Zep said:
Enough anecdotes = good enough for Kumar.
I just wanted to correct the statement, because many homeopaths think we are simply mean by labelling the things they worked so hard for as anectodal evidence and forget. Then they show up with some rare event where anectodal evidence actually was useful and valid and think they scored a point. So it is safer to state, that the presented evidence does not prove homeopathy, as it is perfectly explainable by other concepts.
What seems to be diffcult to have them understand, is that their all case studies can be explained by the same mistake, so adding a few thousand or a million does not help much, wrong is still wrong.
Zep said:
I have a table somewhere I can drag out that Kumar agreed was right that shows that if enough people believe in something for long enough, it's absolutely certainly true. Like the notion of a flat earth, or the sun revolving around the Earth.
[edit: post too soon!]
I read this notion first in some fanatsy book("the mist of avalon") at the age of 14 or so and i got realy fed up by it, because even ifnthat book it does not make sense:
If it is real what people believe(or more precisely, what people on average believe, if 1000 belive in A, 500 believe in B and A contradicts B, then most often A will happen but sometimes still B), then it is impossible for new believes to replace old ones, because if a believe is dominant, then anyone inspecting the relting subject, will find evidence, that that believe is true.
If he gets lucky and comes along one of those rare events, where some of the lesser believes gets hold of reality, he will find evidence for that, but the distrust he is met with(he is challenging the dominant believe), will cause further investigations, which then likely will yield proof to the dominant belief, the other opinion will be shown to be wrong.
And in reality there are enough things, where the mass believes something totally wrong, so disprove is easy.
But not for Kumar.
Carn