What is needed is for the homoeopaths themselves to come up with a test they agree is valid. Strangely, they never do.
Randi has made it very simple, and he repeated this in the latest commentary:
Simply show us that you are able to differentiate between homeopathic and non-homeopathic preparations, by any means, and you win the million-dollar prize. By "any means," we mean chemical (qualitative or quantitative analysis), biological (in vivo or in vitro), physical (polarization, spectroanalysis, microanalysis), or metaphysical (Tarot cards, intuition, vibrations, auras, Kirlian, I Ching, guessing, spirit communication), or any other means.
By "non-homeopathic" I presume he means the stock solvent - the chemically identical material which just hasn't had the dilute-and-shake mojo applied.
This actually leaves the door wide open for any design the homoeopath likes. (I'm surprised nobody mentioned dowsing, because some homoeopaths skip the tedious symptom-matching bit and dowse for the right remedy, and they claim that works just as well. I'm sure it does!
)
The problem is that homoeopaths have over the years developed a sufficiently sophisticated "theory" that no matter what happens it can be accommodated within their belief system. This is easily seen in their approach to their "patients". Patient improves, great, homoeopathy triumphs again. Patient deteriorates, well, this was expected because homoeopathic aggravations are often a feature of the treatment and this shows that the remedy is doing something. Patient stays the same, must not have got the right remedy, start again, repeat until some change occurs (as it always does). Long-term failure is usually attributed either to the patient presenting too late, or to irreversible screwing up of the system by any "allopathic" medication tha patient may have taken, going right back to childhood vaccinations if nothing else can be found.
All the
in vitro experiments are a waste of time, because every time an alleged effect turns out to be irreproducible (like Benveniste), it's, well, we didn't say that's how homooepathy works, we don't know how it works, must be some other way then.
The "provings", as Geni said, seem to provide the most fruitful avenue for investigation. These are the symptoms supposed to be caused by the magic water in healthy people. Many homoeopaths claim that they are so unmistakable that even a sceptic will be forced to admit there's something going on if they undertake a "proving", in fact many of them claim to be able to make even sceptics ill using the remedies. (Funny, these are the remedies that are so safe they don't need to be regulated in any way....)
However, if a sceptic takes them up on this, and then reports no effect, the backpedalling starts immediately - ask MRC_Hans, he's the one who tried it. Many excuses were offered, but the possibility that the whole thing was a pile of nothing couldn't even be considered as an explanation.
How can Randi possibly agree to a test which essentially states that someone takes a remedy, and anything that then happens is consistent with the theory that homoeopathy works?
So, it has to be up to the homoeopaths. Distinguish between remedy and solvent blank, any way at all. Seems to me that there are two areas where they
must be able to do it, 'cos if they can't then their fundamental assertions have been disproved.
Treating patients. Get a bunch of patients with roughly comparable clinical complaints. Get the homoeopaths to agree that homoeopathy should be able to "cure" this problem. Send all the patients to the homoeopaths to be individualised and prescribed any way they like. Then make sure that only half get the prescribed magic water (or magic sugar pills), the other half get the blanks. Monitor the patients very closely, using as many objective tests as possible, and see if there is an obvious differnce between the groups.
This has been done once. Guess what, the homoeopaths (who had originally agreed that the test was valid), picked it to pieces as very poorly designed and proving nothing.
However, it's highly doubtful that a test like this could ever be arranged in such a way as to satisfy the requirements for the JREF prize. The other approach, the "provings", certainly could though.
The obvious design is to give a homoeopath claimant 20 or 30 batches of a remedy of his or her choosing, half of which are the real deal and the other half are shams. All he has to do is sort them out. This ought to be possible by taking the preparations himself and seeing whether or not the characteristic proving symptoms happen. Remember, these provings are the absolute bedrock of homoeopathic theory, the basis for selection of the remedies for patients, and if they're not real, the whole edifice falls apart.
Nobody has ever come forward to do this, though one of the participants in the Homeopathy Home forum did say recently that she'd like to try it. The main excuse (expressed as a serious concern by the possible claimant) is that "proving" a remedy makes you ill, and doing this ten or 15 times is too much to ask, even for a million dollars. Funny, when you read the
accounts of actual provings, nobody seems particularly worried about getting ill - most of the "symptoms" are apparently normal everyday occurrences or psychological things (can you spell "psychosomatic"?) The second excuse is that trying to prove the same remedy again and again will only confuse the system, and it will become impossible to tell what is what before enough repetitions have been done to satisfy the statistical requirements for the prize.
You could cut down the number of real provings by decreasing the proportion of real remedies in the mix, but this would be at the expense of markedly increasing the total number of tests to be done (a lot more blanks). It gets a bit impractical after a while.
So, a friend of mine came up with a better idea. You get 20 or 30
homoeopaths, each of whom is confident that he can prove a remedy of his choice. You give them exactly what they say they can prove - half of them get the real deal, the other half get a chemically identical sham.
I can't see anything wrong with this idea. It seems to answer all the homoeopaths' objections. The only wrinkle is that presumably the prize would have to be split 20 or 30 ways. Still, it would be a reasonable hunk of money each, but not only that, the blow struck for the cause of homoeopathy would be immense.
Why aren't they queueing up to give it a shot? Because they know perfectly well, in their heart of hearts, that they can't do it. Homoeopathy only works when you're allowed to claim any outcome as success. When a falsifiable test is devised you can't see them for dust.
Rolfe.
