Icy claim that water has memory

[JamesM]

M Chapin recanted -- see his website.

What Chaplin says:

Changes in the thermoluminescence of ice produced from ultra-diluted water have been noted [500a] but can be explained by remaining trace amounts of material (due to poor mixing, impurities, absorption or other causes) being concentrated between ice crystals [500b]; an explanation supported by later work [500c].

Reference 500c is:

"Thermoluminescence of deuterated amorphous and crystalline ices"
Louis Rey
Radiation Physics and Chemistry, 2005, 72, 587-594.

This hardly seems like a recantation. But I must admit to being at a loss as to how the above paper supports the "trace material" argument.

 

[Mojo]

M Chapin recanted -- see his website.

Link?

apparently louis rey did some followup research and showed that the 2nd peak could be cancelled by high pressure.

Referencce?

ETA: sorry, hadn't noticed JamesM's post on the new page.

 

[Anders]

Hey Xanta!

Thanks so much for pointing me to Martin Chaplin's website. He does in a very scientific way explain the different theories about ultra dilution having biological effects, and why they are all wrong.

Thanks Olaf!

[edit: and thanks JamesM for the link!]

 

[Rolfe]

Zaaydragon, rolfe, hans, BSM, and many others have all done it and they have all gotten promptly spanked for it.

Xanta, you have the typical homoeopath's habit of calling victory when you're sitting on the floor watching your horse galloping into the distance.

We've just got tired of the fact that you've nothing to say, yet keep saying it at regular intervals. You're boring, these tedious studies are boring, and if you've nothing to say except that you blindly believe their conclusions even with the relatively scanty data given, then the conversation does become a bit one-sided.

Rolfe.

 

[Ossai]

Olaf/QII – B.I.F.

The basophil study does not attempt to prove homeopathy.

You’re right on that point at least. If it’s repeatable it would be yet another study that disproves homeopathy.

And yet another example of B.I.F.

what it does is lend support to the idea that like may indeed cure like.

Ossai

 

[MRC_Hans]

*snip* Zaaydragon, rolfe, hans, BSM, and many others have all done it and they have all gotten promptly spanked for it.

*snip*

Spanked? By who? Do you really really think you posting crap and displaying your silly multicolored signature constitutes spanking? You are so ridiculous.

You don't even understand the implications of what you post. Nobody bothers with you anymore. You are just noise.

Hans

 

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

Olaf/QII – B.I.F.
You’re right on that point at least. If it’s repeatable it would be yet another study that disproves homeopathy.

And yet another example of B.I.F.


Ossai

"B.I.F." ?

 

[Rolfe]

"B.I.F." ?

Just a guess - Bullet In Foot?

Rolfe.

 

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

i believe that Ullman has given analogies such as musical instruments. a 'C' note struck on one instrument will reverberate on another.

"In explaining how small doses act, an analogy to music is helpful. It is commonly known that when one plays a "C" note on a piano, other "C" notes reverberate. Even on another piano at the other end of a room, "C" notes still have a hypersensitivity to the "C" resonance. In music theory (and physics) there is a basic principle that two things resonate if and only if they are "similar."

I'd forgotten that post of yours. What is it with you that you find these feeble analogies so impressive? An analogy is useful if it simply explains a complex process, but yours is spun out of thin air.

Show me something in a homeopathic remedy that vibrates in the way the analogy requires it to and I'll listen.

You share the same problem as Sarah and most of your ilk that you so like the sound of words like these that it doesn't make any difference to you whether they have any grounding in reality. You commit the same intellectual crime as people who argue about quantum physics based on their half-understanding of the analogies used as shorthand by physicists. The analogies don't bear any weight of argument. If you can't do the maths don't try to have the debate. It's the same here. You like these analogies that sound like they say something about medicine but you know nothing about the basic chemical physical and biological processes.

Coincidentally, I first discovered homeopathy was crap about 20 years ago when I first picked up a book on homeopathy and found in the first chapter that the author was airily telling us that Einstein told us that matter and energy were the same and everything vibrated at its special frequency and homeopathic remedies worked by that energy. Written by a naive 8 year old you might tolerate it, but written in all seriousness by an adult you do not.

 

[Bronze Dog]

Just a guess - Bullet In Foot?

Rolfe.

*Imagines Olaf singing...*

o/^ I shot me down. Bang, bang. I hit the ground. Bang, bang. o/^

 

[Ossai]

Rolfe

Just a guess - Bullet In Foot?

Better than the original, so I’ll take it.

 

[Olaf/QII]

There is a similar strange occurrence to homeopathy in enzyme chemistry where an effectively non-existent material still has a major effect; enzymes prepared in buffers of known pH retain (remember) those specific pH-dependent kinetic properties even when effectively dry; these molecules seemingly having an effect in their absence somewhat against common sense at the simplistic level. Water does store and transmit information, concerning solutes, by means of its hydrogen-bonded network.

==============

The original results [132] were, however, confirmed in a rather bizarre Nature paper purporting to prove the opposite [346b],c and have been recently comprehensively confirmed by a blinded multi-center trial [346a

==============

Working hypothesis for homeopathic effect

A further consideration about 'the memory of water' is that the popular understanding concerning how homeopathic preparations may work not only requires this memory but also requires that this memory be amplified during the dilution; this amplification, necessitated by the increase in efficacy with extensive dilution, being even harder to explain. Samal and Geckeler have published an interesting, if controversial, paper [272] concerning the effect of dilution on some molecules. They found that some molecules form larger clusters on dilution rather than the smaller clusters thermodynamically expected

http://www.lsbu.ac.uk/water/homeop.html#500

JamesM wrote:

Reference 500c is:

"Thermoluminescence of deuterated amorphous and crystalline ices"
Louis Rey
Radiation Physics and Chemistry, 2005, 72, 587-594.

This hardly seems like a recantation. But I must admit to being at a loss as to how the above paper supports the "trace material" argument.

the reason it hardly seems like a recantation is because that is the way scientists are --- they try and save face.

If you read these papers in his bibliography you will see that he no longer accepts the contamination theory.

(b) L. R. Milgrom, The memory of water regained? Homeopathy 92 (2003) 223-224. (c) L. Rey, Thermoluminescence of deuterated amorphous and crystalline ices, Radiation Phys. Chem. 72 (2005) 587-594. [Back]

 

[Mojo]

There is a similar strange occurrence to homeopathy in enzyme chemistry where an effectively non-existent material still has a major effect; enzymes prepared in buffers of known pH retain (remember) those specific pH-dependent kinetic properties even when effectively dry; these molecules seemingly having an effect in their absence somewhat against common sense at the simplistic level.

The Kinetic properties for a given pH will be to do with the shape of the enzyme molecule at that pH. Presumably the enzyme is holding its shape in the absence of anything causing it to change.

 

[Mojo]

the reason it hardly seems like a recantation is because that is the way scientists are --- they try and save face.

If you read these papers in his bibliography you will see that he no longer accepts the contamination theory.

(b) L. R. Milgrom, The memory of water regained? Homeopathy 92 (2003) 223-224. (c) L. Rey, Thermoluminescence of deuterated amorphous and crystalline ices, Radiation Phys. Chem. 72 (2005) 587-594.

Is Chaplin an author of those papers? If not, reading them will not tell us anything about Chaplin's opinion, will it? Perhaps you should note what Chaplin says in the passage in which he cites them:

Changes in the thermoluminescence of ice produced from ultra-diluted water have been noted [500a] but can be explained by remaining trace amounts of material (due to poor mixing, impurities, absorption or other causes) being concentrated between ice crystals [500b]; an explanation supported by later work [500c].

This should give you an idea of Chaplin's opinion on the matter.

 

[Mojo]

Working hypothesis for homeopathic effect

A further consideration about 'the memory of water' is that the popular understanding concerning how homeopathic preparations may work not only requires this memory but also requires that this memory be amplified during the dilution; this amplification, necessitated by the increase in efficacy with extensive dilution, being even harder to explain. Samal and Geckeler have published an interesting, if controversial, paper [272] concerning the effect of dilution on some molecules. They found that some molecules form larger clusters on dilution rather than the smaller clusters thermodynamically expected

I'll quote the next sentence as well, as it makes the point I am about to make clearer:

Samal and Geckeler have published an interesting, if controversial, paper [272] concerning the effect of dilution on some molecules. They found that some molecules form larger clusters on dilution rather than the smaller clusters thermodynamically expected. Just the presence of one such large mm-sized particle in the 'diluted' solution could give rise to the noticed biological action (of course, some such preparations may be totally without action, being without such clustered particles).

So, while some aliquots of homeopathic preparations of certain sustances may contain much more of the solute than expected, it is inevitable that many more will contain less than expected.

This may explain why a particular dose of a particular preparation may contain more of the solute than expected, but it doesn't support homeopathy, unless homeopaths are claiming that most of their pills have no effect, but the occasional one might.