".
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It's also called "my mate wrote this" and "I couldn't get anyone else to publish this sort of work, so I started my own journal with some mates who were also having problems".
 
Gavinimurthy said:
We are speaking of counterfeit drug manufacturers and dealers -- those who package useless chemicals in the form of well known AIDS and cancer medications. (We exclude the homeopathic industry, for now.) Such charlatans do more than sell a fraudulent product; they kill people who might otherwise have lived if they had received real medication. Many others die because the counterfeit drugs contain dangerous impurities.
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Why exclude the homoeopathic industry?
 
Well, you posted the quotation. Perhaps you can tell us why the homoeopathic industry should be excluded when someone is talking about "charlatans [who] do more than sell a fraudulent product; they kill people who might otherwise have lived if they had received real medication". I can't for the life of me see why.
 
MRC_Hans said:
Normally, you wouldn't require contols in a physics experiment, but spectroscopy is special, because it is so sensitive that it can detect extremely minute amounts of substances (in principle, single molecules). Even if you don't think reporting bias is an issue, you need to make calibration controls, because otherwise you don't really know what you are detecting.
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Right.

At a minimum, they should have prepared a sample of solvent through the usual dilution/succussion sequence, but without any initial active ingredient.
 
Gavinimurthy said:
Hi Hans

I really woud like to hear about the short comings in this study, if any, in a scientific way, ofcourse.

Are there any material science specialists here?
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It's very simple:

The study posits polymerized water as a mechanism for homeopathy.

WATER DOESN'T POLYMERIZE.

The study is total garbage.
 
Mr Roy, who insists that liquid water has a structure, also says that this structure changes easily (quote from the lecture referenced in the OP):

"The mixture of well known hydrogen bonds and previously totally ignored van der Waals bonds means that water structure is easily changed by:
• Pressure and temperature
• Epitaxy(special relation to SiO2phases)
• Nanobubbleinclusions
• Radiation of various kinds
• Magnetic and electric fields"

So all those homeopathic remedies are altered by changes in temperature, pressure, electric fields, etc.? How do you ensure that the original "structure" is still present when you take the remedy?
 
Against my better instincts, I did waste some time scanning Roy's slide-show that was cited http://www.rustumroy.com/May 16th Webinar.pdf and I have a serious problem with slide/page 28. He claims it shows the spectra of pure ethanol superimposed on three dilutions (6C, 12C and 30C) of nux vomica. To me, it looks like a spectrum of dirty ethanol, superimposed on background spectra. By "background," I mean the absorbance of the cuvette itself (or, pure ethanol- although I doubt it). Unfortunately, when I retired I donated all my handbooks, and compendia of spectral tables, to an assistant professor 900 miles from here; so I can't be sure.
 
Wait a minute- Aldrich Chemicals has spectral information online http://www.sigmaaldrich.com/catalog/search/ProductDetail/SIAL/493511 and ethanol does not have significant absorbance in the range 270-400 nm. The figure on p. 28 of Roy's slide show is definitely bogus. Pure ethanol certainly does not have a maximum at 325. I continue to think Roy shows a spectrum for contaminated ethanol, and the others simply represent use of a glass cuvette (rather than quartz). Glass absorbs UV, and is not suitable for use at short wavelengths.
 
Personally, I have a problem with comparing solid phases with a liquid one. Like using the different forms of ice to presume the same forms exist for a long period of time in liquid of gas.

The problem is that the definition of a liquid basically says that these interactions (H-bonding is what is discussed there) will be shifting on a short timeframe (have to get my nose in a textbook to bring back some numbers for this). Temperature (kinetic energy) is what makes them shift. You may have what is called an "hydration shell" around a given solute (I think that is what is implied in there) but water molecules will be exchanged often in them, with the result that they can't remain in that shape once the solute is gone (which is what happen in homeopathy, per definition). Unless you remove kinetic energy (that is, freeze the water) and then remove the solute molecules. Good luck doing that.

In fewer words, there are large sections of thermodynamics against this phenomenon.

the Kemist
 
from roy's paper. any discussion?

Miyazaki et al. ([FONT=TimesNewRoman,Italic]Science[/FONT], May 21, 2004) show infrared spectroscopic evidence for oligomers of different shape and sizes from n=4-27 in (H2O)n [41]. Shin et al. (May 21, 2004) present intriguing IR data near the 3.7μ O-H stretching band in oligomers from 6-27, around the “magic number” of n=21 [42]. From neither of these papers can one tell whether the authors believe that water—all waters under undelimited conditions—contain 100% of these molecules, or a majority. Nor is there any comment on how such clusters are distributed in space, or whether different size clusters are themselves formed into separate regions of the nano-heterogeneous bulk water.

****
Clearly the origin of some of the inherent confusion in the field is based on the materials scientists’ and the chemists’ use of the same term to mean different things. Chemists use “structure” to describe the structure of the molecules or ‘structural building blocks.’ Materials Scientists use “structure” to describe the 3-D structural architecture of the material. The former describe the size and shape of the bricks or cement blocks; the latter describe the shape and size of the walls and the room and how the bricks and blocks are arranged within it.​
​
 
JJM said:
Wait a minute- Aldrich Chemicals has spectral information online http://www.sigmaaldrich.com/catalog/search/ProductDetail/SIAL/493511 and ethanol does not have significant absorbance in the range 270-400 nm. The figure on p. 28 of Roy's slide show is definitely bogus. Pure ethanol certainly does not have a maximum at 325. I continue to think Roy shows a spectrum for contaminated ethanol, and the others simply represent use of a glass cuvette (rather than quartz). Glass absorbs UV, and is not suitable for use at short wavelengths.
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There are nine types of ethanols mentioned on this site.

http://www.sigmaaldrich.com/catalog/search/TablePage/14577624

See the data for 493546 Ethanol.

UV absorption λ: 240 nm Amax: 0.40

λ: 250 nm Amax: 0.30

λ: 260 nm Amax: 0.30

λ: 270 nm Amax: 0.10

λ: 340 nm Amax: 0.10

*************

This is the data for specroscopic grade

UV absorption λ: 210 nm Amax: 0.40

λ: 220 nm Amax: 0.25

λ: 230 nm Amax: 0.15

λ: 240 nm Amax: 0.05

λ: 270-400 nm Amax: 0.01

The difference of absorbance between the two grades is self explanatory.

So, we can't jump to conclusions and declare the study of a reputed professor as bogus.

Perhaps 'selective blindness'?

Murthy
 
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