The background of the
Atmanspacher et al. (2002) paper is interesting. (My first giggle is at Atmanspacher's affiliation to the Max Planck Institute, at which the irony meter goes off the scale, but never mind.)
I don't know anything about Romer, but Walach, the third author, is an old acquaintance, a homoeopathy apologist extraordinaire. His earlier (2000) paper,
Magic of Signs, is leaned on very heavily by Milgrom in his first "quantum metaphor" paper, and I get the impression that it is in fact the source of Milgrom's ideas. It seems to me to be an earlier attempt to explain the lack of effect in controlled trials on something other than classical physics, but in this case "magic" gets a lot more name-checking than "quantum".
Although the original substance is diluted, it is still in some way 'present' and effective. This presence, I will contend in this paper, is a magical, not a causal presence, like the one described in the text by Scholem. Magical presence and effects are wrought by signs, not by causes. In this sense, homeopathy is effective in a non-local way: it acts by magically activating connectedness. .... I will turn to explain how the scientifically obscene word 'magic' can be understood in an inoffensive way.
The homeopathic medicine is a sign which mediates the meaning between a mental-psychological state, the illness in the patient, and the physical realm of bodily functions, elements of nature, and the like. It acts via the original interconnectedness of all beings, which is activated, as in magical rituals, by the homeopathic ritual of case taking, remedy preparation, repertorization and remedy prescription.
The paper actually includes an excellent and succinct summary of the weakness of the "empirical database" in support of homoeopathy - perhaps the best I've seen even including sceptics' summaries. But of course that doesn't mean it doesn't work, oh dear me no, his faith is too great for that.
I think he really did at this point intend to make "the scientifically obscene word 'magic' .... inoffensive", and use that as the paradigm. However, he does note the similarity of his ideas to some aspects of quantum theory, and includes a subsection on "quantum entanglement" among the various aspects of magic he discusses. I also note he names Atmanspacher in his acknowledgements list.
My hunch is (and if Walach can get away with publishing his hunches, so can I) that the pair of them realised that the "magic" paradigm wasn't really going to fly, and that it might in fact make homoeopathy look ridiculous, therefore they decided to concoct an explicitly "quantum" background which could be used by Milgrom in particular to construct a scientific-sounding "quantum" explanation.
Milgrom's first paper (2002) references Walach's 2000
Magic of Signs quite extensively, however it also references Atmanspacher
et al. (also 2002), which is at that point "in press", demonstrating that he had pre-publication access to it, and presumably discussed it with its authors. Am I wide of the mark in imagining Atmanspacher saying "there you go, Lionel old boy, a quantum paper you can draw on to make homoeopathy sound as scientifically respectable as you like!"
I really do believe that this whole "Weak Quantum Theory" concept was simply invented by a bunch of homoeopaths and their fellow-travellers in order to provide material for Lionel to base his maunderings on.
Walach was last heard of designing and organising a large multi-centre provings experiment, which although unnecessarily complicated was I believe intended to be strictly blinded, and was designed to demonstrate that proving symptoms are indeed a real effect. However this was some time ago, and I've heard nothing about the progress.
This has all the hallmarks of mutual intellectual masturbation, but unfortunately the effect of "the seminal work of the great Dr. Milgrom of Imperial College has demonstrated how homoeopathy works by quantum entanglement" has made it into the real world.
Rolfe.
