

Homeopathy for politicians - RiderOfGiraffes
http://darryl-cunningham.blogspot.com/2010/06/homeopathy.html

======
bh42
Do homeopathy believers love vaccines? Or is a vaccine not diluted enough for
them?

------
a_believer
There is a compilation of clinical cases titled "Microdoses Megaresults" by a
renowned Indian homeopathy doctor Diwan Harish Chand. It lists around 400
cases with complete histories of patients each spanning many years.

It is a wonderful compilation in the sense that it first lists all complaints
and test results of a patient and then follow up results after treatment by
remedies. He has discussed why he selected a particular remedy and why it
worked or not worked.

This book serves as a good empirical evidence for me.

------
psyklic
A LOT of products in the drugstore are based on pseudoscience.

Products like Mederma (claims to reduce scars) sound scientific and are
expensive ($30/tube), but Mederma is just a gel with some "botanical extract"
that has been shown scientifically not to work. (They show before & after
photos, but scars naturally look better on the same timescale.)

Other products like Airborne (to prevent colds on airplanes) are just dietary
supplements which likely do not do as they say. This product even says it is
"invented by a mom" -- why should that be a selling point for a medical
product?

The list goes on and on.

------
Nekojoe
If you're interested in this blog post I suggest reading Ben Goldacre's book
Bad Science - <http://www.badscience.net/>

It covers the problems with homoeopathy in great depth and includes other
similar alternative medicines, along with flaws in scientific studies
promoting them and quackery in general. I highly recommend reading it. Not
just to learn about the problems with these kind of treatments, but also the
difficulties in creating unbiased scientific tests.

------
shabble
Somewhere in my book collection is H2O - A biography of Water, by Phillip
Ball, one of the Nature editors.

The first half of the book is general background on the weirdness and
uniqueness of water compared to other liquids of its class, but the latter
part of the book is directly purely at explaining and dismissing a lot of the
claims presented in Homeopathy.

I'm not certain if he was directly involved with the disclaimers surrounding
the original article, but it wouldn't surprise me, given the vehemence in his
later writing.

Amazon Link (hopefully non-referral, unless google has tricked me):
[http://www.amazon.co.uk/H2O-Biography-Water-Philip-
Ball/dp/0...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/H2O-Biography-Water-Philip-
Ball/dp/0753810921)

------
moultano
As much as I like comics as a form, I'm not sure the images add much here. I
may have preferred to read this as just straight text. (Though maybe I
wouldn't have read to the end in that case?)

~~~
shadowsun7
The images provide visual stimulation. I probably wouldn't have finished it
had it not been for the format. This is an incredibly smart way of spreading
information (and I think quite a number of people understand this - Google,
after all, used comics to explain Chrome when it was first released).

------
a_believer
I know there is a really strong bias against homeopathy here.

I would suggest a thought experiment. Just for a moment think that homeopathy
might have a grain of truth. And with this, ask how and why about its cures.
This might help me to understand your point clearly.

~~~
thaumaturgy
...except that you clearly _don't want_ to understand the point, because the
point -- no matter how it's presented -- is that homeopathy _doesn't_ work,
and it _doesn't_ have even a grain of truth.

And, I wouldn't say there's a strong bias against homeopathy here, so much as
there's a strong bias in favor of 700 years of science of Things That Actually
Work. (Thankfully; this isn't always the case on HN.)

~~~
a_believer
"except that you clearly don't want to understand the point". Don't be so
cruel to me.

Think about yourself. You don't believe anything which contradicts those 700
years of work. You don't believe that water can have a memory. You don't
believe there is some sort of energy/frequency stored in water or sugar which
cures us. Why? Because we cannot see it or prove it with any known scientific
methods. Right?

Well I was exactly like you. I got helped by homeopathy by chance and probably
a "hacker" (as defined by Paul Buchheit) within me got curious if homeopathy
is really works and is as miraculous as it claims?

I spent time, took medicines myself and my volunteer friends and family. It is
still hard to believe for me but it works and it looks more than placebo
effect.

I did not read it in a book. I actually experienced it. And my experience of
10 years tells it works.

------
a_believer
(I could not reply directly to the comment, probably due to bleeding karma)

"How do you explain that the supposed effects of homeopathy evaporate like the
morning dew once they're placed in the setting of a double-blind scientific
experiment with proper (well, in this case more) placebo controls?"

To me, one thing is sure for me. It works. Proved many many times for the last
10 years.

Now I am not really interested into running such tests mostly because I am not
motivated enough (I am a programmer) and also because for myself I don't need
any further proof for my own use.

~~~
Robin_Message
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placebo>

As a simple experiment, could you put your most used homoeopathic remedy into
a jar, and put pure water into another jar? They must be indistinguishable.
Then, give them to someone you trust (and has no opinion either way on
homoeopathy) to label A and B. They should record which of A and B is the real
treatment, but not tell you.

Then, when you get sick, roll a dice. If it's 1 or 2, use A. 3 or 4, use B. 5
or 6, use the homoeopathic remedy. Record how effective they are after each
use. Ideally, generate a new pair of A and B after each treatment. Also,
assume that if you get A or B, it won't work since it's been messed around
with.

After ten trials of each remedy, do the following. It'd be better if you
didn't read this before doing it, but I want to commit to it, so I've ROT13'd
it.

Zngpu hc gur rssrpgvirarff bs rnpu gerngzrag jvgu jurgure vg jnf ubzrbcnguvp
be abg. Sebz urer jr'er tbvat gb nffhzr N jnf nyjnlf cynva jngre naq O jnf
ubzrbcnguvp (nf jnf P boivbhfyl). Abj sbe n gehgu gnoyr bs rssrpgvirarff (0
sbe abg rssrpgvir, 1 sbe rssrpgvir):

    
    
      N O P
      0 1 1 Ubzrbcngul jbexf ba lbh
      1 1 1 Lbh whfg trg orggre naq nffhzr gur zrqvpvar jbexf, be vg'f n cynprob
      0 0 1 Vg'f n cynprob, naq lbh unir gb xabj lbh ner gnxvat vg

------
chmike
I disagree with this popular beleifs. No one managed to explain with a
scientific proof what happens in Benvenist experiences. It is mainly beliefs
and assumptions that bias the data analysis.

Experimental data points undoubtly to EM effects in water. This is the only
way, using rational and actual science, to explain what has been observed. And
ther is at least one possible explanation proposed by my father, physicist,
that explains how it could. How the activity could be reccorded and reinjected
in inactive water, the oscillations in activity during the dillution process,
why shaking is needed, etc. He presented his explanation at a conference on
Homeopathy in France last year. He is a theorist and his theory should be
tested experimentally. None of the people present conducted these experiences.

There are still a lot of strange and unexplained effects in water. One
scientist who reported such effects he saw in his experiments on EM effects
was forced by the scientific community to pull back and say it was mistakes. I
don't remember his name. I think he was german. It happened well before
Benvenist discovery. This happens just because the data didn't fit to common
beleif and assumptions.

The editor of Nature was a strong disbeleiver, maybe not as agressive as
Randi. The real problem here is that these people behavior has nothing to do
with pur science research process as it should be. They forged themselves a
model of how things works and any data that doesn't fit the model must be an
error. Calling back into question the model is out of question for them.

I've seen this behavior on many occasion. This is not scientific and rational.

~~~
DaveChild
All lovely. Of course, in homeopatic "treatments", the water is allowed to
evaporate away on a sugar pill. So does sugar have magic memory too?

~~~
chmike
There are two problems in your comment. First you assume, apparently without
room for doubt, that the sugar pill contains absolutely no water. Second you
assume that the activity is due to some element of fixed quantity.

Beside I don't see any reference to homeopathy in my comment. I only referred
to Benveniste experiences which involved only water.

The sugar pill may contain water and contribute to stabilize the active and
stable water molecule patterns. Even if there is only few of them, they may
replicate themselves and amplify the activity with the same process occurring
during the dilution and shaking process.

The theory suggest that the structures are aggregates of water molecule with
ionic bound ruptures and rebinding at different locations. The oscillations
yields a stable structure. This explains why very low EM frequencies are
detected in active water. They are generated by the big structure
oscillations. Recording the EM oscillations and replaying them in an inactive
water, may induce the same ionic oscillations and the formation of the same
patterns.

It is also commonly assumed that the activity is due to the chemical molecule
itself. But if the molecule is polarized, the polarized water molecules will
surround it and extend the polarization zone. The biological interaction could
then be due to the water envelope around the molecule. The induced
polarization would then have a particular shape. The structure can be
stabilized by electron movements in the structure across water molecules.

By growing the structure would sort of take a print of the chemical molecule
behaving like a sort of crystal seed. Shaking water would break the cluster
and generate new crystal seeds, but made only of water molecules.

This would of course work only for particular type of chemical molecules and
activity. Water behaves then like an amplifier and replicating system which
could in some case have alternating negative and positive prints of the
molecule or active structures.

This would be easy to test, but my father doesn't have the required apparatus
and the time because he works on many other subjects. He is close to 80 years
now.

Believe what you want. All I want to say is that the way Benveniste discovery
was handled has nothing to do with science. The referenced comic is just an
amplifying replication of the mishandling.

~~~
thaumaturgy
I would love to refute your explanation, but to be honest, I can't make heads
or tails of it. "Active" water? "Inactive" water? EM "oscillations"? "Crystal
seeds"? ...I give up. It's like pseudo-science buzzword bingo.

One thing though: people often complain that something "isn't scientific"
whenever the science comes to a conclusion that they don't like. The editor of
Nature -- a prominent science magazine -- was willing to publish the guy's
article. That alone should be reasonable counter-evidence for all those claims
that there's a some scientific "conspiracy" afoot to keep the miracle of
homeopathy down. The thing is, they published his results, and then they tried
to reproduce them. _This is science_. That's how it works. His claims didn't
hold up, and that was that. He's free to go back and re-reproduce his results,
this time consistently, and then they might be re-examined again. Until then,
his results are bunk.

~~~
chmike
Water is said to be active when the effect on basophile cells was positive.
Basophile cells are actors in the immune system and Benveniste was studying
mechanism of allergy when he discovered this effect. Water remained active
even with repeated dilution and shaking. When water was heated above 80°C and
cooled back again it became inactive, which means it had no more effect on
basophile cells.

Benveniste also detected the presence of a low frequency (~500Hz) EM emission
of active water, which is not present with inactive water. The source of this
low frequency EM emission is a problem in itself because it is not compatible
with the water molecule oscillation frequency.

Recording the EM emission and replaying it back on inactive water rendered the
water active on the basophile cells. These are the experimental evidences
reported by Benveniste that remains to be explained.

Things fall in place when we assume the presence of stable water molecule
aggregation with charge movement through them, a growth mechanism by
polarization affinity and fragmentation by shaking.

BTW it is not true that the editor was willing to publish the "guy's" article.
Benveniste was before it a well known and respected scientists and he had to
insist and debate for his article to be published. It was published because
the editor had nothing to oppose to it and justify a rejection.

When he came to check the experience with Randi, probably under pressure of
the scientific community, they found nothing that could explain the
observations which where reproduced at will in front of them in increasingly
twisted ways. Randi and the editor went nearly nuts for not finding any trick
or error.

The result is that they justify the mismatch between their beliefs and the
data by undetermined experimental errors. How convenient, but that is not
science.

Note that I am not talking about homeapathy here and claiming anything about
it. I currently have no clue and no beliefs about it. What I say about it is I
don't know. And this is the best that we can objectively say a priori without
error about it.

Back to the Benveniste discovery, the normal scientific process should be to
try to elaborate a theory that explains the observations; not to debunk it at
any cost. Once a theory is proposed and proved to be coherent and valid with
current scientific knowledge and understanding, it should then be tested. My
father proposed such a theory, but it has not been tested yet. From what he
told me, it should be easy. If the water molecule aggregates are present they
should change the electric property of water. Simple direct measurement with
conventional EM measurement devices should do it. No need of hard to control
basophile cells reaction test. According to Benveniste observation, EM signal
could induce formation of these aggregates and thus, according to the theory,
alter the EM property of water. If the aggregates are stable, the change if EM
emission of water would be persistent and measurable. it would be removed
after heating the water which dissolves the aggregate structures. How hard
would this be to test and explore ?

------
Alex3917
How is it that he equates herbal medicine with homeopathic medicine? The two
don't have anything in common.

~~~
michael_dorfman
Actually, they do. Most homeopathic remedies are just dilute herbal remedies--
note that it's fairly rare for homeopathic remedies to be "strong" (i.e.,
weakly diluted) enough to be completely inert.

In other words, much of the time, what you are getting when you buy a
homeopathic remedy at the local pharmacy is actually just an incredibly weak
herbal preparation.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
The homeopathic stuff is small/non-existant doses of herbs that _cause_ some
ailment. A herbal remedy would be a measurable dose of something intended to
cure the ailment.

The latter may be woolly and untested feelgood hippy claptrap, but it's a lot
less theoretically incoherent.

~~~
Alex3917
"The latter may be woolly and untested feelgood hippy claptrap"

You seriously think that no one has ever tested the efficacy of herbs?

~~~
ZeroGravitas
Do you know what you call herbal medicine that's been proved to work?

~~~
Alex3917
Herbal medicine.

------
Natsu
The worst part about this is that they're out there selling this crap. I went
to the pharmacy in Wal-Mart a while back for some eye drops because my
allergies were acting up.

I was in a bit of a hurry, so I just grabbed one. Fortunately, I read the
label. Sure enough, the damned things were _homeopathic_ eye drops (AKA water)
with some undefined "apis" extracted from bees. I looked up their website,
later. It claimed that their cures would "activate my immune system."
Obviously, I put them back, but they were on the same damn shelf as the real
medicine and in the pharmacy. Can you say "confusingly similar"? Yeah, they
had a tiny label on them that said "homeopathic" without bothering to tell
anyone what that means, or that the substance is nothing but bee crap heavily
diluted with water.

Now, let's review: allergies are caused by an overactive immune system. Their
eye drops, which are often used to treat allergic problems, contain bee bits
(which people can be highly, even lethally allergic to, making me hope they
really do dilute it enough) and they claim that this will cure me "like a
vaccine" by _activating_ my already over-active immune system.

Talk about a recipe for disaster. I was pissed off enough to send out a
complaint, but I never got a reply.

~~~
a_believer
Yes, it is diluted enough (if it _is_ a homeopathy medicine) that it won't
harm you even if it is incorrectly selected remedy.

Selecting the correct medicine for your allergy (or any other problem) is much
more difficult in homeopathy. You need to take into account many factors. So
selling off-the-shelf homeopathy medicines is probably going to make some
money for the manufacturer but not cure you (from the point of view of a
homeopath of course)

~~~
ZeroGravitas
Why should I trust someone selling me magic water, to actually make magic
water correctly? I'd have to doubt either their morals or their grasp of
scientific principles, if not both. Does some external 3rd party like the FDA
actually test these things to ensure that they only contain (at most)
ineffectual doses of whatever they claim to contain?

------
daeken
"Do you know what they call alternative medicine that works? Medicine." If
only I knew where I heard this.

Edit: I'm fairly certain it came from House or Penn and Teller's Bullshit. Can
anyone say one way or another?

~~~
davebert
Tim Minchin's 10 minute beat poem "Storm" has this line in it.

~~~
daeken
Hmm, very interesting. I've never read this, but it's entirely possible that
the source I heard it from got it from there.

------
a_believer
I am not a homeopath, studied science in school and college and I was against
homeopathy as much as any of you are. But here are my experiences which have
made a believer and a lay, part time practitioner for myself, my family and
friends. I am also not knowledgeable enough to support basis of homeopathy and
related things like water memory.

I am posting my experiences about acute issues where a cure is expected in a
matter of hours or days so it is quite clear if the disease has run its course
or the medicine has worked.

I have seen many infants and young kids get better immediately with the
homeopathy use. I am not sure if the placebo effect can work on them.

For the last 10 years my whole family (and many friends) are exclusively using
homeopathy. So I think even if it placebo effect it is worth having.

I know my limited experiences can't be a basis of any scientific proof. But
the point I want to make is homeopathy works for me as "advertised" so I don't
care what science or other people say about it.

Have a look at these and let me know what it can be? Can placebo effect be so
strong?

1\. I was travelling and had severe back pain which resulted from sweeting in
sun and then immediately going into a chilled place. Pain killers for 3 days
could not subside it. My host, a lay practitioner, gave me a single homeopathy
medicine, Rhustox 200, which cured me like a miracle. Please note I was a non-
believer and I took this medicine in the most desperate conditions (traveling,
deadlines etc.)

This experience forced me to give a second thought and I started self-study
and help from two homeopaths.

'Rhuxtox 200' is also a medicine for complaints from sprains and strains on
body. Since then I have cured countless people for similar conditions.

2\. Any pain from injury to soft tissues immediately subsides with 'Arnica 30'
1 or 2 doses in a matter of hour. Have given this medicine to people of all
ages.

3\. Cantheris 30 for burning in urine.

4\. Belladona 30 for fever/head ache due to host sun or any pain/inflammation
with redness of the affected part.

5\. Cough. Phosphorus 30 cures most cases.

6\. Most pains which aggravate with motion. Bryonia 30 helps.

7\. General spasms/pains. Colocynthis 30 1 dose works miracle on kids as well
as elders. Hardly need to give second dose.

~~~
DaveChild
You are not qualified, in any way, to determine what, if anything, had an
effect on you or on other people. You are not capable of telling if your back
pain, for example, was cured by homeopathy or had run its course. And this is
why anecdotes are not considered evidence.

Anecdotes like yours are enough to warrant investigating to see if there is
actually something going on. So people have - they have conducted trial and
trial, and found homeopathy ineffective beyond any placebo effect.

It has no plausible mechanism by which it could work. It has no statistically
significant effect when tested. It is dangerous and kills people. Hopefully
you will wake up and realise this before you choose a homeopathic "remedy" for
something serious and end up dead.

~~~
a_believer
"You are not capable of telling if your back pain, for example, was cured by
homeopathy or had run its course."

In my case, I may not be because it was for 3 days. But then I cured a large
number of people for similar complaints within 1 day. Couple of weeks ago, I
recommended Rhustox200 to a friend of a friend who had back pain for the last
1 year. This had started when he lifted a heavy object at that time. Rhuxtox
faithfully cured him. Before that pain killers were temporary relief.

I am just narrating my positive experience for the last 10 years. And my point
is that it works for me as it claims.

As I said in my comment, I have helped countless cases (fevers, pains etc)
where relief was required within hours or days and I always got good results
with homeopathy.

Homoepathy has cured, in my experience, really really serious cases in such a
simple way that sometimes I just wonder what all this is; a placebo effect?

~~~
thaumaturgy
The problem with people that eschew science is that they no longer know how to
even tell if what they're doing is actually working the way they think it is,
or not.

> _Couple of weeks ago, I recommended Rhustox200 to a friend of a friend who
> had back pain for the last 1 year. This had started when he lifted a heavy
> object at that time. Rhuxtox faithfully cured him. Before that pain killers
> were temporary relief._

What was the biological cause of the pain? Was it neuromuscular? Was it
nervous system? Had there been any medical diagnosis of injury before the
"treatment"? Any follow-up diagnosis? What was your follow-up? What is his
subsequent range of motion? How much weight can he dead lift now? Has he taken
any other treatments since? What was the timing between your "treatment" and
any other treatments? Was his "cure" independently verified by anyone so that
he didn't feel compelled to tell a friend-of-a-friend that it worked even if
it didn't?

How many people have you "treated" that did not get better at all?

The maddening thing about saying that it might just all be "a placebo effect"
is that that explanation implies that the treatment has actually worked, even
in an indirect way, when in fact there's no evidence that it works at all.

This is pretty much the very example of cargo-cultism: taking magic pills and
then trying to correlate positive effects with them.

~~~
a_believer
"What was the biological cause of the pain? Was it neuromuscular? Was it
nervous system? ....."

To use Rhuxtox, we only need to know (short version) if the ailment was caused
by strain, overlifting, getting wet while perspiring. And it will work. I just
mentioned one case but it has worked in many similar cases. In this particular
case, the patient had stopped using pain killers because of side effects and
he felt much better within first 3 days and after 1 week much better. Rhuxtox
will keep working for him and if his complete recovery stops, he will get
Rhuxtox 200 again or the next higher potency (Rhuxtox 1M).

"How many people have you "treated" that did not get better at all?"

This is an interesting point. Sometimes when I prescribe incorrect medicine
(mostly because I was not careful enough taking symptoms, causes) the
medicines does not work at all. Even though the patient is believer. For
example if the abdomen pain is due to injury (Arnica 30 is correct medicine)
and I give Colocynthis (for spasmodic pain), it won't work. Correcting the
medicine will bring cure.

And there are times when I can't help people get better, mostly because I am
not that good, though the patient has faithfully used medicine for quite some
time. See place effect is not working here.

In such cases I recommend him to get consultation from professional homeopaths
I know and he/she in fact gets better from someone with more knowledge.
Placebos working again. Isn't it strange?

~~~
avar
No, it isn't strange at all that placebos work if your definition of "works"
just covers subjective experience. Comments like "I have seen many infants and
young kids get better immediately with the homeopathy use. I am not sure if
the placebo effect can work on them." show that you aren't aware of observer
bias, for one.

How do you explain that the supposed effects of homeopathy evaporate like the
morning dew once they're placed in the setting of a double-blind scientific
experiment with proper (well, in this case more) placebo controls?

~~~
a_believer
To me, one thing is sure for me. It works. Proved many many times for the last
10 years.

Now I am not really interested into running such tests mostly because I am not
motivated enough (I am a programmer) and also because for myself I don't need
any further proof for my own use.

~~~
avar
For someone that's scientifically minded anecdotes like the ones you've
described would actually count against the idea, not for it.

Why? Because human beings are very bad at intuitively interpreting information
methodologically, this is why we have things like double-blind trials in the
first place. It's very easy to subconsciously stack the odds in your own
favor.

I'd encourage you to read up on James Randi and some of the people that
compete for his million dollar challenge. Everyone that takes it is equally
convinced (as you are) of their woo-woo ideas, and all of them are proven
equally wrong.

You aren't immune from deluding yourself, and neither am I. Nobody is, that's
why we have a process to factor human error out of the equation. It's called
science.

In this case we aren't talking about some harmless and quaint idea. If you
continue foistering homeopathy on your loved ones, there's a real possibility
that the magical thinking will rub off on on them. And they'll subsequently
neglect to seek real medical attention when they have a problem that can't be
solved by a glass of water and a friendly smile.

~~~
thaumaturgy
There's a fantastic video online somewhere of a martial arts instructor that
had built a practice out of some form of "energetic combat", where he would
run around and wave his arms, and his students -- somehow convinced that it
worked -- would helpfully fall over.

Then one day there was a challenge from a more traditional martial
practitioner. The sensei was quite surprised when his unconvinced opponent did
not fall down like he was supposed to.

And even more surprised when he got smacked in the face.

Unfortunately, rather than grapple with the realization that he had been
practicing nonsense for years, IIRC he came up with some woo-woo excuse for
why it didn't work that day, or on that opponent.

EDIT: Found it! <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEDaCIDvj6I>

------
celoyd
I basically agree with this, but I can’t help thinking it would be stronger if
it were softer in places.

For example, I couldn’t say that “for homeopathy to be effective, it would
have to work in violation of the principles of biology, chemistry, and
physics” actually means. Surely it would be just as damning and _clearer_ to
say that it can’t beat a placebo in well-designed tests.

Likewise, “Its devotees don’t concern themselves with evidence” is awfully
broad. I think some of them do, they just aren’t very good at it. There’s no
need to call people stupid when you can show they believe something false.

Quibbles, really. I look forward to seeing more things like this.

~~~
avar
The first example wouldn't be the same. There's a big difference between it
being a theoretical impossibility, and something that sounds like we just
haven't tested it enough.

Proponents of homeopathy like to confuse the issue by citing some of their own
badly done studies. Explaining to the layman that proving the efficacy of
homeopathy would earn you a Nobel Price in physics helps to bring some context
to that.

~~~
celoyd
Heh. What is that difference? Philosophers of science would love to know.

If homeopathy failed to conform to accepted theory but consistently beat
placebos in a wide variety of good clinical trials, it would be good medicine;
if it worked in theory but not in tissue, it would not be. Theory is generally
constrained by observation.

Homeopathy is wrong because it doesn’t work. Conceivably it could have turned
out to work in some way that violated previous medical understanding. Lots of
things have done this – it’s one of the main ways understanding is refined.

Besides which, as far as I know (which is not far) there is no fundamental
principle of biology, chemistry, or physics that it breaks. It just so happens
that water molecules and immune systems don’t work the way homeopathy would
need them to. While you could see this in terms of a violation of principles
(in the same way that you can rewrite any false math theorem to 1 = 0 if you
work hard enough), that doesn’t seem like a very productive perspective to me.

But I’m not a doctor, biologist, chemist, or physicist, so I guess it could
be.

~~~
thaumaturgy
It sounds like you're trying to re-frame the discussion from a context where
homeopathy simply doesn't fit within currently understood models of the
universe, into a context where it does and there simply is no evidence of
efficacy. i.e., whether it "would be" good medicine or not is completely
irrelevant, because we're talking about a treatment that doesn't fit at all
within scientists' observation of the universe.

Or, to put it another way, tptacek once said (and I'm paraphrasing here) that
if you were to choose a cryptographic algorithm, you would tend to want to bet
on the one that can only be broken by a fundamental new discovery in
mathematics. In the case of medicine, the opposite is true: we're currently
discussing a medicine that would require fundamental new discoveries in
several sciences in order to work.

> _Conceivably it could have turned out to work in some way that violated
> previous medical understanding._

That's the thing: no, it couldn't have, not even conceivably. I'm really not
generally pessimistic about the possibilities of new discoveries in sciences,
but we're talking here about violating not just "previous medical
understanding" but the violation of our current understanding of the
foundations of chemistry, physics, and biology. This is not just "medical
understanding", this is "our understanding of almost everything".

> _Lots of things have done this – it’s one of the main ways understanding is
> refined._

This is mentioned often by laypeople when debates over our scientific
understanding of the universe comes up, and it's wrong because it ignores the
_way_ in which our understanding has changed throughout history.

Science tends to refine its understanding of the universe towards a narrower
and narrower minima. Since people like to point to relativity as an example of
a radical change in understanding, let's take that as an example: let's start
with Copernicus, who started with the hypothesis that the Earth revolved
around the Sun, and then move on to Galileo, who further observed and refined
the movement of the planets and other objects in the sky, and then find
ourselves at Newton, who began to formulate the theories of gravity that
described the laws of the universe behind Galileo's observations. When
Einstein described relativity, his discovery didn't violate Newtonian
mechanics or the entire body of 700 years of scientific observation and
understanding. Rather, it refined it: the observed differences between
relativity and classical Newtonian mechanics only show up at very large
velocities or very large scales. Otherwise, everything actually works pretty
much the way Newton described it.

Likewise with quantum mechanics: it's likely going to further refine
relativity, but only on very, very small scales.

 _The proposed mechanisms for homeopathy don't require a refinement in our
understanding of science, they require a complete contradiction of its very
foundations._

> _Besides which, as far as I know (which is not far) there is no fundamental
> principle of biology, chemistry, or physics that it breaks. It just so
> happens that water molecules and immune systems don’t work the way
> homeopathy would need them to._

I don't even know how you could put those two sentences next to eachother. :-)
If "water molecules and immune systems don’t work the way homeopathy would
need them to", then "there _are_ fundamental principles of biology, chemistry,
or physics that it breaks". You can't say, "it doesn't break anything, except
that everything would have to be broken for it to work."

> _While you could see this in terms of a violation of principles (in the same
> way that you can rewrite any false math theorem to 1 = 0 if you work hard
> enough)..._

Actually, you can't. Every example I've seen of the "1 = 0" proof contains a
very subtle mistake which violates mathematic principles. Sometimes, finding
those mistakes is really really hard, but they're always there.

But, just to further drive the point home: if we were to argue that water
_could_ contain "memory", we would have to try to figure out _how_. First, are
we talking about ordinary tap water, which contains trace amounts of various
other chemicals? Or are we talking about "hypothetical" water, which contains
only molecules of H2-0? If we assume the latter, for simplicity's sake, then
we next have to determine _where_ the energy for this "memory" is stored, how
it's encoded, and what form it might take. Let's propose the simplest possible
explanation -- which violates everything we know about cellular biology -- and
say that this "memory" is basically some theoretical "frequency" that the
"medicine" resonates with. All we have to do then is propose that atoms of
hydrogen and/or oxygen can somehow store a frequency ...

If that happened in nuclei, I'm pretty sure it would break spectrometry, which
would make it really hard for astronomers to observe the atmospheres of
planets. If it happened in the electron shells, I'm pretty sure it would break
the entire concept of ionization, since changes in frequency cause changes in
energy levels of electrons, which cause them to interact with other atoms in
various ways.

This is just one example; in fact, there is a _huge_ body of scientific
knowledge, built by hundreds of years of experimentation, postulation, and
observation, that would all be directly contradicted by any proposed mechanism
for homeopathy.

> _But I’m not a doctor, biologist, chemist, or physicist, so I guess it could
> be._

This is bugging me more and more, lately. If someone isn't a doctor,
biologist, chemist, or physicist, then I don't see how that person could say,
"...but I think they might be wrong!"

~~~
loewenskind
>"If we assume the latter, for simplicity's sake, then we next have to
determine where the energy for this "memory" is stored, how it's encoded, and
what form it might take. Let's propose the simplest possible explanation --
which violates everything we know about cellular biology -- and say that this
"memory" is basically some theoretical "frequency" that the "medicine"
resonates with. All we have to do then is propose that atoms of hydrogen
and/or oxygen can somehow store a frequency ..."

Good post overall, but this kind of stance always gives me pause. The reason
we know that Homeopathy doesn't work is because it can't be made to work
beyond a normal placebo in testing.

As far as "does water have any kind of memory", it doesn't seem to in any way
that affects us but in general? To me, excluding the possibility because we
can't come up with a way to detect such a thing is going to far [1]. It wasn't
so long ago that we couldn't see what was in cells. Any theories we built on
that _ignored_ cells based on the fact that they were opaque to us could only
coincidentally end up correct.

[1] Note this doesn't mean I think we should be spending time or money trying
to find such a thing. Just that saying anything more than "at present, we've
seen no evidence to suggest such a thing" is going to far.

~~~
thaumaturgy
That's a fair criticism.

> _The reason we know that Homeopathy doesn't work is because it can't be made
> to work beyond a normal placebo in testing._

That's true, but it's a separate point from what was being discussed. As
someone else pointed out in this thread, there's the "we tested it and it
doesn't work" argument, and there's also the "it violates the current body of
science" argument. These are two different, but related, things, and they
reinforce each-other. I was focusing on the "it violates the current body of
science" approach.

You do have a fair point about unknowns in general; a good example is the germ
model of disease, which is a relatively recent development.

However, one of my big beefs with homeopathy is that it doesn't say, "we don't
know what the mechanism is" -- which would be OK with me, because "I don't
know" is a perfectly acceptable answer in science! -- and it doesn't provide a
plausible mechanism that fits within the current scientific body. Rather,
instead it presents a "scientific-sounding" mechanism that actually flies in
the face of what we _do_ know.

Even if I were to concede that water _could_ have a "memory" of some kind --
and that would be a terrible and involved battle -- I would be unwilling to
concede that that particular explanation could possibly work within our
current understanding of biochemistry, because this particular aspect of
biochemistry is fairly well understood. And, as DaveChild keeps pointing out,
a homeopathic proponent would also have to explain how the "memory" from the
water ends up in a sugar pill which contains no water. :-) (I would require
some kind of explanation there simply because otherwise it would make no sense
as a delivery method.)

~~~
loewenskind
> "it violates the current body of science" argument.

Oh I agree, I just put a lot more weight in the "testing" side than the "it
violates our current understanding" side because our current understanding is
constantly changing. It is more additions and amendments than rewrites, as you
mentioned earlier but if there are components out there that we currently
can't detect then some of our foundations could be wrong.

I was just addressing one part of your post. I had no intention of defending
Homeopathy nor anything they say. I was specifically thinking of some extra
"dimension" or realm that is effected by what we can currently observe. I
can't point to any evidence that such a thing might exist but I wouldn't
dismiss the possibility since I have no way of saying it doesn't (nor would I
spend much time thinking about or trying prove/disprove it).

>However, one of my big beefs with homeopathy is that it doesn't say, "we
don't know what the mechanism is" -- which would be OK with me, because "I
don't know" is a perfectly acceptable answer in science! -- and it doesn't
provide a plausible mechanism that fits within the current scientific body.
Rather, instead it presents a "scientific-sounding" mechanism that actually
flies in the face of what we do know.

Agreed. I would only add the amendment:

"and it doesn't provide a plausible mechanism that fits within the current
scientific body, _nor demonstrate where the current body of science is in
error_ ".

That is, I don't think they must stay within the current scientific body but
they _must_ either show conclusively that the current scientific body is
flawed in some way, or simply show something conclusive that seems to
contradict that body and leave it to others to work out why.

I expect it to happen in my lifetime that some discovery will be made that
demonstrates a large body of science is built on foundations that were
misunderstood. But I expect this to happen scientifically based on
observation/tests, not by a group fantasizing about what they would need to
prop up their beliefs and then claiming it to be true.

I don't address any more of your post because I think we're in agreement.

