Reading the book The Alternative Medicine Hoax by Carl Bartecchi, MD. He includes this paragraph in his debunking of homeopathy:
To me, a befuddled one-time English major who makes no pretentions to understanding physics, this statement is impossible. If a single molecule of the stuff survived, doesn’t it have to be in greater concentrations than 1 in (a massive number with 400 zeros) if that number is actually greater than the number of molecules in the universe? Can anything exist in concentrations less than 1 in all-of-the-molecules- of-the-universe without not existing at all? Wouldn’t that mean that there is less than one molecule?
And what is the name of a number with 400 zeros–a quagoogol?
Umm… not to be dense or anything, but I think that was sort of the point: by the time it’s all been diluted and such, there’s not even one molecule of the duck’s heart left. Hence, people who think this procedure will cure them are what we might call raving loonies.
However, I don’t know what 10[sup]400[/sup] is called. Taking a guess, 10[sup]9[/sup] is a billion, 10[sup]12[/sup] is a trillion, 10[sup]15[/sup] is a quadrillion, etc… so it’s 10 (whatever the heck corresponds to 132)illion. Helpful, eh?
By “concentration of duck heart molecules in the final solution”, what is actually meant is “the probability of finding at least one duck heart molecule in the final solution”.
In trying to make mathematical terms sound more understandable to the casual reader, sometimes certain inaccurate statements need to be made.
So, if there’s only one duck’s heart molecule (DHM) in your dose, and a droplet is left on the spoon, or in the shot glass or whatever delivery device, then you might well easily miss it, right?
Oh, wait! I forgot; the water remembers. :rolleyes:
In a book attempting to debunk inaccurate statements, I’d think they’d want to avoid inaccurate statements. This whole book is a rant about inaccuracy and lack of scientific validity.
Well, 10[sup]400[/sup] = (10[sup]100[/sup])[sup]4[/sup] so it’s a googol to the fourth power; unfortunately I don’t think we have an abbreviation like “squared” or “cubed” corresponding to “fourth power”.
Seems reasonable to me… if I “dilute” a ball bearing in a glass of water 3 times, there will be only, say, 1/5th of a ball bearing in the resulting solution. Now there either is or there isn’t, but 4/5 of the time there isn’t.
That reminds me…is it just me, or do the “laws” of Homeopathy bear a striking resemblance to “contamination” obsessions, oft experienced by OCD sufferers?
I think the author is being a little sloppy with the math.
It sounds as though the process of is a series of reductions (filtering, freeze drying, etc.) alternating with a series of expansions (rehydrating, adding to sugar granules, etc.), with the reductions being so numberous and severe that there is little chance of a duck’s heart molecule (DHM) riding it out to the end.
But if you’re losing a lot of DHMs with every reduction, those molecules are being re-introduced into the surrounding environment. It’s entirely possible for one of those DHMs to contaminate one of the expansion steps. It could find it’s way into the water supply, and be returned to the process during rehydration, for example.
I suspect he left that consideration out of his calculations, but the chance of it happening is certainly greater than 1 in 10[sup]400[/sup].
Besides, there is no such thing as duck heart molecules. Duck hearts are made of the same molecules as my heart and yours. Molecules are just chemical compounds with no intrinsic relationship to the object they comprise.
With the apparently slim chance of a duck heart molecule ever making it onto the homeopathic sugar granules, even if you were to get the precious molecules I still seriously doubt that duck heart molecules will do a damn bit of good for the flu.
And just so I understand this correctly, do homeopathists (?) believe that a pure concentrated dose from simply eating a duck heart would somehow be inferior to the effect obtained from diluting duck heart to ridiculous levels and ingesting it from sugar granules? Is it the “less is more” approach to gross home remedies because nobody wants to eat such things as duck hearts?
10[sup]400[/sup] molecules/atoms is about 10[sup]373[/sup] moles of substance, assuming that the it’s dissolved in water, that means he must of made ~18[sup]371[/sup] kilograms of substance.
There are some things that really can’t be explained in terms intelligible to a layperson without sacrificing accuracy. This isn’t always bad–sometimes the basic flavor is what you want to get across, and there’s no need to cover all the subtleties. I don’t think this is one of those cases, but they do exist.
There was a time when this stuff was illegal, and there were no herbs sold in magazine ads with amazing claims.
Then Reagan came to the whitehouse and got the FDA out of oversight for “natural” medecines.
