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Homeopathy, again!

Rolfe said:
Oops, butterfingers. (Fixed it.)

The avatar will return after the election. How long after depends on whether I can ever get an internet connection at the New House with this different account system BT insists on giving me, which will inactivate my current dial-up number.

I'm not accusing anyone of sockpuppetry, really. Just try to remember who last jumped into the forum with her first post a hymn to the Rey experiment.

And wonder.

Rolfe.
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;) :D
 
Meme101 said:
I bow down humbly before the majority of contributors on this threat. Even though I sense the fury that you defend this issue with (and I am not a converted Homeopathy believer), I would dread to feel that unleached on a true devout homeopathic surporter.

But I really did get a fire christening from this round one that I learned a lof from. It is clear that the majority of your contributors are knowledgeable in various field of science. I am persue my scientific studies further in order to be able to support remarks with more facts.

Thanks for having me on this round. I will take a lot of your arguments with me and trust to meet you all again in a few months time, maybe a bit wiser, but surely trying a bit harder to make sense of it all.

Regards

MEME101
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See, this kind of response confuses me. Wait, confuse isn't the right word...I think what I'm trying to say is:

I don't buy it.

If someone is going to come to a site asking questions about homeopathy, and they are given the answers to those questions, what on earth is difficult about then understanding those answers? What on earth could take a few MONTHS to digest here???

NEWBIE: Hi, I'm new - so, what is the de-al with that 'Homeopathy', eh?

FORUMITE: Homeopathy is bunk. This is exactly why it is unscientific. This is all the information you really need, condensed into tiny, post-size, form.

NEWBIE: Ah...what about the 'quantum effects'?

FORUMITE: What effects?

NEWBIE: I see. You've given me a lot to think about, this could take a few months for me to understand...

It's almost as silly as the following exchange I concoted out of thin air:

NEWBIE: Hi, I'm new - so, what is the de-al with that 'Gravity', eh?

FORUMITE: Well, gravity exists, that we know for certain. We still don't know a great deal about it though, and there are a lot of hypothesis as to how it might work.

NEWBIE: But how can I know gravity exists if science doesn't explain it to me?

FORUMITE: Jump up. See how you came back down to the ground. That's gravity.

NEWBIE: I see. You've given me a lot to think about, this could take a few months for me to understand...


As a wise man once said, "Beware the mark of woo, for its many forms belie a dangerous attack on the scientific method." I think it was Confuscious. Or it might have been me...
 
Meme101 said:
I bow down humbly before the majority of contributors on this threat. Even though I sense the fury that you defend this issue with (and I am not a converted Homeopathy believer), I would dread to feel that unleached on a true devout homeopathic surporter.

But I really did get a fire christening from this round one that I learned a lof from. It is clear that the majority of your contributors are knowledgeable in various field of science. I am persue my scientific studies further in order to be able to support remarks with more facts.

Thanks for having me on this round. I will take a lot of your arguments with me and trust to meet you all again in a few months time, maybe a bit wiser, but surely trying a bit harder to make sense of it all.

Regards

MEME101
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Mmmmmokay, fine. ... Excuse us for not slapping your back, jumping up and down and congratulating you for your speedy return to the realm of reality. It's just that we see this about once a week: Somebody enters, declares him/herself basically a skeptic, but there is this here thing that makes them wonder. Then after a few explanations, they declare that this has given them much food for thought, and they are almost convinced. Unfotunately, the most usual course from that point on is that they return and show themselves quite more entrenched in their beliefs than the opening suggested. There has certainly been exceptions. Here's to hoping you're one of those.

Now to homeopathy:

Ultradilution is really just incidential to homeopathic theory. Of course, the lack of credibility of ultradilute remedies does reflect on homeopathy, but you need to give the basic framework some thought as well.

Fortunately, I don't need to write all this every time a homeopath comes along, I can just paste from an article here:

http://www.hans-egebo.dk/skeptic/Homeopathy%20article.htm

History

The history of homeopathy has been told often, so I will try to make it brief. Around 1800, the German medical doctor Samuel Hahnemann, obviously appalled with the still mostly medieval medical practices of his contemporaries, set out to revolutionize medical science. During a long lifetime of hard and dedicated work, he wrote several books and constructed the mainstay of what was to become homeopathic medicine. His books and teachings still form the foundation and the main substance of homeopathy to-day. Starting from sound clinical practice, Hahnemann built a complete system of alleged natural laws (Hahnemann tended to declare his theories “laws of nature”) and an extensive pharmacopoeia of homeopathic medicines.

Main principles

The basic principle of homeopathy is the notion that health and disease is based on the functioning of a “vital force”, which is described as a non-materialistic property of all living creatures. If the vital force is functioning well, the creature is healthy, if not, the creature becomes ill. Disease is defined as a unique set of symptoms characteristic for the particular condition of the particular patient. Homeopathy only recognizes disease causes as disturbing agents for the vital force, and distinct diseases only as categories of cases that display similar symptom profiles. Hahnemann specifically discouraged looking for hidden internal causes and diagnosing diseases per name.

The homeopathic diagnostic method centers around what is called a “taking” of the profile of the patient. Ideally, this involves a meticulous investigation of the patient’s background, family conditions, hereditary body conditions, work situation, social situation, plus all the symptoms perceived by the patients and, preferably, also by persons close to the patient. By “symptom” homeopathic practice refers to anything perceived as not usual.

To cure, one needs medicines, and as homeopathy basically only recognizes symptoms, which are interpreted them as disturbances in the functioning of the vital force, it follows logically that medicines must be substances that are somehow able to affect the vital force, causing some kind of symptoms to emerge. Elaborating on this train of logic, Hahnemann divided medicines into three groups:

1) Antipathic; medicines that cause effects that are opposite of those of the disease.
2) Homeopathic; medicines that cause effects similar to those of the disease.
3) Allopathic; medicines that cause effects that are neither similar, nor opposite to those of the disease.

Based on some practical observations and on logic, Hahnemann developed a theory he called “the law of similars”. According to this theory, a medicine that causes the same symptoms as those of the disease will override the disease, such that the morbid function of the vital force is now caused by the medicine, not the original disease, and as the effect of the medicine wears off, the patient will be left cured. Thus, Hahnemann declares the group of homeopathic medicines to be the one and only path to cure.

To find out what symptoms various substances caused, Hahnemann used a purely empirical approach: He administered the substance to healthy persons (often himself) and carefully recorded the effects. This is called “proving”. Thus, if a substance caused headache, it should be assumed to be able to cure headache. It is not as simple as that, however, because just as a disease is not viewed as a single symptom, but as a complete symptom profile essentially unique to each case, the effect of a substance on a healthy person is rarely a single distinct symptom, but rather a set of symptoms. Hahnemann recorded anything that the test subject felt during testing as caused by the medical substance, unless it was very evidently something the person had also been experiencing prior to the proving.

The result of the provings were compiled into a work called the Materia Medica, which has later been expanded by Hahnemann’s followers. The idea of homeopathic treatment is that the patient’s symptom profile is taken, then the Materia Medica is carefully perused to find the medicine that provides the best (ideally perfect) match of that symptom profile. That is assumed to be the medicine that cures that particular case. During this matching, interestingly, a medicine is sought that matches as many of the patient’s symptoms as possible, whereas any symptoms recorded for the medicine, but NOT matching the patient’s profile are normally ignored; according to Hahnemann, some unspecified selective mechanism ensures that the right properties of the medicine are activated. This is very practical since most medicines have many symptoms on their list, sometimes hundreds.

(Since the article is my own, there is no issue on how much I quote from it)

So, you see, accepting homeopathy is not just about musing about some obscure and yet undiscovered propery of water (and alcohol and lactose). It is also assuming that everything we have discovered about chemistry and pathology in the 200 years since Hahnemann's time is seriously flawed.

Best regards, Hans
 
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Thanks for that Hans.

That is the type of replies I came here for. As for some of the other replies.............

And yes I was talking about "unleashed" in my previous post not leach. Freudian slip...........

It will take me a month or two to get back on the issue as I work during the day at a job where I cannot access this forum. As I do not believe in halve measures I would prefer getting to grips with the likes of quantum mechanics, statistics and some additional psychology. Cannot see any problem in that. Surely the empirical sciences will strengthen the conclusion I hope I will come to.

And I cannot only base my conclusions on homeopathy on one or two posts telling me that it is bogus for the same reason I cannot base it on another site telling me that water has "memory". It is therefore necessary for me to pursue the matter until I know I have weighed up all the evidence. Much the same way you debunk any of the major religions ; - )

Till next time

Meme
 
Meme101 said:
It is therefore necessary for me to pursue the matter until I know I have weighed up all the evidence.
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All what evidence?

Much the same way you debunk any of the major religions ; - )
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I must have missed when we managed to do that. Or even attempted to.

Meme's response still continues to confuse me.

Homeopathy makes claims - 3 main areas which contradict our current scientific understanding of nature (like cures like, efficacy of ultradilutions, water has "memory").
On this thread people have explained clearly why these claims contradict known science. And this isn't even really in disagreement with homeopaths who on the whole agree there is no known mechanism by which these work. They often aren't interested in the mechanism. Their main focus is simply claiming it works.

And that's really the main issue here - why get into a long debate about water memory etc. when the primary issue is... does homeopathy work?
I could talk at length about how quantum fluctuation and biopolarisation fields can make me hover in the air, but is there really much point in doing so before I actually demonstrate the hovering?

So to start from basics Meme, what evidence makes you think homeopathy works in the first place?
 
Meme, pay attention to what Ashles has said to you here.

While I'm sure studying quantum mechanics and whatnot would be interesting, before you try to apply it to something like homeopathy, you have to ask yourself: Does homeopathy work in the first place?

If it works, then we would need pour money into researching the mechanism by which it works.

If it doesn't work, we don't need to do jack.

All the evidence overwhelmingly suggests that homeopathy doesn't work...so why would you want to research the mechanisms by which it work when it is highly likely they don't exist in the first place?
 
Thre is no useful evidence for homeopathy, Meme. When it seems to work it is either a coincidence, the placebo effect or someone telling lies.

There is no mystery to explain.

You should not fool yourself that obtaining an amateur's grasp of physics or statistics will change that simple fact, though it might enable you to share our amusement at the fools who abuse the terminology of science to line their pockets.
 
Meme101 said:
Surely the empirical sciences will strengthen the conclusion I hope I will come to.
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Jeez... The conclusion you hope you will come to. You've got that the wrong way 'round, it's us sceptics who are supposed to be accused of having the closed minds, you could at least get your lines right.
Richard Dawkins coined the term meme, which first came into popular use with the publication of his book The Selfish Gene in 1976. Dawkins based the word on a shortening of the Greek "mimeme" (something imitated)
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Hmmm... something imitated eh? Gosh, how clever. :bwall

Yuri
 
Meme101 said:
And this brings me to my next question: Are all you sceptics of homeopathy sure that there is nothing scientific about it that we have not yet discovered? Are the scientific principals at play in homeopathy all been 100% verified or do we still have room for improvement on some knowledge level that we apply to dismissing homeopathy? Like maybe still not fully understand the properties of liquids etc?
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The principles behind it are grossly unscientific, vague and conflicting, and whats more it has never been to actually work. What more do we need to be able to dismiss something?

I really don't understand folks that advocate homeopathy or claim to be agnostic about it, to they think that one day we will discover that it actually has been working all this time?
 
Once again I must say, Meme, this is not supposed to be some subtle phenomenon that must defeat the best scientific brains who might try to demonstrate it. The effects of homeopathy are claimed to be amazingly robust and reliable even when half-trained eejits use it.

If it's that hard to show there is a real effect the advocates have already lost the argument. Do you really not get this point?
 
Civilized Worm said:
I really don't understand folks that advocate homeopathy or claim to be agnostic about it, do they think that one day we will discover that it actually has been working all this time?
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I really like that - an excellent way of putting it.
 
Meme101 said:
*snip*
It will take me a month or two to get back on the issue as I work during the day at a job where I cannot access this forum. As I do not believe in halve measures I would prefer getting to grips with the likes of quantum mechanics, statistics and some additional psychology. Cannot see any problem in that. Surely the empirical sciences will strengthen the conclusion I hope I will come to.

*snip*

Meme
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If you make a logical conclusion, then the empirical sciences will strengthen it. It may not be the one you hoped for, however.

The thing is, Meme, while there is indeed some observational evidence for homeopathy, there exists (to my knowledge, and I have researched this subject quite throughly) absolutely no evidence that needs homeopathy.

Do you understand what this means? It means that every observation that has been reported for homeopathy has also got other possible explanations. And quite plausible ones.

In other words, there is nothing in our present image of the world that needs homeopathy to be explained.

Hans
 
There isn't any observation evidence in favor of homeopathy. Anecdotes are not evidence. They are simply biased stories.

As well, if doing nothing yields the same result (placebo affect), then why bother with the homeopathy?

Doing nothing will not yield the same result in serious cases.

Let's see homeopathy cure prostate or breast cancer before it metastasizes. Too bad that's really not ethical for serious scientists to do such a study. Any homeopaths and doctors willing to take on dozens of cases of proven cancer patients with the exact same type of cancer at the exact same stage? One group gets real proven effective treatment, the other group will only get homeopathy. We'll see which group has the highest survival rate. I'd like to see the informed consent on that. They'd have to sell the homeopath treatment as "all natural" with "no side effects", but with absolutely no real reason as to why it would work, and with a predicted 100% mortality rate.
 
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