I’m sure that’s shorthand for “I don’t believe crop circles are messages from extraterrestrials, or mysterious vortex forces, or other claptrap.” I’m sure he accepts that there are patterns created in fields.
But that’s not how things work in the world of woo.
One starts with the conviction that the woo is effective (all those testimonials just can’t be wrong), and then searches for a sufficiently science-y mechanism to explain why it is effective, employing heavy doses of jargon and abstruse physics to muddy the waters.
At least that’s the path taken by some homeopathy advocates, like Lionel Milgrom and his “quantum homeopathy”.
There’s two paths here.
The first is that one needs to establish the effect exists before one can study it. This can start with anecdote or whatever, but needs to be put through scientific scrutiny to eliminate things like placebo, wishful thinking, biased interpretations, remembering the hits and dismissing the misses, etc. There are tons of ways we humans trick ourselves. The point of scientific methodology is to counter those ways with the best tools we’ve developed.
The second path is to identify a mechanism. Sure, it’s hard to come up with a mechanism before you have an effect to study. But when you get even the hint of an effect, you have something to consider. Of course, reality indicates that if you haven’t carefully established the effect, those same biases and mental oopses can affect our ability to determine the mechanism we are trying to study. That’s why most in the science side state we need to clearly establish the effect first, beyond the reliance on anecdote.
But, if someone proposes a mechanism for why a certain effect may work, it is valid to access that proposed mechanism for compatibility with understood science. This is where, for example, one can look at ear candling and assess the [del]stupidity[/del] invalidity of the proposed claims. Ear candling proponents pull out just enough physics to bear a slight resemblance to what they are doing to make it sound plausible to the non-specialist. Yes, burning a candle does create a slight upward draft of air from under the flame. That is why the flame goes up, and the smoke goes up. But ear candling proponents push that explanation way beyond sensible limits and suggest that the same “suction” effect justifies how the conical candle can pull ear wax (and apparently any “toxins” in your head) out of your ear and deposit it in the candle.
Except that just does not match physics. The very minor suction effect caused by that updraft is far weaker than the adhesion strength of ear wax. And the idea that that suction force could somehow draw toxins out of the bloodstream through the skin or from the estachian tubes through the eardrum are just preposterous based on everything we know about air currents, pressure differentials, etc. That would be a mighty big shakeup of conventional physics for such a marginal case of having it show up, it defies reason.
Now, it is just possible that we don’t have full knowledge, that there could be something there just waiting for us to discover and overturn our understanding of physics. But the thing is, given the preponderance of evidence for our current understanding, it’s going to take a lot more than “hey I tried ear candling and got a hunk of stuff in it” to make that effort worthwhile. So it’s going to take a lot of examining the effect to prove that ear candling does more than burn a candle and deposit melted wax and soot from that candle in the conical base.
So when Cecil says, “The real problem with magnetic therapy — [snip]— is that no one’s proposed a plausible physiological explanation for how magnetism does its stuff on the body’s cells,” what I think he’s saying is that the explanations that they do put forward are gibberish, counter to existing science, or just implausible on the face. A ridiculous possible explanation does little to make the possibility of the underlying effect seem reasonable, and little to justify taking the effort to study the effect in detail.
I agree with all of that. I’m simply not content to let someone say, “Not everything is understood therefore anything is a valid hypothesis.”
Ever ride a passenger train?
I finally got a smartphone recently, and it came with a compass app. Just for fun, I decided to watch it work on a Metra (diesel locomotive) passenger train ride from Union Station, out to Naperville (Chicago downtown to western 'burb).
It was a sunny morning, and I was looking forward to mentally mapping some landmarks, etc.
It wasn’t fun, and I gave up on the game. The needle would spin wildly everytime another train sped by the other way, and kept indicating north toward various metal constructions that we passed. Occasionally, the needle spun and/or hung off the mark for no apparent reason.
Off the train, the app worked rather well.
I happen to have some experience as an open-minded yet slightly skeptical recipient of a bit of magnetic therapy. My view is that sure, I can accept there are circumstances where magnetic interventions may be efficacious. I’ve had two incidents where magnet therapy was used, and I couldn’t explain away the results.
As for the physics, you can go quantum, and make a case for it, or you can stand on electromechanics, and make a case against it. Or, you can be investigative, and say not enough is known, and find some perspective to test from.
Most of us will just go on practicality.
Most of us are traveling through tangles of magnetic fields all the time. We likely generate weak magnetism ourselves, because our bodies have nervous systems and brains, and the weak electric impulses that go along with them.
Practically speaking, my first experience with magnet therapy was when, out of desperation, I went to my chiropractor for a knee injury. I decided to run a marathon, had been working out religiously on a wind resistance rower for almost a year, but hadn’t run for several months. I decided to put some miles on the old legs, to get them configured better.
My running experience included track, cross country, and road racing, with a quite a few top ten finishes, with a number of wins. I had previous marathon experience. I used to run ultra-distance for training, at one point I had a 35 mile, out-and-back course that I’d run about once a week, for almost a year.
I passed on an opportunity to run for a major shoe company, at one point.
Anyway, I know my body, and in the transition from rowing machine to road running, I injured my knee. Classic Illiotibial band syndrome. I’d had it before, and at that level of pain, too. In my experience, that level of damage meant I shouldn’t be running for at least two months, wouldn’t be pain free for perhaps three. I certainly wouldn’t have any business stepping to the starting line of a marathon in two and a half weeks.
I went to that chiropractor, because he’d figured out ways to speed my recovery times before. I’d never seen or heard of magnet therapy before then.
After my response to, “Okay, now tell me your tale of woe”, he made an evaluation, pulled a magnet out of a drawer, did his thing, and said, “Okay, that’s it.” I thought he was kidding. I asked how long till I could run again, and he said I could run the next day, no restriction. I didn’t believe him.
He said the knee would be tender for a few hours yet, by the next day I’d probably notice a bit of stiffness, but that would likely be gone the day after that.
Well, it pretty much went down the way he said. Two weeks later, I ran that marathon, starting late, from the back. I paced myself to start slow, and progressively speed up my splits over the course, and my last mile was around six minutes, ten seconds. My overall time was three hours, 50 minutes and change.
The knee held.
I don’t pretend to understand it. I do know that chiropractor led student research groups for the National College of Chiropractic, in Lombard Illinois.
There was a more serious incident involving a vision problem resulting from a skiing accident - skull fracture w/dislocated jaw. That involved more than the magnet, so I can’t say much about it, other than other doctors failed to address it, and I walked out of there able to see clearly out of both eyes again, and the intense headaches stopped.
For what it’s worth.
I’m not a physicist, but I’d like to hear your quantum case for the efficacy of magnetic therapy (or a link to someone making the case).
From a quantum perspective, an earth reality where solidly demonstrable, efficacious magnet therapy is a commonly accepted phenomenon, would be a realm of probability. Doesn’t solidly prove the efficacy, at all - that’s not the point. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/physics/fabric-of-cosmos.html#fabric-multiverse
Seems anything that manifests to us in our physical space-time experience can only do so if it already exists in a realm of probabilities. What blows my mind about that is, that same idea is a central concept in a book written by Jane Roberts, published in 1974 - The Nature of Personal Reality.
The book was recommended to me personally, by Tony Robbins, the self-help figure.
Okay, that has nothing to do with proof of magnetic therapy effectiveness - but it was a real challenge to my world view when I read it - I tend to be overly analytical - that is in amazingly harmonious agreement with quantum theory, as understood in 2012.
For me, the common take-away from these two seemingly opposite mindsets - that come to the same conclusions - is to follow one’s inner compass.
Ah, the BS meter. Kind of a trap, in a way, that one. I think the idea is, if you focus on finding BS, your reality will be filled with examples of BS.
Probably better to focus on finding what’s true and progressive for your life. If something doesn’t seem right for you, it likely isn’t.
As for being careful about chiropractic, sure, everyone needs to be careful about their choice of health care practitioner. The chiropractor I’ve referred to, felt the less spinal manipulation, the better. I guess he was ahead of his time, although he definitely was Palmer trained, initially.
I’ve never had a poor outcome from a Chiropractic practitioner, myself.
Anyway, I was just relating my experience of receiving what I consider to have been effective magnetic therapy, noting that we are surrounded by magnetic fields every day, and that IMO, more actual scientific study is warranted to figure out the parameters of efficacy, and environmental variables that may come into play with it.
So in other words, you don’t have a quantum argument, nor anything resembling one.
Seriously, people, quantum mechanics is not just a matter of “The Universe is really friggin’ weird, man, and therefore anything that’s weird must be true”. If it were that simple, we’d be teaching it in elementary school.
Um, a compass app doesn’t really have a magnetized needle nor is it affected by Magnetic North, right? I assume it works by interpreting your GPS coordinates or it triangulates your position based on local cell towers. A train car is an inefficient Faraday cage and your phone is a radio so it’s already struggling for a decent signal and a passing train just messes up the signal more. There’s electromagnetism aplenty at work but none of it is from a lump of magnetite.
I actually do, and it follows pretty clearly, for anyone actually interested. I didn’t figure this thread needed to turn any further into that discussion. My point is, the phenomenon can’t definitively be ruled out, IMO, because, while there’s a lot of pointless discussion about it, there’s almost no well-conducted, objective, science based research.
Medical magnetics is done all the time, but it’s diagnostic - MRI. At one time, the idea to use magnets as a diagnostic tool was considered rather off-beat, but today, it’s big money - and effective, too.
I absolutely agree with you, about physics comprehension. Richard Feynman, in the preface to Six Easy Pieces, after teaching physics in his freshman-sophomore lecture series at Cal-Tech, came to the conclusion that quantum mechanics was best taught beyond second-year university level.
That was in 1963. Today, we have the Higgs field, Super String Theory, and Spooky Action at a Distance, yet most of us still have a hard time thinking even of reality as being four-dimensional - forget about ten dimensions, or of effects that don’t depend on space-time at all, bypassing speed of light limitations.
We can’t observe any of these things directly, but it’s all at work supporting our reality, whether or not we know about them. Even physicists aren’t exactly sure WHY electricity works, even though HOW it works is well understood.
I am asserting that a sufficient body of rationally constructed studies doesn’t yet exist about the effectiveness of magnetic therapies.
Your accusation that I’m asserting that quantum physics amounts to “just because something is weird it must be true”, is absolutely wrong.
How many studies would be enough, in your opinion?
Actually, the GPS was turned off during that experience.
Smartphones actually do sense magnetic fields, having solid-state compasses built-in. Depending on the app, one can improve the accuracy slightly by turning on the GPS, and enabling the correction function.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compass#Solid_state_compasses
Modern diesel locomotives are actually diesel powered generators that produce electicity for an electric drive. That’s why the needle spun around every time one went by in the opposite direction. A large magnetic field was zooming by.
Ya lives and learns. Thanks, and I apologize for being the one who assumed you were the idiot, not me.
I should have realized that - I even have an app for that: Tricorder. Yep, it is styled after a ST:Next Gen tricorder graphics, and has gravity, acoustic, magnetic field, geographic, cellular and wifi status, and solar activity tabs. The geo tab has a compass that looks like is shows magnetic and true north. I need to look up the website for more info.
It’s entirely on topic.
OK, let’s start out simple, then. What Hamiltonian are you using for the magnetic field, and what gauge condition are you applying for the vector potential? Once we’ve got that settled, then you can start posting the calculations.
Well, actually, THERE IS a plausible explanation of how magnets COULD suppress pain.
Pain is conveyed through electric signals in nerves. Magnets suppress electric signals in wires.
I guess most of you have observed wires with a contraption attached to it: it’s called an RF choke or Ferrite bead (it depends on the type). This thing sometimes is made of a magnet. This contraption suppress radio frequencies.
For example:
RF choke: Choke (electronics) - Wikipedia
More common, Ferrite Bead: Ferrite bead - Wikipedia
So, at least in some applications a magnet (actually, a ferrite core) is used to suppress some frequencies out of wire (frequencies that come out as noise on your screen or PC).
I guess it is possible then to use a magnet to suppress some frequencies out of a nerve.
Note that this magnets or chokes are NOT able to suppress all current. This explains why you do not become numb when placing a magnet on your skin (duh).
However, as pain is “expressed” as a change in the electrical signal that goes over the nerve, it is IMAGINABLE that you could use a magnet to eliminate the frequencies that transmit pain.
QED.
ciroa, your argument is as good as any I’ve heard on a university barstool, but again: if you can’t prove the effect, there’s little point in trying to explain how the effect happens.
I’ll also point out that humans are exposed to enormous magnetic fields every day without the slightest ability to sense them - if your theory were true, megagauss fields would have some noticeable effect on nerve action. A few little cobalt magnets on your wrist - well, you’re talking about the same degree of interaction as those who claim the positions of the planets have gravitational influence on people, never mind that the person sitting next to you is exterting many times the grav force of even the Moon.
Prove the effect exists, first. Then worry about how it works.
ciroa, when MRI machines used in hospitals for diagnostics have zero measurable effect on pain relief, it is ridiculous to try to argue that kitchen magnets can do anything but placebo.
Not to mention that magnets don’t cause numbness or paralysis.