Homoeopathy article from Penn State

The idea of "like treating like" might be valid if there was anything in a homeopathic remedy that could possibly be "like" something. There isn't.

Most homeopathic defenders do not realise that homeopathic remedies contain zero active ingredients. They are simply water. Or alcohol. Or whatever the diluting agent is. The main ingredient has been diluted away to literally nothing.

It has also been my experience that people confuse homeopathy with naturopathy. Naturopathy can be beneficial, depending on exactly what kind of treatment is used. Homeopathy can't be beneficial - it's technically impossible to get any kind of effect with zero active ingredient.
 
homeopaths appear to be a rather ignorant lot, yet i think there is something to the idea of water molecules and memory.

some very good experiments in the last few years show this to be likely.
 
No, some completely awful experiments in the last few years showed it to be likely. Very good experiments show it to be total bunk.
 
fls said:
Only if by "open mind" you mean "ignorant", I'm afraid. It should mean something like a critical appraisal of all the information and a recognition of the reliability of various conclusions, but in this case, she simply seems unaware of the principles of homeopathy and of the research that has been performed on homeopathy.
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I think she's quite aware of the principles, given that she explicitly said they're very hard to swallow. About her ignorance, yes I will concede that and take back some of what I said in my original post.


fls said:
Well, they are unreliable ways to form conclusions, and you did mention critical thinking which is about forming reliable conclusions.

Linda
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Assuming that something hasn't been gone through the rigours of well controlled studies and peer review, there is nothing wrong with intelligent use of anecdotal evidence. In some cases appeal to personal experience can provide a deeper understanding of nature than is available through literature reviews simply because certain questions haven't been tested yet. While this may not be the case in homeopathy, I think she was acknowledging that many people DO indeed claim to find relief from homeopathic medicines. She never said that this is evidence for an effect, but rather something that should be CONSIDERED.

Indeed, this consideration is what has presumably led to more rigorous research (and, if what you all say is to believed, the conclusions point towards placebo effects).
 
meow said:
homeopaths appear to be a rather ignorant lot, yet i think there is something to the idea of water molecules and memory.

some very good experiments in the last few years show this to be likely.
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Evidence?
 
Mojo said:
To elaborate on what's already been posted:

Vaccination prevents infections by sensitizing the immune system to antigens specific to the infectious agent to be protected against, as you say by introduction of antigens from the pathogen. It does not attempt to induce symptoms.

Homoeopathy attempts to treat illness by administration of remedies that will duplicate and reinforce the totality of symptoms exhibited by the patient, on the basis that intensifying the symptoms will help the body to heal. The remedy administered will almost certainly not be anything to do with the actual cause of the illness.

These are totally different ideas.
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yes different ideas, but there is a shared principle if you abstract a layer or two. There was nothing in her statement that indicated she thought the mechanisms underlying the two ideas were the same.
 
I won’t say that I buy into it 100 percent, but I won’t say that I think it’s quackery either.
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You can try to defend what she says all you want, but the quote above, IMO, says it all in terms of where she is on it.

TAM:)
 
meow said:
which ones?
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All of them that were not conducted by Jacques Benveniste.

From http://skepticwiki.org/index.php/Homeopathy

Recently there has been a number of tests involving basophils (a kind of blood cell involved in allergic reactions). this was triggered by the work of Benveniste who reported that that the basophils became more effective when diluted beyond the point where there should have been any reaction.
In 1988, Benveniste went to the journal Nature to publish his results. Nature agreed, as long as they could come inspect Benveniste's lab. Benveniste agreed, and his results were published in one of the most prestigious science magazines in the world. The news spread far and wide, and Benveniste became a celebrity.
But when Nature examined his lab, things went sour for Benveniste. John Maddox, then editor of Nature, arrived to observe the testing, bringing with him Walter Stewart and James Randi. Benveniste's people repeated the experiment, and Maddox and Randi saw the positive results with their own eyes. But Maddox noticed that the experiment wasn't double-blinded; the experimenters knew which tubes had the dilution and which were just plain water.
Maddox and Randi came up with a secret code with which to label the tubes, which they had sealed inside an envelope and stuck to the ceiling of the laboratory before the basophil runs were done. This ensured that none of the experimenters running the basophil tests knew which was the homeopathic solution and which was distilled water. It also ensured that no-one could change the coding between the beginning of the experiment and the analysis of the results.
When the experiment was complete, it was time to open the envelope and examine the results. Benveniste and his team were very confident that the results would confirm their findings, but when the results were compared to which tubes were which, the distribution was exactly what one would expect by random chance. Maddox and Randi wrote a report accusing Benveniste of doing bad science and calling homeopathy a "delusion".
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geni said:
Evidence?
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ww....ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15105967

Belon P, Cumps J, Ennis M, Mannaioni PF, Roberfroid M, Sainte-Laudy J, Wiegant FA.

Boiron, 20 rue de la Libération, 69110 Sainte-Foy-Les-Lyon, France.

BACKGROUND: In order to demonstrate that high dilutions of histamine are able to inhibit basophil activation in a reproducible fashion, several techniques were used in different research laboratories. OBJECTIVE: The aim of the study was to investigate the action of histamine dilutions on basophil activation. METHODS: Basophil activation was assessed by alcian blue staining, measurement of histamine release and CD63 expression. Study 1 used a blinded multi-centre approach in 4 centres. Study 2, related to the confirmation of the multi-centre study by flow cytometry, was performed independently in 3 laboratories. Study 3 examined the histamine release (one laboratory) and the activity of H(2) receptor antagonists and structural analogues (two laboratories). RESULTS: High dilutions of histamine (10(-30)-10(-38) M) influence the activation of human basophils measured by alcian blue staining. The degree of inhibition depends on the initial level of anti-IgE induced stimulation, with the greatest inhibitory effects seen at lower levels of stimulation. This multicentre study was confirmed in the three laboratories by using flow cytometry and in one laboratory by histamine release. Inhibition of CD63 expression by histamine high dilutions was reversed by cimetidine (effect observed in two laboratories) and not by ranitidine (one laboratory). Histidine tested in parallel with histamine showed no activity on this model. CONCLUSIONS: In 3 different types of experiment, it has been shown that high dilutions of histamine may indeed exert an effect on basophil activity. This activity observed by staining basophils with alcian blue was confirmed by flow cytometry. Inhibition by histamine was reversed by anti-H2 and was not observed with histidine these results being in favour of the specificity of this effect We are however unable to explain our findings and are reporting them to encourage others to investigate this phenomenon.



p< .001

highly significant results
 
Archives of Surgery: Abstract: Efficacy of Homeopathic Arnica

[FONT=verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif]Conclusion: The claim that homeopathic arnica is efficacious beyond a placebo effect is not supported by rigorous clinical trials.[/FONT]

Lancet: Are the clinical effects of homeopathy placebo effects?

Conclusion: Biases are present in placebo-controlled trials of both homoeopathy and conventional medicine. When account was taken for these biases in the analysis, there was weak evidence for a specific effect of homoeopathic remedies, but strong evidence for specific effects of conventional interventions. This finding is compatible with the notion that the clinical effects of homoeopathy are placebo effects.

European Journal of Cancer: Efficacy of homeopathic therapy in cancer treatment

Conclusion: Our analysis of published literature on homeopathy found insufficient evidence to support clinical efficacy of homeopathic therapy in cancer care.

There are more if you want them. These three articles were found simply by looking at Wikipedia.
 
arthwollipot said:
For a start, it wasn't double-blinded. Didn't you read the quote I posted just above?
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the 2004 ennis study was blinded to the nth degree. they even spread the study over 4 different countries.

so please list in detail how the study was flawed.
 
I think the fact that the british embrace homeopathy show they have contempt for science, despite their admiration of Charles Darwin.
 
arthwollipot said:
Why?
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because at first you said it wasn't blinded which it was. in fact it was blinded far far far far beyond almost any other study that i can remember.

then you said it was flawed.

so i would like to know how it was flawed.
 
Dr Harriet Hall wrote a very good critique of homeopathy in eSkeptic. Here's a relevant section:

Dr Harriet Hall said:
The Benveniste basophile degranulation study was a convoluted attempt to show that water could remember. It was supposedly replicated in other labs, notably by Ennis. Homeopaths are still citing these studies as evidence for the memory of water, but this is intellectually dishonest. In the first place, the studies are completely discredited by the fact that every attempt to repeat them with proper blinding has failed. When James Randi and a team from Nature visited Benveniste’s lab, his experiment stopped working. When Ennis’s experiment was repeated for Randi’s million dollar prize on the BBC show Horizon, it failed. If the experiment really worked under proper blinding conditions, someone could have easily won the million dollars by now.
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So if you're asking me what the specific methodological flaws were in the Ennis study, the answer is "I don't know". I haven't studied the report or the protocol in detail, and I'm not likely to. But the fact that the results have not been successfully replicated in any other studies strongly suggests that there is some flaw.

So if the Ennis study was so good and if you believe that it was not flawed, why have the results not been replicated?
 
meow said:
because at first you said it wasn't blinded which it was. in fact it was blinded far far far far beyond almost any other study that i can remember.
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I said the Benveniste study was not blinded. I hadn't considered the Ennis study until you brought it up.
 
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