Ethics of Posting

[MRC_Hans]

Mmm, yeah, that would be a little fun. Might do well starting the thread in Flame War, right off the bat.

Hans

 

[Rolfe]

Bye Bye Jazz Bee

If my memory serves me correctly, was Jazz Bee not the first one banned at HH, to be followed within a day or two by everyone else who questioned a word of their delusional claptrap?

Maybe we're about to see the same at H'pathy?

It's really just emblematic of a huge problem that no little group of individuals is going to be able to do much about. Anyone at all can just anoint themselves as a homoeopath, and start prescribing. And the homoeopathic community itself has no intention either of policing such people, or of policing the practices of those who have actually done the "training". Because they have no idea what they're doing, and they know it, so it's easiest just to do nothing and keep raking in the money, and hope that the regulatory authorities just keep granting them diplomatic immunity.

Rolfe.

 

[geni]

You can't stop people practising homeopathy. At most you can stop it being used on childern but adults are and should be free to do what they like. The people who could be taken down by legistation are the manufactres of the stuff who should have to get there stuff throught the same tests as conventional drugs.

 

[Suezoled]

I'm sorry! I confess! I drank water from a teacup once after the tea had been diluted over and over again! I'm a bad bad person!

 

[geni]

This would of course mean that you were using the K method of remedy preperation.

 

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

I think you'll find that most homeopaths are taking the P!

 

[Rolfe]

You can't stop people practising homeopathy.

If it was outlawed by the medical and veterinary professions it would slide into a backwater. It's people like Chris Day and Peter Fisher who really get my goat. I'm convinced it's the legitimacy accorded to it by the professions that keeps it as high-profile as it is. If the remedies had to meet normal drugs regs (which would eliminate OTC sales), and medics and vets didn't practice it, personally I'd just laugh a bit and go and do something else.

A bit more publicity on the lack of evidence-base and maybe Peter Fisher might not be as secure as he thinks he is?

Rolfe.

 

[Phil63]

- ah - to many posts to reply to and I have a date with my girls and the new Lion King 1 1/2 movie so I'll just start with this.

Jazz - Yes, Divina and Cha Cha are the same. There a handful of posters at HHBB (this is the BB you refer to correct? I don't know if Hpathy has a similar rule about double identities or not) that post with two different names. They had to recieve permission from Jon to do so and give a valid reason, ie. posting from seperate computers - one at home and one at the office. I myself ran into this when my pc crashed and I was unable to access my password and had to resign by another name. I know in my case I had to ask Jon for permission and aslo publically posted both names I go by. The rule of only having one identity is fairly new ( last year or two) and was because there were several troll (no not skeptics or scientists btw) that would psot using different identites just for the heck of it - it became a problem. I hope that answers your question. ACtually, if you are really curious you would probably do best in asking Jon.

 

[Phil63]

Oh and Rolfe -

including refusing even to name the disease she thought she'd been cured of) invited that handling, or how rude she is as a regular routine to anyone who doesn't share her point of view.

Rolfe - seriously, I never refused to name my disease. It was less than 24 hrs between the time I first posted my story without the name and when I then "confessed" what it was - Please stop saying I refused to name it - it is simply not true.

Also - I don't think I am rude to "anyone who doesn't share my view" - can you please back this up with rude comments made by me to all the posters here who don't share my view? Thanks.

In fact I think Prester, Hans, and even Jazz would say I have been quite civil - perhaps I am wrong but lets see. Anyway please don't make comments regarding my character that are untrue. You can disagree about homeopathy all you want but not make stuff up about me. Again - don't lump me in with any other homeopath who has been rude - tis not I.

 

[Phil63]

Alrighty - last post and this one I will be rude in but not because the poster disagrees with me about homeopathy but rather because he is a jerk.

Botox - first you said "no one is buying your story" and then called me a liar, fake and fraud - implying my story was a lie. Then you changed it to "your a homeopath so you are a fraud". I don't mind you thinking I am a fraud because I practice something you have no belief in but I do have a real problem for calling me a liar about my story. Why would you not believe my story??? What is it about you that thinks I would lie??

 

[MRC_Hans]

Phil/Barb. Let me teach you a bit of skeptic arguing tactics:

1) Don't misspell names, it's BTox, not Botox. You lay yourself open to similar rudeness.

2) Don't discuss ad hominem attacks, simply dismiss them. BTox started with an unfounded accusation. You demanded evidence. BTox responded with an ad hominem (attack on your person). That is not acceptable arguing (although most of us do it from time to time, since we are human), so simply dismiss it.

About your style: Yeah, it's not bad. I dont mind a rough remark. What is frustrating is that it is all you present. You do not offer any arguments at all for your position, except the "I believe" thing. Actually that is OK too, but you then have to concede that homeopathy is a belief-based system.

Hans

 

[Rolfe]

Rolfe - seriously, I never refused to name my disease. It was less than 24 hrs between the time I first posted my story without the name and when I then "confessed" what it was - Please stop saying I refused to name it - it is simply not true.

OK, you just made rather a lot of posts which didn't happen to name the disease before you finally got round to it. And in the middle of it all went off to H'pathy to say how much you'd revealed and yet you were still being criticised.

Never mind, you've rectified the deficiency now, so we do know what we're talking about.

What we don't know is your reason for believing that there is the slightest cause-and-effect relationship between the remission of your clinical symptoms (and we have to recall that the exact diagnosis was never really certain) and the homoeopathic remedy.

Regarding your other story, of the woman with amennorhoea. It just so happens that a friend of mine was in exactly the same situation. She was a junior doctor, too much work and virtually no sleep. Major stress territory. Her periods stopped, for obvious reasons (she was too thin as well). Her mother insisted on taking her to a homoeopath, and she did as she was told. I saw her taking the pills one day, which is why she told me the story. No effect whatsoever. (She says, "If I'd known then what I know now, I'd neve have gone near the quack.")

The following year, when she finished with the stressful job and got some sleep and put on weight, her periods started again quite naturally. She now has three children.

Now, suppose she'd happened to take the homoeopathic pills just when the problem was about to fix itself? Would the homoeopathy have got the credit? You see the problem? When you get the result you want, you showcase the case, but when nothing happens, you don't talk about it.

What about all the other cases I can talk about where homoeopathy has had no effect? The dog with the skin disease? The hyperthyroid cat? (Actually, several of these.) Lots more where these came from. We can go on trading anecdotes till the cows come home, and get nowhere. The only way to tell whether patients getting homoeopathy have a better "cure rate" than would have happened without it is to look at some statistics - either properly structured clinical studies, or controlled trials. And you already admitted that these show no effect.

This isn't a game, you know. You are treating sick people, and taking their money, on the basis of an irrational belief you know can't be backed up with objective evidence. This isn't something I find attractive.

Rolfe.

 

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

Barb

I've plucked this from hpathy.com

If youhad come along this board about 6 months ago you would have been met with a much more open attitude and would have recieved a heck of a lot more discussion and comments from the homeopaths._ The thing is you cam right at the exact time that this board had an onslaught of skeptic from Randiland._ I mean at the very same time._ We had been constantly challanged, rather rudely and even sabatoged (reffering to the polls)._ It had gone on for awhile and the vast majority of the homeopaths are just sick of it._ I am sorry you, who seem to be a decent person, an intelligent skeptic, have suffered the fallout from this but that's the way it went._ It would have been very different just months ago - bad timing.

I have been taking part in internet discussions of this type and observing them for a long time now and I have to say that this is rather disingenuous (though not rude!).

I have seen sceptics adopt a placatory tone, a naive interested tone and an openly hostile tone. What I have seen is that time and again the homeopathic side resorts to ad hominems and plain rudeness as soon as a point is reached where they either cannot or will not deal with what the sceptic is putting to them.

You personally may have remained polite, I can't easily check that by retrospectively going through posting records, but the general response of homeopath board members has been of unmitigated hostility.

Catriona's recent post at hpathy just about sums it up;

I'm very conscious of the fact that those who choose to respond to my questions seem not to be those with a very technical grasp of homeopathy._ However, my questions are general._ There are people around here, I believe, who are trained and practising homeopaths who surely should be able to answer very basic questions about whether there is objective evidence that the remedies have any effect at all on the body._ When it seems as if these people would rather hurl insults and call for bans rather than address these questions, I do find myself wondering why.



As has been pointed out several times, the provision of health-care on a paid-for basis isn't a hobby, and in any other context it is required to produce a great deal of very hard evidence._ My main finding so far is that every homeopath I encounter not only cannot produce any objective, reproducible evidence to show that the remedies have any effect, but is absolutely closed to the very possibility that there is not such effect - even as a theoretical "what if?" thought experiment.

Thus my view is to disagree completely with the opening part of my quote of your words;

"If youhad come along this board about 6 months ago you would have been met with a much more open attitude and would have recieved a heck of a lot more discussion and comments from the homeopaths._"

It seems to me that as soon as homeopaths are asked any difficult questions then all that results is retreat into hostility. At best there is evasion.

Behind this is the fact that we are pretty sure you are wrong and while maintaining a small window of doubt that astonishing evidence might turn up in favour of homeopathy, that which already exists is overwhelmingy against you. That is why there is not much scope for debating the nuances of homeopathic practice and pondering the niceties of the Organon or Materia Medica, which seem to be what the initiates regard as discussion on their boards. These issues are not relevant to us in the face of the big issue of homeopathy's basic validity. It all comes back to you either accepting or refuting the evidence that is against homeopathy.

If these were your own private views of the merits of Jane Austen over Dickens then it would not matter, but you wish to act as doctors yet absolve yourselves of any regulation or supervision.

To quote again from hpathy.com, this time it's Muskan

The homeopaths are clinicians, not scientists. They can not answer every query about the limitations of scientific validity.

This is an appalling attitude. Real doctors do question what they do. Maybe some don't all the time but the whole system is set up to ask about its own practices. I have never met a more blinkered and closed off community than the homeopaths, and given that the ones who post on these boards presumably regard themselves as advocates for homeopathy by the mere act of taking part in public forums, I find the lack of self-reflection and questioning to be astonishing.

If you were a member of the real medical world you would find questioning of basic assumtions going on all the time. It's part of the job. I spend my life getting junior colleagues to think about why they do what they do instead of working by rote.

What I find most scary about homeopaths is their complete lack of doubt.

 

[Rolfe]

What I find most scary about homeopaths is their complete lack of doubt.

I've been reading through these threads BSM is talking about, and he's right.

There are three or four people there who repeatedly ask the homoeopaths to think about a falsifiable trial - not the sort of thing they usually do, in which any outcome at all is interpreted within the basic assumption that the remedies have a physiological effect, but something for which a negative result would actually support the view that they do not have such an effect.

It has been explained to them that this may be seen as a "thought experiment", and that any real world effect is capable of being tested like this even if you are absolutely certain that you will get a positive result. (As one poster said, I'm absolutely convinced that insulin has an effect on the body, but I'd be perfectly happy to test that for you by injecting 10 units into that laboratory rat and watching to see what happens - I'd also put every penny I could scrape up on the rat's demise.)

There have been relatively few responses to this, but the salient point of virtually all the homoeopaths has been the statement that their starting point is the assumption that the remedies do have an effect on the body, and that it is virtually impossible for them even to consider that this might not be so.

This seems to be at the root of the conflict. The sceptics are prepared to question anything, and do. As BSM said, the sceptic attitude is that it all seems very unlikely, and so far the working hypothesis is that the remedies have no effect, but nevertheless, show us the evidence and we will consider it. People have been wrong before. However, the homoeopaths regard this request for evidence as insulting per se, and the default position that failing such evidence the assumption will be in the negative as even more insulting, and meeting of minds there definitely is not.

They seem genuinely unable to grasp why they should even consider performing the very simple and cheap test which has been outlined to them about four times, and which, if positive, would be the most enourmous coup for homoeopathy (not to mention putting them in line for the JREF million). Simple. Take 20 homoeopaths, each of whom is confident that he or she can prove a remedy of their own choice. Each of them is given, randomly, either exactly what they specify, or a chemically identical placebo. All they have to do is say which they got. If all or nearly all of them got it right, we'd really have to start rewriting the textbooks! If even a significant majority got it right it would surely trigger a huge wave of replication attempts. However, if the accuracy was only chance, it would blow an enormous hole in the very fabric of homoeopathy. If the provings, on which they base the entire "like cures like" edifice, are illusionary, the whole thing starts to unravel.

And that's the crux of it all. We as medical scientists simply cannot imagine continuing to practice a discipline with such a vital confirmatory test unperformed. They as homoeopaths simply cannot imagine performing the test, for fear that a negative result will put them out of business.

Is it any wonder that hard words tend to be exchanged?

Rolfe.

 

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

Here's some links to illustrate the problem of taking the n=1 'success' story as any form of proof;

Crohn's disease

"Although spontaneous remission or medical therapy may result in a prolonged asymptomatic interval, established Crohn's disease is rarely cured but instead is characterized by intermittent exacerbations"

I would suggest that if you are in remission it can feel like cure.

Ulcerative Colitis

"Spontaneous remission from a flare-
up occurs in 20 to 50% of the patients, but 50 to 70% have a relapse during the first year after diagnosis"

Conversely, 30-50% of the 20-50% do not have a relapse after their spontaneous remission.

These links are not part of an exhaustive literature search, but just search Google on the disease name and "spontaneous remission" and this comes up straight away.

Food for thought. Not intended as strict disproof, but it does show up the problem of relying on anecdote.

 

[(S)]

[vaguly off-topic]
You know, I think I fundementally dislike the term 'allopathy'. Probably because it was made up solely for the purpose of making homeopathy and 'allopathy' seem /equal/ and opposite.
The thing which homeopathy opposes, /real medicine/, does not simply consist of treatment with chemical substances, 'things with opposite effect'. It consists of treatment with /everything that works/. Surgury, radiation-treatment, getting plenty of rest & liquids, the occasional cast.
I think it annoys me most when people hide behind words; I wish more homeopaths would go around claiming 'Homeopathy is an alternative to real medicine' than 'homeopathy is an alternative to allopathy'. I don't believe in allopathy, I don't use it, I don't have a clue what it is. I use real medicine.

 

[geni]

It's particularly ironic as some real medcines (purly conincerdently) follow the principle of like cures like eg some comeoptharapy agents are carcenogenic.

 

[Rolfe]

It's particularly ironic as some real medcines (purly conincerdently) follow the principle of like cures like eg some comeoptharapy agents are carcenogenic.

Insulin causes coma in non-diabetics. One guy I know even said that putting Vaseline on chapped skin is homoeopathy in action - though that did trigger a snappy put-down from a dermatologist.

Yeah, I don't remember studying anything called "allopathy". When homoeopathic colleagues (in the loosest sense of the word) use the term, I tend to get a bit violent. Of course, we know from Barb (? was it?) that those on H'pathy deliberately use the term because they know it annoys those of us who actually went to college and studied things called medicine and surgery and pharmacology and biochemistry and so on.

Rolfe.

 

[Phil63]

Of course, we know from Barb (? was it?) that those on H'pathy deliberately use the term because they know it annoys those of us who actually went to college and studied things called medicine and surgery and pharmacology and biochemistry and so on.

wasn't me

 

[Rolfe]

wasn't me

It was Barb, then.

Rolfe.