My wife is a believer in ARNICA (a herb) as a treatment for bruises. She bought a tube of homeopathic arnica…it was manufactured by a firm called BOIRON, in France. I have no idea if this crap works in any fashion, but it intrigued me that the French (heirs to Descartes and skepticism) actually buy into homeopathy! How could a people so skeptical as the French buy into such nonsense? To me homeopathy is about as logical as voodoo…imagine, take a poison, dilute it (to the point that NOT ONE molecule of the poison remains), and take it as medicine!
Actually, it makes a LOT of sense (for the drug manufacturer)-my wife paid $11.00 for a 4 OZ tube of this worthless crap!
I don’t know if homeopathy works or not. I remember reading the “electrostatic water memory” hypothesis several years ago at www.sciencedaily.com. However, I think there is a real point to be made that many scientists will not consider seriously analyizing a theory (even when there is some evidence to support it’s validity) because they cannot understand the mechanism behind what is occuring. History is replete with examples of theories being dismissed as implausible or not possible only later to be confirmed (sometimes centuries later) once the theoretical foundation for their possiblility has been better elucidated. Consider the current state of quantum physics and the various experiments in non locality (such as the Schroedinger cat type experiments) which demonstrate effects that cannot be easily explained with our current knowledge of physics. Furthermore, consider that astronomers tell us that the universe is expanding ever faster into nothingness and that as much of 90% of our universe’s matter is not observable. Two quotes that come to mind (unfortunately my febile mind cannot recall their author) are:
“The universe is not only stranger than we imagine, but stranger than we can imagine.” Another basically said that anyone not troubled by the implications of quantum physics simply does not understand what those implications are.
Of course none of this in any way means that homeopathy is anything but wishful thinking. However, if someone showed me sufficient evidence that the moon was made of green cheese I would seek to find a theoretical basis for their claims (and subject their evidence to great skecticism and review), but I wouldn’t proclaim their assertion false simply because it was extraordinary. Of course extraordinary claims as Carl Sagan once stated do require extraordinary evidence. However, I would add that extraordinary claims with some credible evidence and with profound implications should they be proven correct are worthy of the effort (cetaris paribus) necessary to establish their validity (or prove them false). Thus, I wouldn’t be surprised if in three hundred years someone didn’t start a thread on straightdope.com (which by this time costs $300.00 per year and there are no usernames which read charter member) entitled “Why was homeopathy dismissed as not possible two hundred years ago?”
I’ve never really seen this. What I have seen is woo woo’s who like to yell loudly that their particular crackpot alleged phenomenon is being dismissed because scientists don’t understand the mechanism. One gets the distinct impression they yell this because if they stopped yelling it, they might hear the chorus of scientists saying “the reason we dismiss your alleged phenomenon is because you cannot demonstrate that it happens.”
Possibly. But what it is not replete with is examples of alleged phenomena that have been repeatedly demonstrable under controlled conditions but which have nonetheless been dismissed as not actually happening, which have subsequently been confirmed as happening.
Dude, you know that the Schroedinger’s Cat experiment is a thought experiment that has never been tried (and can’t be, really) and has certainly therefore never demonstrated jack?
No, extraordinary claims really do need extraordinary evidence to be considered, whatever their implications, in every. single. case. According to Bayes’ theorem, if the evidence offered up for your hypothesis could be expected if your hypothesis is false or could be credibly explained by hypotheses other than your own, it lowers the probability of your hypothesis given the evidence.
In other words, the more improbable your hypothesis given the background evidence (that is, centuries of chemistry), the stronger and unlikelier (given the same background evidence) your evidence must be.
Sadly, many French are great believers in homeopathy.
On the other hand, it has to be pointed out that homeopthy pushers in France doesn’t stress the extreme dilution so much. A lot of what’s sold as ‘homeopathic medicin’ looks to me like standard ‘herbal supplements’, and is actually sold in respectable pharmacies!
So much for the illusion of the French as logical sceptists… Like all stereotypes it is at least partly untrue.
You take any relatively ancient theory with mystical aspects, believers who largely depend on anecdotal evidence and testimonials, and a premise that violates well-known laws of physics, and the scientific community is bound to have a high level of skepticism.
For a look at homeopathy from the standpoint of anti-quackery efforts, try this site.
Modern, double-blind, placebo-controlled studies are, of course modern. However, scientificly minded physicians of long ago were also not all a bunch of unsophisticated bumpkins.
For example these two items from Britannica.
"The first physician to prescribe digitalis was the English physician and botanist William Withering (1741–99), who used it in the treatment of edema (dropsy). In An Account of the Foxglove, and Some of Its Medical Uses (1785), he summarized the results of his extensive clinical trials of the drug and describedthe symptoms of digitalis toxicity. [bolding added]
“In May 1796 Jenner found a young dairymaid, Sarah Nelmes, who had fresh cowpox lesions on her hand. On May 14, using matter from Sarah’s lesions, he inoculated an eight-year-old boy, James Phipps, who became slightly ill over the course of the next 9 days but was well on the 10th. On July 1 Jenner inoculated the boy again, this time with smallpox matter. No disease developed; protection was complete. In 1798 Jenner, having added further cases [bolding added], published privately a slender book entitled An Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolae Vaccinae.”
These aren’t today’s controlled, double-blind tests, but they certain show that the idea of clinical testing isn’t new by any means. Homeopathy has been around since 1796 and hasn’t shown any results that were convincing enough to generate interest in clinical trials as far as I can determine.
People usually don’t drop their present scientific work in order to test a new idea unless the new idea is about things that have actually happened. I don’t think that homeopathy can demonstrate a proven record of cures that can’t be explained any other way.
I guess it could also be mentioned that any test of homeopathy is certainly blind but can’t be “controlled.”
In homeopathy the agent is diluted to the point that there is only a small probablility that any given dose contains even one molecule of the agent. Suppose for discussion that probablility is 1 in 10.
So you don’t know and can’t know which of the patients in the trial received the agent. And the placebo part is automatic since the probablility is that 9 out of 10 patients received plain water.
You’re joking! A repeateable, observation with an unexplained mechanism? They’d be climbing over each other to work on it - the lure of being the first person to explain phenomenon X is just too strong.
could you offer a few concrete examples of this (I’m not saying there aren’t any, I just can’t think of any)
Until those studies were replicated lots and lots of times, I would persist in denying homeopathy’s effectiveness, because it would take an enormous amount of evidence to make me willing to throw out everything humans have learned about chemistry and physics in the last 100 years.
I have a problem, though, with the way many skeptics have some misunderstandings of homeopathic products. Although there are many products sold at extreme dilutions, I believe that there are some which would still contain some of the original substance. A 20X, or 10C, dilution would still contain some of the stuff in it, although at levels way too low to have any observable effect. Also, many homeopathic things are sold as pills, with lactose being the inert ingredient, instead of water. These are my impressions of homeopathic substances, anyway, and if I’m not right, I would appreciate being corrected.
Well, the Copernican model certainly got off on the wrong foot, all things considered. Of course, he was wrong on some points. The center of the universe is not near the sun, and his theory assumed that all orbits were completely circular. But most of his contemporaries decided that his theories were improbable.
Not that this shows that homeopathy is anything but hogwash. Copernicus (and Kepler, and Galileo) based his theories on observed data, data which anyone else could observe.
As a caveat, it should however be noted that Erasmus Darwin (who was a fellow member of the Lunar Society) probably killed at least one patient by following Withering’s dosage and there were other similar early cases of fatal overdose. Clinical trials in the 1780s were random in at least one sense and Withering and his colleagues did have the good sense to experiment with such stuff on the lower classes before trying it on their paying customers.
And I guess today clinical trials of such drugs as Vioxx (sp?) are continued on to the paying customers. My point is that even with highly advanced knowledge over that of Darwin and Withering, the introduction of new drugs still has risks.
And, I was really only trying to show that the claim was at least exaggerated, if not false, that drug pre-testing was so recent that it was not surprising that homeopathy hadn’t successfuly passed rigorous tests.
I’d have to guess that on average, the more dilute a homeopathic mixture, the more effective it is.
Why? Because homeopathy is based on the notion that minute amounts of stuff that cause symptoms similar to the ones you are being treated for will cure you of those symptoms.
So, a 1 in 1 trillion chance of taking one poisonous molecule will tend to show more easing of symptoms than a 1 in 1000 chance 
It looks like you done broke da code.
What’s the difference? One of my friends was getting a degree in homeopathic medicine when I graduated from college, and everything she studied was herbs, not anything to do with water remembering it once had something disolved in it. Why do they call these two seemingly very different things both “homeopathy”?
Lets see: what would the final exam questions for a homeopathic medical degree be like? A few possibilities:
-What would you prescribe for skin cancer? A tiny does of sunlight?
-For a burn?A little acid on the skin?
-For poison ivy: A little bit of poison ivy, diluted 10X times?
Homeopathic doctors…do they ever get sued for malpractice?
When I referenced the “Schroedinger’s cat” experiment I thought I mentioned that it was a “thought experiment”. However, it is based on many actual experiments that seem to demonstrate “non local connectivity”. I have but a basic back ground in Physics but seem to remember reading about several experiments where light Photons were split to have opposite polarities (positive and negative?). If I remember correctly observing one has been shown to have an “instant” effect for the other. Here is one experiment taken from www.sciencedaily.com which details a more advanced application of this concept.
Also, I am having some difficulty in citing specific examples of theories once scorned, but later proven correct. Perhaps someone better educated in the sciences can cite more examples. Here are some of the ones that I seem to recall:
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The germ theory of disease was initially scorned by those who advocated so called spontanieous generation.
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The “steady state” theory of the universe ruled supreme essentially until Hubble showed that red shift was occuring with most (every?) distant celestial object. The final death knell for this perspective came when “those guys” at Bell one a Nobel prize for demonstrating the uniformity of cosmic background radiation.
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Prions were once scorned as viruses in disguise. It was said completely impossible that a protein could replicate itself. Many Biologists in fact called it a violation of the so called “Central Dogma” of Biology. Prusiner finally won the day when he received a Nobel prize in the late 1990’s.
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The “Asteroid impact” theory for the extinction of the dinosaurs was initially dismissed until a rare element (Iridium?) was found in the so called “KT” boundary.
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Continental drift was long dismissed by geologists.
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Most Dr’s scoffed at the idea that a bacteria (H. Pylori) could play a significant role in stomach ulcers until the early 1990’s.
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Mendels theory of genetics was dismissed for many years (until rediscovered after his dealth) in part because the theory of his day could not explain his results.
Can some of you science geeks out there help me out to fill this list out (or chop it down where appropriate)?
Of course none of this even supports let along proves homeopathy. However, I would assert that there have been a good number of papers published in respectable journals on the subject that at least make it worthy of study. Also someone said essentially “every scientist would fall over himself to study an observable phenominum with not explanation” I would submit that there is a human/cultural element in science that discourages going “out on a limb” into what is considered by many to be “fringe” or quackery. This is especially the case for those who are trying to establish their careers. The conventional wisdom is usually correct however the problem is that when Ochum’s razor is wrong it leaves us vulnerable to serious gaps on our understanding of the universe.
Source: Williams College
Date: 1998-02-12
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Physicists Confirm Prediction On Quantum Teleportation
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass.–Professor of Physics William Wootters’ prediction of “quantum teleportation” has progressed from science fiction to reality. A team of Austrian scientists report in a recent issue of Nature magazine that they have teleported a physical property from one particle of light to another one, without a physical connection.
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Although the discovery has nothing to do with beaming people from one place to another, it does form the first step in the creation of “quantum computers,” and may provide a new means of encrypting messages and storing information about unstable entities such as atoms that are just about to decay.
Perhaps the greatest importance of the experiment and related research is to explore the quantum paradoxes that Einstein once derided as “spooky action at a distance.”
Four years before the Austrian team began their experiments, Wootters and five other scientists wrote a paper claiming that teleportation is theoretically possible. Once the scientists started studying the question, the idea arose “remarkably fast,” claimed Wootters. “It only took about a day to formulate the basic idea.”
Quantum teleportation was considered impossible before the publication of this 1993 paper because the quantum state of any particle is “collapsed” by the act of measuring it. Wootters and his colleagues bypassed this problem through a technique called an end-run, which measures only part of a given particle’s quantum state, thereby avoiding a complete collapse.
The quantum part of the end run is based on a pair of “entangled” particles, which are always predestined to assume opposite states whenever a measurement of one of them occurs. They’re made by taking one photon and converting it into a pair that fly off in opposite directions. If you find a way to impose a specific quantum state on one member of an entangled pair of photons, then you instantly impose a predetermined quantum state on the other distant member of the entangled pair. That’s quantum teleportation. Wootters came to Williams in 1982 from University of Texas at Austin and has taught most of the courses in the physics curriculum, although he specializes in quantum mechanics. According to physicist David Park, Wootters is known for “finding interesting things for students to think about."
Wootters earned his B.S. from Stanford in 1973 and his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Texas at Austin in 1980.
Williams College is consistently ranked one of the nation’s top liberal arts colleges. Founded in 1793, it is the second oldest institution of higher learning in Massachusetts. The college of 2,000 students is located in Williamstown, which has been called the best college town in America. You can visit the college in cyberspace at http://www.williams.edu
elfkin, naturopathy is herbs and supplements. Homeopathy is based on the law of similars and the work of Hahneman. A classical homeopath only uses diluted, succussed remedies.
I used to work as a receptionist for a classical homeopath and we did see some remarkable cures, especially with skin conditions. The placebo effect can be really powerful.
Your post raises a good question. Exactly what is the proposed mechanism (at a biochemical level) that explains the diverse action of the placebo effect?