Homeopathy is everywhere!

[Pyrrho]

So what have the closed minded skeptics done in response, they replied that this single trial refutes Ennis' thousands of trials and that her numerous trials (and those of others) were statsitically flawed. Okay, SO it becomes a he said, she said ...literally.

The fact is there is no done deal on this yet with evidence racking up on both sides. Insofar as anything Randi does on a singular basis, if you want a definition of useless anecdote, this would be it.

By controls I refer to impartiality of scientific judges and security in the handling of the samples to be tested as well as the products they are to be tested against. Not controls in the sense of a control group and an active group.

Unlike Schwartz who did follow-up experiments off camera to see if he could get similar results with mediumship than he got when they were filming the original trials for HOB, these Horizon people did no pre or post experimental work to back up their findings.
They rested their entire case on this one anecdotal trial. I wonder why?

Randi's last words from the Horizon program:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/2002/homeopathytrans.shtml

NARRATOR: So Horizon hasn't won the million dollars. It's another triumph for James Randi. His reputation and his money are safe, but even he admits this may not be the final word.

JAMES RANDI: Further investigation needs to be done. This may sound a little strange coming from me, but if there is any possibility that there's a reality here I want to know about it, all of humanity wants to know about it.


Close-minded skeptic? I don't think so.

 

[SteveGrenard]

Randi attempted to refute thousands of trials with a set-up, singular trial on a television program. This is my opinion and statement as well as evidence (he did it, didn't he? it speaks for itself--I am sure there is a Latin legal term for that somewhere). that Randi engineered this televised stunt with the producers. What is, by the way, wrong with that? Why can't Randi engineer something? You call this hyperbole because you say you think I don't like Randi. I sometimes do not agree with his methods but I have nothing but admiration for him as an individual. Do you have a problem with that?

The judges were not experts on homeopathy.

The trial was too small to be of significance -- everyone agrees,
even those backing the results.

The entire thing was anecdotal given the weight of evidence
published in peer reviewed journals that dictate otherwise.

I agree with Tai --- this experiment should have been submitted to peer review and subsequently published in a scientific journal. Geez, even Schwartz did that with his studies.
So its okay to demand these things of Schwartz but not of Randi?
Do I feel a double standard around here somewhere?

And like Tai, we should not place our belief of a controversial experiment or subject unless published in a peer reviewed scientific journal. Period. That includes rating JE on TV as well as believing what we see Randi doing on TV.

If you follow this plan, which I see demanded by skeptics on every other subject, then you will be interested in knowing that there are numerous peer reviewed published studies on homeopathy which you can try and refute but not by a single stunt on a TV show.

 

[Pyrrho]

Sigh...the Horizon program was an attempt to win the JREF prize. It seems to have been conducted properly, and it seems they took pains to do so. If you want the full protocol information, I suppose the Horizon producers could give it to you. The results, it seems, were not arrived at by subjective judging, but by double-blind testing and legitimate statistical analysis. Yes, indeed, it should be peer-reviewed and subjected to scrutiny. Randi himself indicated this:

JAMES RANDI: Further investigation needs to be done. This may sound a little strange coming from me, but if there is any possibility that there's a reality here I want to know about it, all of humanity wants to know about it.

 

[CFLarsen]

Steve,

There were no judges. The results spoke for themselves. No judging needed.

The questions add up:

The Horizon "Homeopathy" program

• What do you base your claim that there were "no controls" on this trial?
• Did you watch the program at all?
• Why can't a scientific experiment be conducted on TV?
• Please show how Randi "engineered" the television stunt to "discredit" homeopathy.
• How do you know that the scientist had a "preconceived bias against a possibly effective alternative treatment"?
• Do you claim that the test was conducted differently than what you said should be done: "Usually the control substance (e.g. pure water) and the allegedly active substance are put into identical formats and labeled with numbers or letter or coded. The code is held by one person and locked in a safe. Both substance A and B or 1 or 2 or whatever are tested. Then the code is broken."?
• Do you maintain that judging was used, and not objective testing?
• Why would you need to be an expert on homeopathy to judge a result that needs to judging?
• How big a trial do you consider of "significance"? And why?
• Who among those backing the results claims that the trial was too small to be of significance?
• Please point to the evidence published in peer reviewed journals that "dictate" that homeopathy is real.
• In what "peer-reviewed", "scientific" journals did Schwartz publish his studies?
• The data from the homeopathy test were published. Why is Schwartz not publishing his?
• Why is this experiment "controversial", and not Schwartz' HBO-experiment?

Schwartz

• If the Horizon experiment was not "scientific" because it was on TV, what about Schwartz' HBO-experiment?
• Was judging required at Schwartz' experiments?

CSICOP/JREF

• Please point to what the "party line of CSICOP, JREF or the other groups" is.
• Please name the "other groups" you mentioned.
• How do you know the health of Randi?

Aspirin as treatment for coronary thrombosis

• Who are these people who "screamed the loudest and the longest" against the use of aspirin for this?
• How do you know it has cost the patients or their insurers three thousand+ dollars a pop?
• Can you point to where CSICOP refuted the use of aspirin in coronary thrombosis/chest pain victims or as a prophylactic for coronary artery thrombosis?
• If they did, do they still hold these views?
• Please point to where you got the information that "many thousands probably died" due to CSICOP and JREF's "efforts to to discredit the treatment for this purpose".

Misc.

• Please point to the rule of this board that allows you to post a whole page from another site.

Please either:

• address the questions, providing either a retraction or evidence of your claims, or
• state that, despite the evidence to the contrary, you still wish to believe what you claimed, or
• state that you refuse to answer.

 

[Darat]

Randi attempted to refute thousands of trials with a set-up, singular trial on a television program. This is my opinion and statement as well as evidence (he did it, didn't he? it speaks for itself--I am sure there is a Latin legal term for that somewhere). that Randi engineered this televised stunt with the producers. What is, by the way, wrong with that? Why can't Randi engineer something? You call this hyperbole because you say you think I don't like Randi. I sometimes do not agree with his methods but I have nothing but admiration for him as an individual. Do you have a problem with that?
...snip...

So Randi did not engineer the "stunt". You accept then that the TV programme makers engineered the "stunt" not Randi?

I don't want to be rude but I was and am interested, at the moment, only in one particular claim you have made. However I did make a claim that I believe you made the statement because you don’t like Randi. And it is only fair that I either provide the reason why I said that or retract it.

The reason I said it is that I believe with many of your posts where you mention Randi there is a distinct tone of anger and dislike. This is of course a personal opinion of mine and it is of course possible that I am wrong and you don’t dislike Randi.

 

[T'ai Chi]

Sigh...the Horizon program was an attempt to win the JREF prize. It seems to have been conducted properly, and it seems they took pains to do so. If you want the full protocol information, I suppose the Horizon producers could give it to you. The results, it seems, were not arrived at by subjective judging, but by double-blind testing and legitimate statistical analysis. Yes, indeed, it should be peer-reviewed and subjected to scrutiny. Randi himself indicated this:

Double blind etc. aside, why should anyone take it seriously if it is on TV, and the results not published in a respectable peer reviewed hopefully science related journal?

It might be provocative or inspiring, but in my opinion it reveals little about the scientific status of homeopathy.

Science ain't done on TV, no matter the credentials of the doers and the double blind etc. procedures.

 

[CFLarsen]

T'ai Chi,

Sure, it would be nice to have it peer reviewed etc. However, you are forgetting one thing: This was a JREF challenge, with much more lax controls than a "proper" scientific protocol (although it could very well be argued that the scientific standards were quite in order).

Still, not even then could homeopathy pass. Homeopathy doesn't work.

Just because it's on TV doesn't make it untrue.

 

[Darat]

Double blind etc. aside, why should anyone take it seriously if it is on TV, and the results not published in a respectable peer reviewed hopefully science related journal?

It might be provocative or inspiring, but in my opinion it reveals little about the scientific status of homeopathy.

Science ain't done on TV, no matter the credentials of the doers and the double blind etc. procedures.

Why not? What intrinsically makes it not possible for science to be “done” on "TV".?

(Please note I am not asking about any particular programme but your universal declaration.)

 

[T'ai Chi]

was a JREF challenge, with much more lax controls than a "proper" scientific protocol (although it could very well be argued that the scientific standards were quite in order).

Very well put.

Because something is on TV, we have no idea of all that took place. Things get edited for content and time. Things get clipped and snipped and moved, not necessarily out of deviousness, but because this is what is done to make a TV show content-filled and entertaining. A TV show is on TV mostly to sell what is run during the advertisements.

It is certainly true that just because it was on TV, that doesn't make the findings false. But, it does make the findings non-scientific.

Perhaps we should conduct the peer review or a follow up study on Ricki Lake? Maybe JE's stuff is all valid, you know, since it is on TV.

 

[Darat]

Very well put.

Because something is on TV, we have no idea of all that took place. Things get edited for content and time. Things get clipped and snipped and moved, not necessarily out of deviousness, but because this is what is done to make a TV show content-filled and entertaining. A TV show is on TV mostly to sell what is run during the advertisements.

It is certainly true that just because it was on TV, that doesn't make the findings false. But, it does make the findings non-scientific.

Perhaps we should conduct the peer review or a follow up study on Ricki Lake? Maybe JE's stuff is all valid, you know, since it is on TV.

You still haven't answered why science can't be done on TV.

All the points you make about editing, moving content about and so on apply to every single "scientific" experiment.

Peer review doesn't remove this or prevent this; peer review does not say anything about the validity of a particular result, only that it appears from the data supplied to have followed a given process. Peer review is an "honour" system that is open to abuse.

Thankfully the nature of science, which isn’t based on trust and honour, can and does eventually expose the frauds and cheats. There are many examples of scientists being caught cheating, lying and making up data even though their papers had been peer reviewed and published in "respectable" periodicals.

So again why can’t science be done on TV?

 

[T'ai Chi]

You still haven't answered why science can't be done on TV.

I said "Science ain't done on TV, no matter the credentials of the doers and the double blind etc. procedures.". So you actually asking me to prove a negative here? Um.

Certainly the scientific status of homeopathy isn't determined on TV any more than the scientific status of JE is. TV has little to do with science, but rather selling advertising.

Do you think science is about entertainment rather than gaining unbiased knowledge?

In any case, I'd rather have something submitted to peer review rather than no peer review and something done for entertainment purposes.

For anything to scientifically stick, you have to be in the big boys club; be a scientist, and publish your findings, disclose all of your methods and results, and allows others to try and replicate your results.

Could you be kind enough to share all of this information with us? What? You mean you don't have access to it either??!! Shocking..

 

[CFLarsen]

T'ai Chi,

You are not answering the question: What in TV makes scientific research impossible?

TV does not have to be about selling ads. The biggest TV station in Denmark is a public channel.

TV also doesn't have to be entertainment. Are the evening news entertainment? Critical consumer programs? Political debates?

What was wrong with the results in the horizon program?

Please answer the questions. You are dodging wildly here.

 

[T'ai Chi]

You are not answering the question: What in TV makes scientific research impossible?

Um. I never made that claim, Claus.

TV does not have to be about selling ads. The biggest TV station in Denmark is a public channel.

TV does not have to be about selling ads, but unfortunately, Claus, the majority is. You must have little experience in the television industry to make a comment like that. What percentage of the industry, all over the world, do you think is advertisement free?

TV also doesn't have to be entertainment. Are the evening news entertainment? Critical consumer programs? Political debates?

Evening news sometimes is entertainment. Political debates are always entertainment. That is true that TV doesn't have to be about entertainment. Once again, the majority of TV is entertainment. What percentage of TV do you think is not entertainment?

What was wrong with the results in the horizon program?

I never said anything was wrong. Care to quote me directly where I did?

Please answer the questions. You are dodging wildly here.

Please answer my questions. And I demand you quote me EXACTLY from now on. I don't care to answer your strawman interpretations of my quotes any longer.

I think we could just pop in the "Remote Viewing: Scientific Study" science show right between Ricki Lake and Jerry. Better yet, let's get rid of our science journals and only do science on TV. Yeah!

Everyone has to publish in Nature or some respectable peer reviewed journal...unless you are a skeptic, then you are immune and can do whatever you want. How many skeptics have published science articles of their findings in respectable peer reviewed science journals? Enquiring minds want to know.

 

[SteveGrenard]

In reading all the accounts of this Randi/Horizons (dont tell me he didnt meet with the producers and set this up, in advance, now Darat.....you think he was just walking Oxford Street one day and bumped into someone who said lets do this?)
engineered stunt ................

(yeah, okay, they engineered it together.....is there some purpose in you trivilaizing this, taking the attention off the main subject matter? You are evidently trying to do so...did you learn this from Larsen 101?).

I can't find any mention of who the claimant was? Was it Dr. Madeline Ennis of Belfast? I also can't find any mention of who prepared the homeopathic preparations and the bottles of "pure" water (or what is defined as pure -- was it triple distilled or what?) used? Who or what was the source of the solutions used? I can't find any details on how they were differentiated afterwards, how they were stored and by whom befroehand
and so forth. None of the methods and protocols we would normally have in a scientific paper seems to be revealed. Does anyone know where this information can be found?

And again, even though the judges said they couldnt discern a difference between the control and the active substance, was anyone else looking at these results? If Dr. Ennis was the claimant did she or other members of her team get a chance to look at the same results as the judges? Or did they just trust the people chosen by Randi and the producers to do this for them?


But finally Tai and .... Randi, I admit, are correct. TV and the circumstances surrounding this P.R. event is no place to settle a scientific argument ... so the skeptics can go with their one single televised anecdote and we will just ignore the thousands of controlled trials that took place that were not on Horizons.
Maybe we should test antibiotics, anti-cholesterol or anti depressants on TV next. In fact lets do a show: Drug of the Week and test everything on TV in front of a live audience. Recruit people with different diseases and treat them right then and there in front of millions of viewers at home. Then we can decide what pills we should take for our own problems.

The original point of me bringing this up was not to prove or disprove the validity of homeopathy. It was to respond to the usual choruses here that there is not one shred of evidence, etc.
So please don't use the Horizon's program as an example ....
it was not science although I am not surprised some cling to this notion.

 

[CFLarsen]

Um. I never made that claim, Claus.

You said that "Science ain't done on TV, no matter the credentials of the doers and the double blind etc. procedures." That pretty much rules out any possibility, doesn't it?

TV does not have to be about selling ads, but unfortunately, Claus, the majority is. You must have little experience in the television industry to make a comment like that. What percentage of the industry, all over the world, do you think is advertisement free?

I don't know, and it is beside the point. Science can indeed be done on TV. You need to explain why it cannot.

Evening news sometimes is entertainment. Political debates are always entertainment. That is true that TV doesn't have to be about entertainment. Once again, the majority of TV is entertainment. What percentage of TV do you think is not entertainment?

Beside the point. Please focus on the issue, instead of shifting it to something else.

I never said anything was wrong. Care to quote me directly where I did?

I didn't say you said so. I merely asked. If nothing was wrong, what is your problem with it, then??

Please answer my questions. And I demand you quote me EXACTLY from now on. I don't care to answer your strawman interpretations of my quotes any longer.

Not a strawman. A logical consequence from your statements.

I think we could just pop in the "Remote Viewing: Scientific Study" science show right between Ricki Lake and Jerry. Better yet, let's get rid of our science journals and only do science on TV. Yeah!

Slippery slope. You still haven't explained why science "ain't done" on TV.

Everyone has to publish in Nature or some respectable peer reviewed journal...unless you are a skeptic, then you are immune and can do whatever you want. How many skeptics have published science articles of their findings in respectable peer reviewed science journals? Enquiring minds want to know.

Who has made the rule than scientific findings can only be found in peer reviewed journals?

You might want to look up who Carl Sagan was.

Now, please answer the question: Why is science not "done" on TV?

 

[CFLarsen]

Steve,

The Horizon "Homeopathy" program

• What do you base your claim that there were "no controls" on this trial?
• Did you watch the program at all?
• Why can't a scientific experiment be conducted on TV?
• What about Schwartz's HBO experiments? They are not scientific, then?
• Please show how Randi "engineered" the television stunt to "discredit" homeopathy.
• How do you know that the scientist had a "preconceived bias against a possibly effective alternative treatment"?
• Do you claim that the test was conducted differently than what you said should be done: "Usually the control substance (e.g. pure water) and the allegedly active substance are put into identical formats and labeled with numbers or letter or coded. The code is held by one person and locked in a safe. Both substance A and B or 1 or 2 or whatever are tested. Then the code is broken."?
• Do you maintain that judging was used, and not objective testing?

CSICOP/JREF

• Please point to what the "party line of CSICOP, JREF or the other groups" is.
• Please name the "other groups" you mentioned.
• How do you know the health of Randi?

Aspirin as treatment for coronary thrombosis

• Who are these people who "screamed the loudest and the longest" against the use of aspirin for this?
• How do you know it has cost the patients or their insurers three thousand+ dollars a pop?
• Can you point to where CSICOP refuted the use of aspirin in coronary thrombosis/chest pain victims or as a prophylactic for coronary artery thrombosis?
• If they did, do they still hold these views?
• Please point to where you got the information that "many thousands probably died" due to CSICOP and JREF's "efforts to to discredit the treatment for this purpose".

Misc.

• Please point to the rule of this board that allows you to post a whole page from another site.

Please either:

• address the questions, providing either a retraction or evidence of your claims, or
• state that, despite the evidence to the contrary, you still wish to believe what you claimed, or
• state that you refuse to answer.

If you ignore this post, I have to assume that you refuse to answer.

 

[T'ai Chi]

You might want to look up who Carl Sagan was.

Got any more? A sample size of 1.

Claus, you expect me to answer your questions but you evade and don't answer all of mine. This has to be a give and take thing. So I'll tell you what, I'm going to give you a cozy spot on my ignore list, and you can take it.

Cheers.

 

[Martin]

You said that "Science ain't done on TV, no matter the credentials of the doers and the double blind etc. procedures." That pretty much rules out any possibility, doesn't it?

I don't know, and it is beside the point. Science can indeed be done on TV. You need to explain why it cannot

He didn't say that it couldn't, just that it isn't.

 

[Martin]

Got any more? A sample size of 1

A single counterexample is all that is required.

 

[CFLarsen]

He didn't say that it couldn't, just that it isn't.

"No matter" leaves a possibility open??? Sorry, but that's not the way I learned English.

I could be wrong, of course.