Milgrom and Homeopathy

Rolfe - methinks ABC in this case is the Australian Broadcasting Corporation - not the US American Broadcasting Company.
 
Badly Shaved Monkey said:
Oh, yes, I'd forgotten that part of what Milgrom said. It does look like an independent test, and score another failure for homeopathy.
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But that doesn't square at all with the A(ustralian)BC transcript, which is 100% definitely the BBC Horizon experiment (it even includes the line "So Horizon hasn’t won the million dollars. It’s another triumph for James Randi.") That ABC programme is absolutely definitely certainly just a re-edit of the Horizon material into two programmes, possibly a bit longer overall and including a bit more detail on certain segments.

So what the hell was Lionel doing in Guy's Hospital in November/December 2003, and who was it for? Could the other ABC, the American one, have done its own repetition?

:confused:

Rolfe.
 
Rolfe said:
So what the hell was Lionel doing in Guy's Hospital in November/December 2003, and who was it for? Could the other ABC, the American one, have done its own repetition?

:confused:

Rolfe.
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yes it did becuase ullman didn't know the results in advance.
 
No, wait a minute. Randi is quoted in the ABC transcript and we'd know if he'd been involved in two separate experiments. So, why does Milgrom refer to them as if they are separate? What is he and/or Dana Ullman up to?
 
Anders W. Bonde said:
Rolfe - methinks ABC in this case is the Australian Broadcasting Corporation - not the US American Broadcasting Company.
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Um, yes, partly. See my post above.

The contradiction is that while the Australian station has definitely put out the material, it's clear that what they broadcast was a re-edit of the BBC Horizon programme, and not a different experiment. It's verbatim, and it even refers to the experiment as having been done for Horizon in the transcript.

But in the email exchange which started this, Lionel Milgrom referns to a repetition of the BBC experiment for "ABC" (which "A" not specified), being done in late November/early December 2003. The BBC experiment (in which Wayne Turnbull was also involved) was done in the spring of 2002 and broadcast in November 2002.

I'd like to get to the bottom of this.

Rolfe.
 
geni said:
yes it did becuase ullman didn't know the results in advance.
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Geni, we appreciate that you are normally monosyllabic, but how about a bit more expansiveness here?

Are you saying that the 2003 A(ustralian)BC rebroadcast of the BBC's 2002 material is a total red herring, and that Wayne Turnbull (and Lionel Milgrom) did in fact co-operate with the A(merican)BC in an actual repetition of the experiment, in 2003? And that Dana Ullman was also involved in that effort?

Do you have any more sources for this, other than the email exchange BSM linked to? I'm remembering some sideways references on a couple of homoeopathy sites, but an actual TV company page describing the programme or even better a transcript would be nice.

Rolfe.
 
geni said:
http://www.townsendletter.com/July2004/shorts0704.htm

refures to scientist brought over from london.

more stuff

http://www.otherhealth.com/showthread.php?p=1603&mode=threaded

One of these days I'm going to get round to contacting these people to find out what they really say.
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OK, thanks, I'll have a look at that. How confusing is this, anyway?

Does anyone know if the A(merican)BC has any sort of description or transcript of its version of the experiment avaliable for scrutiny?

Rolfe.
 
I've seen some of that before. I'd forgotten the "20/20" part. There does seem to be a transcript available but you have to pay for it and I'm not sure I'm that keen. I see that Randi is listed as one of the guests. And I don't know about bringing anyone over from London for the broadcast, but it's plain from the email exchange that the actual experiment was done in London, at Guy's. It's funny they went to all that trouble for a mere eight-minute segment.

The Otherhealth post by gpm, quoting Ullman, is so biassed it's very difficult to sift out what the facts are, but he seems to be implying that when Dana Ullman was looking for mud to throw at the 20/20 experiment, he latched on to something about ammonium chloride in the protocol used by Guy Turnbull. It then appeared that Turnbull had used the same protocol in the Horizon trial, and it was at this point that Madeleine went ballistic that this was deliberate sabotage, because ammonium chloride would simply kill basophils. Or did she? I saw a posting of the email in which she expresses this view, and it's couched in much more tentative terms, indeed she says something like, if that did happen then yes, I wouldn't be happy because it would nullify the experiment. Nothing about her flatly turning anyone down, or alleging deliberate sabotage.

I have the gravest doubts about Ullman "trying to get the experiment called off", and Turnbull changing the protocol, and a lot of the rest of the stuff in these links.

This is just another round of what happens every single time anyone tries to set up a properly-controlled trial of any of the claims of the homoeopaths. You seem to get agreement on all sides that the method is valid, then after the event, when it's too late to go back and change it, the homoeopaths start finding all sorts of fatal flaws with the protocol. Look at what Turnbull says in his email.
Given an assay that I was confident to stand behind, the eventual results would be valid, regardless of whether they turned out to be positive or negative. The pursuit of scientific enquiry requires an abstract objectivity. Not only do I believe that I am perfectly capable of such impartiality, I had hoped that I was successful in communicating that impartiality to Dana, John, Francis and yourself. I have tried to be as receptive as practicable when comments have been made, because a consensus between all parties is essential ....
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He believes he tried to get a consensus with the homoepaths that the method was acceptable. Nothing there at all about ammonium chloride, or about "Dana" "trying to get the experiment stopped".
".... I am absolutely certain that such inaccuracies in potency would never pass muster in [John's] establishment. So why were they allowed in yours?" Unfortunately the answer to this question is because you allowed it to happen. Francis, John and yourself were actively encouraged to express any comments, reservations or objections that you had at the time. We were more than willing to listen. I believe we went out of our way to express this position. To labour the point once more, without the agreement of all participants, the eventual outcome has little value.
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This is about Lionel's post hoc complaints about the weighing out of the histamine for the "mother tincture", which seems to have been done to a perfectly reasonable standard of accuracy for the purpose, with no demur from the homoeopaths at the time.

It's just another example of what we see with the proving trials of Walach and Lewith, where homoeopaths' agreement is sought to the protocol, then the same protocol is blasted as completely ridiculous, designed to fail, once its failure has become apparent.

If Lionel did start expressing reservations before the results were known, so what? It was too late to re-do the experiment, and what difference would it have made if they'd got the positive result? "Oh well, it obviously didn't affect the results, isn't that great!" I'd call this expert damage limitation in advance.

So, the obvious question. TV channels are quite keen on this protocol. I'll just bet my little cotton socks that they'd be even keener if they got a positive result! Clearly, Wayne Turnbull is an incompetent clod (if not a deliberate saboteur), as he has failed twice to replicate Madeleine's experiment that she can get to work any day of the week. (Except that when you actually look at Madeleine's actual papers, and Xanta/Gold/Olaf/Q11/yaw/nerr (have I missed any?) would have us do, we see that it's all just a tad hazier than that....) Why is it that these experiments are always sabotaged to fail? Surely the TV companies would quite like the publicity of smashing the laws of chemistry to smithereens!

Anyway, why doesn't Lionel, who is a chemist and has laboratory facilities at his disposal, or Madeleine herself, just step up and say, look, let us show you that it works! So long as the attempt was properly supervised against bias and cheating, as with the Maddox et al. supervision of the Benveniste experiment, the method is irrelevant. If Madeleine doesn't want to use foetal calf serum, or ammonium chloride, and insists on some sort of super-accurate balance in a hermetically-sealed room, fine. Do it your way, under genuinely blinded and controlled conditions, and blow us all away!

WHY DON'T THEY DO THIS??? Why the perpetual post hoc griping from the sidelines if they could do it so much better, and show us all up for idiots?

Rolfe.
 
The actual lab methods are beyond my routine experience, but the baseline activation set for the was 50% "activation" of the basophils. Well, you ain't gonna get 50% activation if they've all been killed, so that rather defeats that objection.
 
Badly Shaved Monkey said:
The actual lab methods are beyond my routine experience, but the baseline activation set for the was 50% "activation" of the basophils. Well, you ain't gonna get 50% activation if they've all been killed, so that rather defeats that objection.
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Well, yes, that had rather occurred to me....

Rolfe.
 
Originally posted by MRC_Hans
He does. Been there done that (the T-shirt didn't fit). :rolleyes:
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That's because he used bathroom scales to measure chest circumference :D
 
Wow, I come back after a year, and the usual misfits are STILL involved in mental masturbation. HAHAHAHA!

Nevermind. During that time I have had several more firsthand experiences with several more remedies in how homeopathy can function decisively.

I have no idea how or why it works. However, since I know for absolute fact that it DOES work, if the right remedy is chosen, I don't fret about those details.
 
Bowser said:
Wow, I come back after a year, and the usual misfits are STILL involved in mental masturbation. HAHAHAHA!

Nevermind. During that time I have had several more firsthand experiences with several more remedies in how homeopathy can function decisively.

I have no idea how or why it works. However, since I know for absolute fact that it DOES work, if the right remedy is chosen, I don't fret about those details.
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Pity that neither you nor anyone else can actually demonstrate this "absolute fact."
 
Bowser said:
Wow, I come back after a year, and the usual misfits are STILL involved in mental masturbation. HAHAHAHA!

Nevermind. During that time I have had several more firsthand experiences with several more remedies in how homeopathy can function decisively.

I have no idea how or why it works. However, since I know for absolute fact that it DOES work, if the right remedy is chosen, I don't fret about those details.
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Hi Bowser. I wasn't here a year ago.

Have any remedies to cure multiple myeloma?
 
Bowser said:
Wow, I come back after a year, and the usual misfits are STILL involved in mental masturbation. HAHAHAHA!

Nevermind. During that time I have had several more firsthand experiences with several more remedies in how homeopathy can function decisively.

I have no idea how or why it works. However, since I know for absolute fact that it DOES work, if the right remedy is chosen, I don't fret about those details.
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A whole year has gone by, and you've managed to prove homeopathy to yourself? Wonderful... now I'll give you another year to come up with the Sooper Deedooperty Homeopathic Decisive Functionality Test, and prove it to everyone else.

That should give you ample time to fret over the details.

This time next year? Lovely.

See you then.
 
Bowser said:
Wow, I come back after a year, and the usual misfits are STILL involved in mental masturbation. HAHAHAHA!

Nevermind. During that time I have had several more firsthand experiences with several more remedies in how homeopathy can function decisively.

I have no idea how or why it works. However, since I know for absolute fact that it DOES work, if the right remedy is chosen, I don't fret about those details.
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If this isn't another of Xanta's socks, I'm a chinaman's auntie.

Rolfe.
 
I wasn't around a year ago, either. I'll make sure to go back and read this thread.
Bowser said:
I have no idea how or why it works.
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Not that I care, yet.

However, since I know for absolute fact that it DOES work...
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How do you know it works?




... And you do know that "absolute" isn't terribly scientific. More in the vicinity of dogmatic, but I digress.

EDIT: Oops. Seems I was thinking this was some old thread Bowser was involved in. Oh well. My sentiments stand.
 
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