Timescale of a trial

[Darat]

Does that mean that the water retains the properties of anything that it has ever been in contact with? Surely they would see the absurdity of that?

Maybe it only retains the properties of the thing that they really, really want it to retain the properties of? Is there a magic spell when the water gets imbued with the appropriate property?

Winny

You've reached the core of homeopathy very quickly. It is nothing more then a magic spell dressed up to look like a medicine.

 

[KRAMER]

Official protocol negotiations are indistinguishable from unofficial protocol negotiations, then. Telling some people to "apply or disappear" but discussing protocol with other people before they have applied appears, to us outsiders, to be a capricious adherence to your own rules. And doing so just causes you problems and stress.

Well, yes, why should we discuss a claim one way informally, and then in a different manner when formal negotiations begin? Wouldn't that bring about more real problems than how "capricious" we seem to you?

Randi wasn't so much discussing a protocol as he was trying to figure out what the heck the guiy's terms were. We can't even begin to talk about a test protocol until we know what the claim says he can do, and that was the issue during the exchange in question; the would-be applicant's terms.

Here's what you're missing as regards this entire affair:
Randi does NOT normally enter into such discussions with would-be applicants, so your basic assumption that our adherence to our own rules is capricious, is just wrong.

Randi, after I insisted he read the "Kramer You're the Wrong Man for the Job" thread, engaged this fellow for the specific purpose of illustrating for concerned forum members just how difficult it can be to even decipher what most applicants are claiming to be able to do. Read Randi's commentary again - he said as such.

If the applicant eventually succeeds in being clear and understandable, the more difficult task of agreeing to a test protocol begins.

You've missed the entire point of what Randi was trying to do.

 

[drkitten]

Here's what you're missing as regards this entire affair:
Randi does NOT normally enter into such discussions with would-be applicants, so your basic assumption that our adherence to our own rules is capricious, is just wrong.

[...]

You've missed the entire point of what Randi was trying to do.

I think, though, that you've missed the entire point of what Rolfe was trying to do, which is at least to give applicants a nudge into "this is what a 'scientific' test looks like." An alternative way to make the point clear might be a statement of "these are the kinds of problems that will make a proposed protocal unacceptable out of the gate."

For example, I don't need to explain to you (nor you to me) the importance of a baseline success rate to compare against. Ditto the significance of blinding, and if at all possible, double-blinding. Ditto the importance of replicability to eliminate the factor of chance. Perhaps most important is the protection against cheating. But a number of protocol applicants, or even proto-applicants, clearly don't understand these points and their significance.

 

[Tez]

Well, yes, why should we discuss a claim one way informally, and then in a different manner when formal negotiations begin? Wouldn't that bring about more real problems than how "capricious" we seem to you?

Randi wasn't so much discussing a protocol as he was trying to figure out what the heck the guiy's terms were. We can't even begin to talk about a test protocol until we know what the claim says he can do, and that was the issue during the exchange in question; the would-be applicant's terms.

Here's what you're missing as regards this entire affair:
Randi does NOT normally enter into such discussions with would-be applicants, so your basic assumption that our adherence to our own rules is capricious, is just wrong.

Randi, after I insisted he read the "Kramer You're the Wrong Man for the Job" thread, engaged this fellow for the specific purpose of illustrating for concerned forum members just how difficult it can be to even decipher what most applicants are claiming to be able to do. If the applicant eventually succeeds in being clear and understandable, the more difficult task of agreeing to a test begins.

You've missed the entire point of what Randi was trying to do.

Kramer, I think much of what people are saying would be useful could be incorporated into the challenge webpage by simply giving some examples of protocols that were approved in the past. Not the full application necessarily, just a brief, summary form (whether or not they were actually ever undertaken) would probably do. Something of the form "Applicants claim: Can smell body odour of aliens at 5000 meters. Test protocol: 10 aliens located,..blah blah"

I realise this would be yet more work for someone at JREF. However, the reason it would be useful, is that the sort of people we encourage to take the challenge, as you well know, have absolutely no clue on how to test anything in a scientific (never mind double blind!) manner. What this means is that often they are clueless how to even phrase their claim in terms that are vaguely testable. You know all this better than me of course.

If one can point to specific examples of testable claims, and how they could be tested, it may actually alleviate some of your work in the long run...

 

[webfusion]

Well, some of us didn't miss the point...

KRAMER: " You've missed the entire point of what Randi was trying to do."

I certainly didn't miss it. I saw exactly the support and confidence that Randi places in you, KRAMER. I was able to understand how Randi wanted to illustrate a typical example of what you deal with, and how each (potential) applicant needs replies that vary with the circumstances.
No "boilerplate" or "read the FAQ" (cop-out)
No "apply or go away"
No "talk to KRAMER, not to me"

It was professional, clear, precise, educational and entertaining, all at once!
Thanks to Randi.
Thanks to KRAMER.

Keep on rockin' our world.

One-million posts and counting... glad to be a part of it.

 

[webfusion]

Tez. maybe I'm being my usual ignorant and illiterate self, but when you say:

"If one can point to specific examples of testable claims, and how they could be tested, it may actually alleviate some of your work in the long run..."

How about just looking through the entire "Challenge Applications" thread???? Many of those show how protocols are developed (or not).

What you are suggesting is 'spoonfeeding' --- not to mention it cannot possibly cover all examples of claims and beyond that, the JREF has no need to propose protocols anyway.

If anyone has even the slightest doubt what "double blind testing" means, there is a little thing called "Internet Search Engine" which offers over 4000 webpages that discuss it and explain it and even offer examples of it.
http://skepdic.com/control.html

(Number One Google result: The Skeptics Dictionary, by Robert Todd Carrol)

 

[jmercer]

Re: Well, some of us didn't miss the point...

I certainly didn't miss it. I saw exactly the support and confidence that Randi places in you, KRAMER. I was able to understand how Randi wanted to illustrate a typical example of what you deal with, and how each (potential) applicant needs replies that vary with the circumstances.
No "boilerplate" or "read the FAQ" (cop-out)
No "apply or go away"
No "talk to KRAMER, not to me"

It was professional, clear, precise, educational and entertaining, all at once!
Thanks to Randi.
Thanks to KRAMER.

Keep on rockin' our world.

One-million posts and counting... glad to be a part of it.

Well said, Webby. Ditto.

 

[KRAMER]

Kramer, I think much of what people are saying would be useful could be incorporated into the challenge webpage by simply giving some examples of protocols that were approved in the past...
If one can point to specific examples of testable claims, and how they could be tested, it may actually alleviate some of your work in the long run...

It might. It could also usher in a whole new set of problems as yet unforeseen. One can only imagine.

And it's also exactly what I'd call "spoonfeeding".

 

[Tez]

Its true regarding both your comments about the spoonfeeding.

How about this argument (not sure you'll like this one either ): In my experience JREF has had most of its positive impact on "seekers of the truth" - people who dont believe they have psychic powers or whatever, but who are "dabbling in it", or perhaps were hardcore TrueBelievers who are beginning to harbour doubts. For these people, who also are generically scientifically challenged, having some idea of what kind of testing "the psychic that Aunt Mildred claims predicted her cats death" should be able to pass would actually be educational. i.e. the examples would serve to outline simple but correct methods of applying scientific methodology.

In fact, quite a few scientists could do a lot worse than to (re?)learn the art of designing simple experiments from some of the examples that I've seen over my years here. I certainly have (though I am not an experimentalist, thank Ed...). WHile its easy to find out what a double blind test is, its not easy to design simple and effective ones that remove superfluous protective complications.

The other idea I had years ago was to offer a $10K "finders fee" to anyone who found the psychic that passed the test. That'll get the TrueBeliever's really hassling their favourite "true psychic". Randi told me back then that something similar had been tried in the past, and they'd had to deal with a bunch of disappointed people!!

 

[Beleth]

Well, yes, why should we discuss a claim one way informally, and then in a different manner when formal negotiations begin? Wouldn't that bring about more real problems than how "capricious" we seem to you?

That's not my point. My point is that sometimes you discuss a claim pre-application and sometimes you don't.

If the JREF sticks to their guns - either set of guns, the "apply or disappear" guns or the "let's talk about this informally before you apply" guns - then people will know what to expect. It doesn't matter which rules you follow, as long as you only follow one set.

You need to be consistent. You need to treat every applicant the same at the outset. It's like going to the DMV. People don't like going to the DMV, but at least they know what to expect when they go there.

Imagine if you found out that there was a back room to the DMV, the head of the DMV's office, with mahogany paneling and new Berber carpeting and comfortable chairs and soft music piped in, where the head of the DMV smiled at you and said things like "Well, you're supposed to fill out this pile of forms before we talk, but I won't make you do that because you're an interesting person with a car I've never seen before, Kramer."

What sort of problems would that cause if - when - a person who has been standing in line in the gray-linoleum front room of the DMV finds out that this back room exists?

If you don't want headaches, you need to treat every applicant the same way.

Randi wasn't so much discussing a protocol as he was trying to figure out what the heck the guiy's terms were.

Okay, I'm confused. What's the difference between a protocol and an applicant's terms? The terms are "I can make this happen", and the protocol is "here are the conditions I can make this happen under", isn't it? I think the guy's Web page is pretty self-explanatory as to what (he believes) he can make happen.

When the discussion turned into "what if you tap him on the neck instead of the jawbone" or whatever, it's pretty obvious that the terms were understood and that the line had then been crossed between discussing terms and discussing protocol.

Here's what you're missing as regards this entire affair:
Randi does NOT normally enter into such discussions with would-be applicants, so your basic assumption that our adherence to our own rules is capricious, is just wrong.

But Randi entering into this discussion at this point is an example of capriciousness, not a counterexample.

Randi, after I insisted he read the "Kramer You're the Wrong Man for the Job" thread, engaged this fellow for the specific purpose of illustrating for concerned forum members just how difficult it can be to even decipher what most applicants are claiming to be able to do. Read Randi's commentary again - he said as such.

For the record, I only read about half the first page of the "Wrong Man" thread before I became nauseated. As often as I disagree with you, KRAMER, the thought of you getting run out on a rail turns my stomach.

You've missed the entire point of what Randi was trying to do.

You're mostly right; I didn't realize at the time that Randi was attempting to show that your method of handling the claims was appropriate.

But now that I have that information, I realize that what Randi actually showed was that your method of handling claims is similar to his method. And that's not necessarily the same thing. I didn't get his point before, but now that I do, I don't believe he performed a proper demonstration of his point.

 

[Rolfe]

I think, though, that you've missed the entire point of what Rolfe was trying to do, which is at least to give applicants a nudge into "this is what a 'scientific' test looks like."

Actually, I was mainly trying to find out whether in order to test someone who claimed to be able to cure a disease, it was essential to find a number of people who all had that disease on the same day, and to complete the test then and there. Which seemed to make a lot of altmed claims untestable, because even if you could find these people, the applicant wouldn't necessarily be claiming to be able to accomplish the cure that quickly, or to be able to handle that number of "patients" at once.

Obviously, if all tests do require those sorts of condiitons, then many of the things we suggest to homoepaths that they might consider to go for the challenge would be impractical. I'd like to know whether it's possible to do such tests over a period of time, and even whether the concept of supplying materials by post would be acceptable, so long as there was sufficient blinding.

Kramer did indicate that the challenge was flexible enough to accommodate necessary conditions inherent in the applicant's claim, which was useful, and he also said in another thread that for a yes/no choice then 9 right out of 10 tries would be considered good enough for a pass at the preliminary stage.

Both of these things are useful information. I tend to hope that the JREF is smart enough to agree to a fair challenge protocol even if the nature of the claim makes a longer time-scale or piece-meal tests essential. It's the blinding that's important, after all.

It would certainly be nice if everyone were a bit less snippy, but then people are people I suppose.

Rolfe.

 

[webfusion]

HONDA spocket

Gosh darn it, Beleth ---

"Imagine if you found out that there was a back room to the DMV, the head of the DMV's office, with mahogany paneling and new Berber carpeting and comfortable chairs and soft music piped in, where the head of the DMV smiled at you and said things like "Well, you're supposed to fill out this pile of forms before we talk, but I won't make you do that because you're an interesting person with a car I've never seen before, Kramer."

My car:

That is exactly the situation when I go to the DMV; I sure wish you hadn't revealed that here.
It was my little secret.

 

[MRC_Hans]

Sorry for late answer:

Does that mean that the water retains the properties of anything that it has ever been in contact with? Surely they would see the absurdity of that?

Apparantly not.

Maybe it only retains the properties of the thing that they really, really want it to retain the properties of?

Something like that.

Is there a magic spell when the water gets imbued with the appropriate property?

It is called sucussion. You rap the glass hard on the back of a leather-bound book, or equivalent, 2-10 times (some controversy on this, too). Somehow, this procedure makes the water tune in to the right substance, and nothing else.

Yeah, sounds daft to me, too.

Hans

 

[Pyrts]

Actually, I *can* think of a way to test the homeopathic claims that doesn't involve anyone making themselves ill or stopping their meds.

Homeopathy, as I recall, works on animals. There are a number of fairly benign -to-fatal conditions that occur in pets, including (as fish keepers know) a condition called "ick."

A solution can be made up of the recommended remedy and another with the homeopathic remedy (with appropriate dyes in it.) A sequence of sick fish can be treated and evaluated.

Other conditions that might be evaluated (in humans) include reducing age spots (that can be done by simple photography and measurement)

But I think that treating plants or animals would probably be best, since there's fewer ways to bias the evaluation. You can tell your dog that this magic water is going to cure his arthritis, but the dog won't actually be able to process that information as a human would.

 

[Rolfe]

There are a number of problems with animal tests. First there is the legal matter of all animal experiments, however benign, having to be approved and licensed.

Then there is the question of individualisation. Veterinary homoeopaths frequently treat heards or groups of animals en masse, including adding the chosen remedy to a bulk water supply. However, whenever an objective trial is proposed or carried out using this method, there is a unanimous scream of "this would never have worked, it isn't proper homoeopathy, because all treatments have to be individualised."

The best example of this was when the homoeopath known here varously as Homeoskeptic, Corallinus and Sarah-I and on the homoeopathy forums as Naturalhealth immediately damned a well-conducted objective trial of homoeopathy as a treatment for calf diarrhoea on the grounds that each calf had not received an "individualised" remedy - or so she assumed, she hadn't actually read the paper! (Of course that trial showed no effect of homoeopathy, in fact the treated calves had a slightly longer duration of illness than the control group.) Then just a week or two later, a poster on a homoeopathy forum started a thread asking for help for a farmer friend who had calves dying with diarrhoea symptoms. With only minimal, sketchy clinical information (not even including whether the calves were with their mothers or bottle-fed, or indoors or out), the same homoeopath posted a recommendation that a single remedy should be used on all the calves.

In fact the protocol as suggested would allow the homoeopath to test the remedy any way he liked, including using it to treat an animal assuming that could be ethically done. Or plant preparations, anything at all. It's really just a matter of clarifying how quickly the test has to be accomplished, and how closely the process has to be supervised, given that nothing is forbidden to the homoeopath so long as the blinding is not compromsed.

One of the frequent objections to the test that we hear from homoeopaths is the number of repetitions necessary. Remember, they are the ones who have to decide how they believe they can make the distinction between the remedy and the sham - once we've got through to them the concept of even trying to tell the real thing from a sham, mostly they just think they can say, here, I gave this preparation to a volunteer and look what happened, give me the money. The most usual claims are that they can give the stuff to someone suffering from a certain illness and they will get better, or that they can give it to a healthy person (either themself or a healthy volunteer) and induce certain symptoms.

So, they tend not to want to do this too often. Either there is the question of scaring up a sufficient number of suitable sick volunteers, or of making a healthy person "ill" a certain number of times. So if we can say to them, you have to make ten trials, approximately half of which will be the real thing and half a sham preparation, that helps.

Turning round and saying to them, well, why don't you just test it on animals or plants, when their basic claim is that they can tell the effect on humans, isn't really likely to advance the discussion much. These people are so skittish they make Wellfed look sensible.

Rolfe.

 

[SezMe]

There are a number of problems with animal tests. < snip >

Turning round and saying to them, well, why don't you just test it on animals or plants, when their basic claim is that they can tell the effect on humans, isn't really likely to advance the discussion much. These people are so skittish they make Wellfed look sensible.

Rolfe, do H'Paths claim that their remedies apply to plants? If so, that would seem to obviate all the ethical problems with testing protocols. All we have to do is gather a bunch of, say, roses with blight and let the Homos have at it with their cures in a blinded test. Is it really that simple? What am I missing?

 

[Rolfe]

Rolfe, do H'Paths claim that their remedies apply to plants? If so, that would seem to obviate all the ethical problems with testing protocols. All we have to do is gather a bunch of, say, roses with blight and let the Homos have at it with their cures in a blinded test. Is it really that simple? What am I missing?

There are a couple of really flaky published papers relating to homoeopathy and plants. The main thing seems to be that they've found a very unstable system with a lot of uncertainty in the measurement, and somehow managed to dredge up something with statistical significance. However, in general homoeopaths don't treat plants. And (as I said to the homoeopath who showed me the abovementioned papers) I fail to see where Hahnemann ever applied his theory to plants, or how one could carry out a meaningful homoeopathic case-taking on a plant.

No doubt if we had a homoeopath come forward with a claim that he could demonstrate the effect of a homoeopathic remedy on a plant, it would be fairly easy to devise a test of the claim. However, we have to work with the claims that they actually make. And these are almost exclusively either that they can give a remedy to a healthy human and produce particular effects, or that they can give (the right) remedy to a human with a particular set of clinical symptoms, and produce a "cure".

You have to look at what they are actually claiming to do, and work out some way of actually testing that. To tell them that they have to use plants instead of humans is a bit like telling Wellfed that CDs are impractical so he has to be able to do the test with cassette tapes. He never claimed that there was any difference with cassette tapes!

Rolfe.

 

[Pyrts]

Originally posted by Rolfe There are a number of problems with animal tests. First there is the legal matter of all animal experiments, however benign, having to be approved and licensed.

Okay... let me ask if they really do, because I notice we're testing humans in here without going through the IRB protocols. Or at least nobody ever mentions going through the ghastly paperwork to do the IRB protocols and get them approved for these tests.

I would assume that by extension, individuals can give their permission to have the animals that they own tested.

Then there is the question of individualisation. Veterinary homoeopaths frequently treat heards or groups of animals en masse, including adding the chosen remedy to a bulk water supply.

But doesn't this also apply to humans? If not, why not? (I am not being snarky; I know little about homeopathy. But it would seem that if an individual treatment works on me, then individual treatments should work on cats.)

That's why I was proposing fish. They can be treated in groups and as individuals and there's not a lot of shrieking over bait-bucket minnows. Their purpose (as far as humans are concerned) is to go off and be food for other fishes. You can even have one tank where there's a group of fish to be treated and one where there's a single fish.

Heck, you could even set up fishcams to make sure that the dosages were done.

In fact the protocol as suggested would allow the homoeopath to test the remedy any way he liked, including using it to treat an animal assuming that could be ethically done.

Don't see a problem here.

Turning round and saying to them, well, why don't you just test it on animals or plants, when their basic claim is that they can tell the effect on humans, isn't really likely to advance the discussion much. These people are so skittish they make Wellfed look sensible.

Thing is, though, I know I've seen homeopathic remedies for dogs and cats around so therefore they can test the remedies on those. The dog and cat remedies are supposed to work, so they should not be afraid to test them.

(insert evil cackle)

 

[Rolfe]

That's why I was proposing fish. They can be treated in groups and as individuals and there's not a lot of shrieking over bait-bucket minnows. Their purpose (as far as humans are concerned) is to go off and be food for other fishes. You can even have one tank where there's a group of fish to be treated and one where there's a single fish.

(insert evil cackle)

This reminds me inexorably of a letter an acquaintance of mine wrote to a veterinary journal many years ago. It followed on a claim that homoeopathic remedies in the bulk water supply were a useful treatment for bovine mastitis. He asked whether homoeopathy was a suitable approach to fish farming.

At the time there was a lot of concern about certain fish diseases, and the consequences of using real drugs in the open sea. Walter remarked that surely with the simple addition of a suitable mother tincture to the headwaters of a sea loch, with the entirety of the world's oceans as diluent and the waves for succussion, all fish diseases would be wiped out forever.

There were a couple of replies which didn't address his question, simply saying very funny Walter, but it really does work. Walter then repeated his question saying that he was perfectly serious. Would homoeopathy work in fish farming? If not, why not? This was about 12 or 13 years ago, and the crickets and still chirping.

What you need to take into account when debating with homoeopaths is their system of case-taking and repertorisation. Yes, some of them claim to do it on animals (well, mammals), but I have never seen any of these people posting on JREF. The ones we get here tend to be entirely hung up on the fact that you have to interview your patient for at least an hour about every little detail of their feelings and sensations (including a lot of psychological stuff) before you can ascertain the simillimum. Any protocol that doesn't allow that is liable to be rejected out of hand.

Honestly, don't try to dictate to them how they should distinguish between the remedy and the sham. This is absolutely categorically guaranteed to produce the response, but that's not how it works. Just arrange a way to supply to them, with absolutely nuclear-bomb-proof blinding, either the remedy they specify or a sham, and let them decide how to do it. Nine correct out of ten.

Actually, using human volunteers is much less hedged about with restrictions than using animals, including private pets. However, the important thing about a basic protocol suggestion is that it should leave the homoeopath as free as possible to do things the way they think will work for them. If specific problems arise with what they propose to do, then they can be addressed as they come up. But to dictate to them, you've got to test on plants, or fish, is guaranteed to end the discussion then and there.

Rolfe.