Homoeopathy: Help explain it to our credulous parliamentarians!

"speculation does not require anything - the real world is not obliged to conform to our speculations. the suggestion that it is, or is assumed to be, is presposterous."

Lovely. From bwv11 who is Neil?

Linda
 
Wolverine said:
It is.
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Lothian said:
I wasn't sure. I can't open that website. I must have a tripe filter installed.
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Well the heading of the web page is a contradiction in terms
'Cure for incurable clinic.' If something is incurable then it cannot be cured. If it can be cured then it is not incurable.

Worse there is nowhere a promise that they can cure anything. The testimonial page is rather weak, amoung other reasons the last date is 09.03.2003.
 
[FONT='Arial','sans-serif']When something was found in the remedy either in the thermoluminescence experiment or kirlian instrumentation it put to rest the basic objection that there's nothing in the homoeopathic remedies.[/FONT]
 
I can follow you round all day!

How about a comment from you on this table of dilutions?

1st succession 1:100 = 1C
2nd succession 1:100 = 2C
3rd succession 1:100 = 3C
4th succession 1:100 = 4C
5th succession 1:100 = 5C
6th succession 1:100 = 6C
7th succession in water and dilution = 30C
8th succession in dilution = 200C
9th succession in dilution = 1M
10th succession in dilution = 10M
11th succession in dilution = 50M
12th succession in dilution = CM
 
Dr. Nancy Malik said:
When something was found in the remedy either in the thermoluminescence experiment or kirlian instrumentation it put to rest the basic objection that there's nothing in the homoeopathic remedies.
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Kirlian instrumentation? :D Does anyone still think that's anything other than voltage-dependent photography?. When are you going to give us the references for the published papers independently replicating Emoto's work?
 
(Hi, can you tell me if I'm posting in the right thread or if there's one more specific which I should be posting in?)

I sent the pdf file which was posted on the first page of this thread by Michael C: Homeopathy.pdf (oops, I can't paste urls!)

to my sister as part of my argument against homeopathy. It was great, summed up and organised my (chaotic) thoughts on the subject, so thanks for that.

Her response was “I don’t think such a large body of anecdotal evidence can be totally dismissed quite so easily as that.”

Any thoughts on how I can best answer that?
 
CriticalSock said:
Any thoughts on how I can best answer that?
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"The plural of anecdote is not data".

In other words, there is plenty of "anecdotal evidence" for all sorts of wacky things - UFOs, healing at Lourdes, ghosts, astrology etc. etc. but we cannot take these at face value. This is a form of what's known as "argumentum ad populum" - i.e if lots of people believe something, that something must be true. I'm sure there are plenty of things that millions of people believe in and which have "anecdotal evidence" to support their efficacy that your sister regards as ridiculous - Ouija boards, maybe? Psychic surgery? Tarot cards? 'The Secret'?

Often, lots of people believe things that are mutually exclusive - say, for example Christians believe that Jesus was the Son of God and Muslims believe he was just a Prophet - and the relative popularity of each is no real way to find out the veracity of either claim. Now there's no way to test these claims, unfortunately.

In your example, though, there is. If you apply similar to homoeopathy, there is also plenty of anecdotal evidence that homoeopathy does nothing at all, and so we need a way to determine which set of anecdotes is true. This way is called "science", and, sadly for your sister, the evidence doesn't look good for her side.

You might want to buy her "Why People Believe Weird Things" by Michael Shermer, or a book called "Irrationality" by Stuart Sutherland.
 
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"Why People Believe Weird Things" sounds like a book that I'd better read! Thanks.

The negative anecdotal evidence for homeopathy is a good way to reason too, any idea where I'd could get examples? Actually Googling "Homeopathy doesn't work" brought up an article in the Guardian from Nov '07 which looks tip top!
 
The problem is that people who tried homoeopathy and nothing happened don't usually run around telling everybody about it. So this "silent majority" is never really accounted for when weighing up the evidence.

It's only natural that the "miracle cure" tales are the ones that are trotted out at one dinner party after another, and passed on second and third hand. On the other hand, until recently it would never have occurred to me to bother to tell anyone that when I was 14 my mother took me to a homoeopath because of my acne, and the suger pills had no effect whatsoever.

The apparent effects of homoeopathy have two main causes. One is a change in perception - people really do feel a little better when they think someone has the answer they're looking for and has taken control of their problem. They're not objectively better, but subjectively they think they are. This effect can be very much enhanced by the homoeopath insisting to the patient that they are in fact better - the old joke, "I don't feel any better but my homoeopath insists I'm doing great!" The other is simple coincidence. There are a lot of conditions which are liable to go away quite suddenly, or at least dramatically improve on a temporary basis. If such an improvement happens to coincide with homoeopathic treatment, guess who gets the credit.

What you really need to know is, are these miracle cures more common among people treated by homoeopathy than among a similar group not treated? That's where the controlled trial comes in, and the answer seems to be, no they're not.

One thing which would be very illuminating would be access to a homoeopath's unedited casebook, to see just how common such miracle cures were among all the people consulting him. I've never heard of anyone getting access to such a casebook for human patients, but one vet did.

I became more and more concerned at, what I can only term the "brain-washing" of clients into thinking that, somehow, the homoeopathic treatments were actually working when it was patently clear to an objective outsider that they were not. Many of these animals had been undergoing treatment for years without significant improvement. [....]

Any good veterinary surgeon knows the power that we all wield in the consulting room. [....] It is .... possible for a veterinary surgeon with "gift of the gab" to convince a client that an animal with an incurable disease is actually getting better with the help of a few sugar tablets.
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The vet who wrote that also told me that when he scrutinised the whole case book, he saw that the impressive recoveries that had been used to persuade him to get involved with the homoeopathic practice were in fact just a few isolated cherries plucked from a long and boring litany of cases trickling along going nowhere. "However, with time, I came across increasing numbers of cases in which good-quality conventional medicine was able to improve the lot of many animals now under my care."

This is the reality of homoeopathic practice. That and the "Remedies charged out at over £10 [which] actually cost pence to produce (including materials and labour)." Nice work if you can get it.

Rolfe.
 
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Oh... also, make her watch Derren Brown's "The System".

Although it's not about homoeopathy, it really is about homoeopathy, and particularly why we shouldn't trust anecdotes.

Google Video This video is not hosted by the ISF, the ISF can not be held responsible for the suitability or legality of this material. By clicking the link below you agree to view content from an external website.
I AGREE


http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay...=51&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0
 
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volatile said:
<snip>
Although it's not about homoeopathy, it really is about homoeopathy, and particularly why we shouldn't trust anecdotes.

Google Video This video is not hosted by the ISF, the ISF can not be held responsible for the suitability or legality of this material. By clicking the link below you agree to view content from an external website.
I AGREE


http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay...=51&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0
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Great movie! I would love to post that on a homoeopathy forum and tell them it is proof of homoeopathy working. Not that they would understand it.
 
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In an interesting update to my story, well, I hope it's interesting, I went round to my parents for dinner last night and the subject of my discussion of homeopathy with my sister came up and my mother told me this story:

When I was young I had some sort of aggravated eczema which our local GP had had no success in dealing with so my mum took me to a homeopath to see if they could help. Great Ormond street hospital was mentioned but it was a chat at the dinner table so I didn’t take notes sorry. Wherever it was, the homeopath decided that my problem was due to the measles and prescribed a course of measles based remedies. Shortly after this my condition deteriorated so badly that I was admitted to hospital, lost most of the skin and flesh on my arms and legs and only recovered after a long course of steroid injections.

I have no memory of any of this, which is probably for the best as it sounded pretty traumatic! I’m still covered in the scars though…
 
CriticalSock said:
When I was young I had some sort of aggravated eczema which our local GP had had no success in dealing with so my mum took me to a homeopath to see if they could help. Great Ormond street hospital was mentioned but it was a chat at the dinner table so I didn’t take notes sorry. Wherever it was, the homeopath decided that my problem was due to the measles and prescribed a course of measles based remedies. Shortly after this my condition deteriorated so badly that I was admitted to hospital, lost most of the skin and flesh on my arms and legs …
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Nothing to worry about: this is what homoeopaths call an "aggravation", which shows that the homoeopath had chosen the right remedy.

Seriously.
 
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