Homeopathy: Rustum Roy drops the bomb

[Mojo]

Originally Posted by Badly Shaved Monkey

This is a vital point. Whenever I get the chance faced with one of these pseudorationalist homeopaths trying to distance themselves from the real loons, I ask, "How can you tell?", i.e. how do you 'know' they are loonies but you're all right?.

In the case of the editor of that particular journal, an appropriate question is "how do you know it doesn't prevent malaria?"

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programme...ht/5178122.stm

Quote:

The hospital's Director Peter Fisher told Newsnight "I'm very angry about it because people are going to get malaria - there is absolutely no reason to think that homeopathy works to prevent malaria and you won't find that in any textbook or journal of homeopathy so people will get malaria, people may even die of malaria if they follow this advice."

[Mojo]

Holy ****! Milgrom is citing Rao et al to support his statement that "recent work from the materials sciences indicates that it may indeed be possible to distinguish ultra-diluted and potentised homeopathic remedies from pure water by physical methods".

[Kuko 4000]

Hi all, it's my first post here, didn't want to start a new thread, I hope this is fine. English is not my native language, so please excuse any obvious grammar mistakes.

I was talking about homeopathy with my friend the other day and this is roughly where we are:

We believe that there's been no signs of positive results in scientific homeopathy studies. And, we'd like to know more about how the studies have taken into consideration the "possible" "bad energies" or whatever the homeopaths claim to be the reasons for the tests failing one after another.

Any kind of help is much appreciated. And sorry, this must be common knowledge around here, but it's a pretty big mountain of scattered info to climb and we'd like to make progress.

[BillyJoe]

Oh, I'm sorry, you don't see anything?

[Blue Wode]

Hello Kuko 4000, and welcome to the JREF forums.

Originally Posted by Kuko 4000

...we'd like to know more about how the studies have taken into consideration the "possible" "bad energies" or whatever the homeopaths claim to be the reasons for the tests failing one after another.

Any kind of help is much appreciated. And sorry, this must be common knowledge around here, but it's a pretty big mountain of scattered info to climb and we'd like to make progress.

Just take it from the Director of the (troubled) London Homoeopathic Hospital, and Homoeopathic Physician to Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, that homeopathy is a placebo:

Quote:

"Over these years we have come to believe that conventional RCTs are unlikely to capture the possible benefits of homeopathy...It seems more important to define if homeopathists can genuinely control patients' symptoms and less relevant to have concerns about whether this is due to a 'genuine' effect or to influencing the placebo response."

http://rheumatology.oxfordjournals.o...full/40/9/1052

BTW, feedback from those who took part in yesterday's ‘Water Intention Experiment’ can found here:
http://theintentionexperiment.ning.c...ATopic%3A96821

Apparently Rustum Roy's team will have the results available next week.

[PixyMisa]

Originally Posted by Kuko 4000

We believe that there's been no signs of positive results in scientific homeopathy studies. And, we'd like to know more about how the studies have taken into consideration the "possible" "bad energies" or whatever the homeopaths claim to be the reasons for the tests failing one after another.

The problem with "bad energies" is that because the homeopaths won't say what this means, they can't be controlled for in the experiment.

If they meant light, for example, we could run two experiments in parallel, one in a lighted room, and one in total darkness. If they meant radiation, we could run one experiment in a shielded room, and the other in a normal lab. If they meant noise, we could run one in a soundproofed lab. And so on.

But they won't say, because then they wouldn't have an easy answer for the perennial failure of homeopathy in any properly controlled experiment.

Oh, and welcome!

[Mojo]

Originally Posted by Kuko 4000

Hi all, it's my first post here, didn't want to start a new thread, I hope this is fine. English is not my native language, so please excuse any obvious grammar mistakes.

Welcome.

Quote:

I was talking about homeopathy with my friend the other day and this is roughly where we are:

We believe that there's been no signs of positive results in scientific homeopathy studies.

That's not quite the case. There are some studies giving positive results, but they tend to be small or of poor quality. It has been found that larger better quality studies (i.e. ones that reduce the likelyhood of an apparent positive being due to chance or a result of flaws in the experimental procedure) are less likely to give positive results. If you look at the threads on this forum in which studies have been presented as showing that homoeopathy works, you'll find that It always tends to be the same handful of studies. When all the evidence is looked at it appears that homoeopathy is no more effective than placebo.

Quote:

And, we'd like to know more about how the studies have taken into consideration the "possible" "bad energies" or whatever the homeopaths claim to be the reasons for the tests failing one after another.

They haven't really done this. What we see is assertions that double blind RCTs are not suitable for testing homoeopathy, and fantastic rationalisations of this (mis)using quantum mechanics. No alternative methods of rigorously assessing homoeopathy are ever suggested.

Instead, we see homoeopaths running unblinded trials such as the 2005 Spence et al study, in which patients treated at a homoeopathic hospital were asked if they felt better a few months later. Because there is no control group this can't tell us anything about whether homoeopathy actually works. This doesn't prevent homoeopaths claiming that it does, of course.

[Mojo]

Originally Posted by PixyMisa

But they won't say, because then they wouldn't have an easy answer for the perennial failure of homeopathy in any properly controlled experiment.

Apart from, "well, it's quantum, innit!"

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

I suspect Kuko 4000 is not referring to "bad" energies like radiation, but bad "energies"- the bad vibes that the homs sometimes claim screw up SCAM experiments if nasty sceptics try to do them with proper objectivity.

[PixyMisa]

Originally Posted by Badly Shaved Monkey

I suspect Kuko 4000 is not referring to "bad" energies like radiation, but bad "energies"- the bad vibes that the homs sometimes claim screw up SCAM experiments if nasty sceptics try to do them with proper objectivity.

Yep. But if you ask the homeopaths what "energies" means, you don't get very far.

[shpalman]

Ask Alex Hankey or Cyril Smith. None of them seem to notice that they all have completely contradictory ideas.

Welcome Kuko 4000 and Philippe Leick.

[fls]

Originally Posted by Mojo

That's not quite the case. There are some studies giving positive results, but they tend to be small or of poor quality. It has been found that larger better quality studies (i.e. ones that reduce the likelyhood of an apparent positive being due to chance or a result of flaws in the experimental procedure) are less likely to give positive results. If you look at the threads on this forum in which studies have been presented as showing that homoeopathy works, you'll find that It always tends to be the same handful of studies. When all the evidence is looked at it appears that homoeopathy is no more effective than placebo.

I'm not sure that that's even true. I've accepted the word of others that the poor quality trials are positive, because they should be (poor quality has the effect of increasing the probability of returning a 'positive' result). I've mostly focussed on the results of the better trials and discovered that while many of them are reported as 'positive', they are actually negative when judged using the usual standards. However, I've not come across this body of positive but low-quality trials that homeopaths and others make passing reference to. I'm beginning to think that this is a fiction. They make these claims and then present long lists of studies, but if you actually look up the references on those lists (as I did in the Lupercalia thread), the majority of them would be considered negative. I used to assume that all these 'positive' studies were out there and I had simply missed them (I wasn't looking very hard, after all, since quality tells you whether the results are likely to be valid and so even positive results in a low-quality study don't need to be taken seriously). But the more I look in to this and fail to discover these positive studies, the more I suspect that they don't even exist - that homeopaths are calling a bunch of crappy negative studies 'positive' and getting away with it because no one with the know-how bothers to get past 'crappy'.

Linda

[Mojo]

Maybe I should have said "apparently giving positive results".

[BillyJoe]

Originally Posted by Blue Wode

BTW, feedback from those who took part in yesterday's ‘Water Intention Experiment’ can found here:
http://theintentionexperiment.ning.c...ATopic%3A96821
.

Lots of mention of god and light and colour and connection.
Seems to turn them on somehow.

[BillyJoe]

...all nice and fuzzy wuzzy.

[fls]

Originally Posted by Mojo

Maybe I should have said "apparently giving positive results".

If that is acceptable to you, I think it would help to bring attention to what are misleading (I'll be generous in my characterization ) claims.

Linda

[fls]

The study that opened this thread is a case in point. The data presented simply cannot be used to conclude that homeopathic remedies can be distinguished on the basis of structure since the authors made no effort to exclude other differences in the preparations, and they did not provide the information that would allow anyone to confirm that their measurements were actually different (mean, S.D., or confidence intervals). Yet this is presented as a 'positive' paper.

Linda

[Mojo]

There are also the various clinical studies that after the event choose, from a variety of other measurements, an individual measurement that showed a significant difference - effectively drawing a target around where the dart happened to hit.

[Kuko 4000]

Thank you all for the welcomes and replies!

I don't know too much about the issue, but my long-standing understanding of homeopathy is that it works, at best, as a placebo. And I consider it very unlikely that there will ever be evidence that shows anything else. But, I'd like to know more about it.

I work in a place where I meet homeopaths, naturopaths, ayurvedics, acupuncturists, reiki healers, etc. (and their customers) almost daily. I enjoy talking with them and sharing all the different viewpoints about these subjects. I'm comfortable sharing my skepticism with them, because it doesn't really require anything technical to point out many problems in their ideas and practises, only fairly common sense. But when the discussion turns technical, I don't want to speak over my head, even if I realise that that's pretty much all that they are doing.

Few things I'd like to understand better in homeopathy (DIM ) and it's relation to EBM (of which my knowledge is minimal as well).

1) Hahnemann's claim was that 'like cures like', right? Now, to a significant part of the population, this seems quite imaginable because all they know is that vaccines are doing "the same thing" and are helping people. Could someone clarify to me, in simple but real terms, how the homeopathic principle differs from the vaccines?

At this point, nevermind that there is no observable 'like' at all in the diluted homeopathic medicine (because this just gives them room for claiming that "our" "meters" are not good enough yet), I just want to be able to explain to the people around me, in simple and real terms, how the homeopathic principle differs from the use of vaccines.

I'd like to do this one point at a time, in order to keep it easy for me to digest. More questions coming up if you have the time to answer!

[Mojo]

Originally Posted by Kuko 4000

1) Hahnemann's claim was that 'like cures like', right? Now, to a significant part of the population, this seems quite imaginable because all they know is that vaccines are doing "the same thing" and are helping people. Could someone clarify to me, in simple but real terms, how the homeopathic principle differs from the vaccines.

At this point, nevermind that there is no observable 'like' at all in the diluted homeopathic medicine (because this just gives them room for claiming that "our" "meters" are not good enough yet), I just want to be able to explain to the people around me, in simple and real terms, how the homeopathic principle differs from the use of vaccines.

Vaccines work by stimulating an immune response - the immune system produces antibodies against whatever the vaccine is for. Homoeopathic remedies do nothing of the sort.

ETA: I think those last three words may be redundant.

[Mojo]

In addition, the basic principles of homoepathy don't include the idea of disease causing pathogens (or the specific diseases caused by them for that matter) so even if homoeopathic remedies produced antibodies their action in preventing disease wouldn't be compatible with the principles on which homoeopathy is claimed to work.

Instead, homoeopaths say stuff like "they make it so your energy doesn’t have a malaria-shaped hole in it so the malarial mosquitos won’t come along and fill that in." to quote David Colquhoun, "this last bit of advice means nothing whatsoever. It is sheer gobblydegook."

By the way, when I was looking for that I found this: Help! I have a malaria shaped hole in my Qi!

[Acleron]

Originally Posted by Kuko 4000

Thank you all for the welcomes and replies!

I don't know too much about the issue, but my long-standing understanding of homeopathy is that it works, at best, as a placebo. And I consider it very unlikely that there will ever be evidence that shows anything else. But, I'd like to know more about it.

I've recently seen a lot about the placebo effect and homeopaths claiming that their observations show that their treatment may work through this mechanism.

The placebo effect has several mechanisms which are understood to different extents.

The sort of diseases that homeopaths specialise in are usually self correcting. The aspect of the placebo effect which occurs here is simply that the patient gets better. This is not particularly amazing, hundreds of millions of years of evolution have produced mechanisms to repair damaged tissue and to destroy infecting bacteria and viruses. The claim that some interaction of homeopath, homeopathic preparation and patient leads to a cure above no treatment at all has less evidence than homeopathy works. And the evidence that homeopathy works is so small as to be invisible.

[steenkh]

Vaccines are preventative: the immune system is primed to combat the virus if it should ever invade the body. There is no purpose in using a vaccine if you are already infected, because the virus itself will be stimulated the body to a response, although too late (OK, I think there are cases where the vaccine does a better job then the live virus, but that is an exception). Homoeopathy is not preventative: it aims at curing diseases directly. If you are vaccinated, you are really immune to that particular disease for a certain time. If you only use homoeopathy, you will get the same disease again and again (because you are not being treated at all)

We know everything about how vaccines work, but nobody knows how homoeopathy is supposed to work. The theories of homoeopaths have no relation to reality, and no homoeopath has ever been able to show any element of their theories to be based on reality.

There are actually active ingredients in vaccines. Not even homoeopaths can show that there are any active ingredients in their remedies when they are above 12C. In fact, no homoeopath has ever been able to show that they can tell two of their remedies apart, because they are all technically identical to nothing at all.

[fls]

Originally Posted by Kuko 4000

Thank you all for the welcomes and replies!

I don't know too much about the issue, but my long-standing understanding of homeopathy is that it works, at best, as a placebo. And I consider it very unlikely that there will ever be evidence that shows anything else. But, I'd like to know more about it.

I work in a place where I meet homeopaths, naturopaths, ayurvedics, acupuncturists, reiki healers, etc. (and their customers) almost daily. I enjoy talking with them and sharing all the different viewpoints about these subjects. I'm comfortable sharing my skepticism with them, because it doesn't really require anything technical to point out many problems in their ideas and practises, only fairly common sense. But when the discussion turns technical, I don't want to speak over my head, even if I realise that that's pretty much all that they are doing.

I understand what you mean and they rely on that; the use of technical language means that they are not forced to explore or justify their ideas. Because they are speaking over their head, they do not realize that what they are saying does not make sense (they probably assume it does make sense having learned it from someone they think was not speaking over their own head), and they recognize that most others will lack confidence in their own technical expertise and shut up. It's a good debate-stopping technique.

Quote:

Few things I'd like to understand better in homeopathy (DIM ) and it's relation to EBM (of which my knowledge is minimal as well).

1) Hahnemann's claim was that 'like cures like', right? Now, to a significant part of the population, this seems quite imaginable because all they know is that vaccines are doing "the same thing" and are helping people. Could someone clarify to me, in simple but real terms, how the homeopathic principle differs from the vaccines?

Homeopathic remedies are 'like' the conditions they 'cure' in the same way that armadillos are like alligators because they both start with the letter 'a'.

The 'like' when it comes to vaccines refers to the identification of a causative agent and a response directed to that specific causative agent. When homeopaths use the word 'like', they are referring not to a causative agent, but to subjective perceptions (loosely corresponding to symptoms) and personality characteristics, and a response directed (using that term very loosely) at those perceptions. To fill in the blanks, when it comes to vaccines, "like cures like" means "a dose of the same agent leads to a physical response that can cure a second dose of the same agent", but when it comes to vaccines it means "a dose* of an agent that led** to a similar subjective perception when taken by a person 200 years ago changes that subjective perception".

Linda

*As you point out, no 'dose' need actually be present.
**'led' used loosely, since whether or not the subjective perceptions recorded in the provings done by Hahnemann (and others) were caused by the substances ingested or merely due to the power of suggestion is questionable.

[JJM]

Originally Posted by Kuko 4000

Thank you all for the welcomes and replies!

I don't know too much about the issue, but my long-standing understanding of homeopathy is that it works, at best, as a placebo. And I consider it very unlikely that there will ever be evidence that shows anything else. But, I'd like to know more about it.

I work in a place where I meet homeopaths, naturopaths, ayurvedics, acupuncturists, reiki healers, etc. (and their customers) almost daily. {snip}

The best InterNet source for those topics is www.quackwatch.org I would suggest some books; but I am not sure of their availability to you. A couple have been published, recently, in England; but I am waiting for them here. If you can get a copy of "A Consumer's Guide to 'Alternative Medicine'" by Kurt Butler (Prometheus, 1992) I recommend you to do so.

[Blue Wode]

Originally Posted by Blue Wode

...feedback from those who took part in yesterday's ‘Water Intention Experiment’ can found here:
http://theintentionexperiment.ning.c...ATopic%3A96821

Apparently Rustum Roy's team will have the results available next week.

The first feedback from the experiment has just been published. The scientists involved claim that they've "seen results they’ve never seen before with their equipment"...
http://theintentionexperiment.ning.c...ogPost%3A97963

[JJM]

Originally Posted by Blue Wode

The first feedback from the experiment has just been published. The scientists involved claim that they've "seen results they’ve never seen before with their equipment"...
http://theintentionexperiment.ning.c...ogPost%3A97963

I love it!

Many scientists have seen "results we've never seen before." It would be great if those were a discoveries; however, it usually means there is something wrong with the equipment or the experimental controls. Considering these characters' history, it is probably both.

[shpalman]

Originally Posted by Blue Wode

The first feedback from the experiment has just been published. The scientists involved claim that they've "seen results they’ve never seen before with their equipment"...
http://theintentionexperiment.ning.c...ogPost%3A97963

Quote:

... long-wave far-infrared light waves... infrared energy at the levels detected by the Raman spectrometer is not something that can, according to our understanding of transverse EM waves, be sent long distance.

Here's what I understand about Raman:

When you see a peak in a Raman spectrum at, say, 1160cm^-1, it doesn't mean that the sample is emitting light at that wavenumber. It means that the outgoing laser beam has its wavenumber shifted by 1160cm^-1 compared to the incoming one. The shift is relatively small: red light has a wavelength of about 650 nm, which corresponds to a wavenumber of about 15400cm^-1, so a Raman shift of 1160cm^-1 would mean that the outgoing light had a wavelength of 700 nm. So the peak at 1160cm^-1 doesn't mean that their detector is really detecting light at 8628nm: it's detecting light which is about 50nm longer (depending on the laser they are using) than the laser it's expecting.

(A peak at about 9 microns, by the way, corresponds to a black-body temperature of about 60 degrees C. What are they talking about, that it "can't be sent long distances?")

[Philippe Leick]

Quote:

The laser light is absorbed by the water molecules, depending on how they are energetically configured or arranged, and then reradiated at a different wavelength.

This quote is from the web page describing the "intention experiment" (see links in previous posts). Whoever wrote this text doesn't understand the difference between ordinary fluorescence (absorption and subsequent reemission of photons) and Raman scattering (instantaneous scattering with wavelength shift of the scattered photon).

Also, they write about "typical Raman spectra when the laser is turned off". But Raman scattering can only occur when the laser is turned on. There's something here that needs to be explained... it would be nice to see details of the experimental setup somewhere.

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

Rustum Roy may have dropped a bomb, but Lionel Milgrom seems to have dropped something else...again.

http://www.liebertonline.com/doi/pdf.../acm.2007.0674

Published on 1st April, but I don't suppose he'd see that as a joke.

I'd be fascinated to know who J. Comp. Alt. Med. got to referee the paper. Probably a couple of homeopaths whose previous greatest mathematical feat has been working out the difference between the cost of a sugar pill and what it can be sold for when labelled with the phrase "Homeopathic Remedy".

[shpalman]

Originally Posted by Badly Shaved Monkey

Rustum Roy may have dropped a bomb, but Lionel Milgrom seems to have dropped something else...again.

http://www.liebertonline.com/doi/pdf.../acm.2007.0674

http://shpalman.livejournal.com/10038.html

[wilsontown]

Looking at the famed Rao et al. paper in Homeopathy, they state that for Raman spectra, "stray light is eliminated by turning off all the room lights whenever data are being collected". Unless they're working in a darkroom, that surely won't be good enough, and how would they see what they're doing?

The more you look at it, the stupider it gets.

[JJM]

Originally Posted by wilsontown

Looking at the famed Rao et al. paper in Homeopathy, they state that for Raman spectra, "stray light is eliminated by turning off all the room lights whenever data are being collected". Unless they're working in a darkroom, that surely won't be good enough, and how would they see what they're doing?

The more you look at it, the stupider it gets.

I guess that's another lesson for me- to never "assume" things. When I read they turned off the room lights, I thought they were being quaintly over-cautious! It should, perhaps, have served notice that their spectrometer is only cobbled-together.

[Rocko]

Originally Posted by Blue Wode

The first feedback from the experiment has just been published. The scientists involved claim that they've "seen results they’ve never seen before with their equipment"...
http://theintentionexperiment.ning.c...ogPost%3A97963

High on hyperbole, low on details. Who would have thought it?

Some of the comments make me want to weep.

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

Originally Posted by shpalman

http://shpalman.livejournal.com/10038.html

I see from Hankey's editorial that apparently scientific 'conservatives' can't handle Milgrom's ideas because they are so novel. He seems to have become confused. Our problem with Mlgrom's ideas is not that they are novel, but that they are bollocks.

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

I've just realised where these muppets are getting their ideas from;

Compare

http://www.liebertonline.com/doi/pdf.../acm.2008.0064

"And now, as a summation of his previous work, the present opus derives
a picture of a stellated octahedron known as a stella octangula.

Milgrom rightly mentions the stella octangula’s connection to mystical Judaism, but uncharacteristically leaves it to the reader to deduce the full significance of this fact, which is certainly worthy of comment."

with

http://www.clivebanks.co.uk/THHGTTG/THHGTTGradio6.htm

"The Haggunennons of Azizatus Three have the most impatient chromosomes of any life-forms in the galaxy. Where as most races are content to evolve slowly and carefully over thousands of generations - discarding a prehensile toe here, nervously hazarding another nostril there, the Haggunennons would do for Charles Darwin what a squadron of Arcturan Stunt-Apples would have done for Sir Isaac Newton. Their genetic structure, based on the quadruple-striated octo-helix, is so chronically unstable, that far from passing their basic shape onto their children, they will quite frequently evolve several times over lunch. "

The numpties aren't writing about medicine's interface with physics, they're just producing poor imitations of Douglas Adams' material. His estate should sue.

[BillyJoe]

Here is one way to swear on the forum and get away with it:

http://www.quackometer.net/blog/2008...nd****ing.html


Here is another way:

What do you think: Are they bv||$#!++!^g or m!^dfV<k!^g?

[BillyJoe]

.........hmmm, it seems even URLs are censored.

[BillyJoe]

It won't link either!

Oh, well, insert "05on-bv||$#!+-and-m!^dfv<k!^g.html" after the "2008"

[shpalman]

Or just click on this tiny url.