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#1 |
Graduate Poster
Join Date: Mar 2006
Posts: 1,433
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Homeopathy: Rustum Roy drops the bomb
Rustum Roy's eagerly anticipated article on homeopathy is here.
Homeopathy Volume 96, Issue 3, July 2007, Pages 175-182 The Memory of Water
Quote:
You may note the rampant speculation, and overuse of 'preliminary data'. However, what is most extraordinary to me is that the entire journal edition is devoted to 'the memory of water'. It's as though the Nature committee's debunking of Benveniste never happened. Go here for more discredited nonsense, starring such luminaries as Peter Fisher, Lionel Milgrom and Louis Rey. Madeleine Ennis is conspicuously absent. Rustum Roy's upcoming article has also been discussed in these threads : http://www.internationalskeptics.com...ad.php?t=82393 http://www.internationalskeptics.com...ad.php?t=87421 |
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#2 |
Mostly harmless
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Nor Flanden
Posts: 37,690
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I see he's running his strawman argument again:
Quote:
The key stumbling block is that it doesn't work. |
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"You got to use your brain." - McKinley Morganfield "The poor mystic homeopaths feel like petted house-cats thrown at high flood on the breaking ice." - Leon Trotsky |
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#3 |
Banned
Join Date: Sep 2002
Posts: 26,704
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Has he got any actual reliable data? Or is it all just rampant gobbledygook and speculation.
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#4 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Sep 2001
Posts: 21,258
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Rustom Roy is a pretty big loon. I remember back in the early 90s he was big on eliminating the peer review system, in the name of "young scientists" who apparently couldn't get their work published due to the biases of the old guys. Oddly enough, I didn't meet too many of them as I began my career. Roy postulated a system in which young people only needed to get a senior colleague endorsement of their work for it to be published. It never caught on (unless he did it in his own journal that he started).
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#5 |
Cuddly Like a Koala Bear
Join Date: Jul 2007
Posts: 7,270
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The "key stumbling block" is the assumption that the foundations of modern chemistry are solid? Really?
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#6 |
Mostly harmless
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Nor Flanden
Posts: 37,690
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__________________
"You got to use your brain." - McKinley Morganfield "The poor mystic homeopaths feel like petted house-cats thrown at high flood on the breaking ice." - Leon Trotsky |
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#7 |
Mostly harmless
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Nor Flanden
Posts: 37,690
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His journal Materials Research Innovations uses something called "super peer review", which it claims is "especially suited for the publication of results which are so new, so unexpected, that they are likely to be rejected by tradition-bound journals". It doesn't seem to be of much use to the "young scientists" referred to above, though. According to this page, also about Materials Research Innovations:
Quote:
So in fact it benefits people like, er, Rustum Roy. |
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"You got to use your brain." - McKinley Morganfield "The poor mystic homeopaths feel like petted house-cats thrown at high flood on the breaking ice." - Leon Trotsky |
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#8 |
Graduate Poster
Join Date: Mar 2006
Posts: 1,433
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It's like vanity publishing for scientists.
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#9 |
Cuddly Like a Koala Bear
Join Date: Jul 2007
Posts: 7,270
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I'd forgotten about the "Super-Duper Groovy Peer Review"...
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#10 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Sep 2001
Posts: 21,258
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Yeah, that's what I was thinking of. The way it helps young scientists is that they could get a "senior colleague" to add their name to the author list and therefore get it published. Maybe it wasn't done to help young scientists, but this is the way young scientists could get into the thing. It was a long time ago when he was talking about it. Everyone I knew just sort of rolled their eyes. |
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#11 |
Adult human female
Join Date: Sep 2003
Location: NT 150 511
Posts: 50,593
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You used to be able to get whole Homeopathy articles free online, but not now. I'm damned if I'm paying for that!
But looking at the abstract, I think we've seen his data already.
Quote:
Four slides in the middle of this. The UV spectroscopy is just wrong. The spectrum he presents for ethanol just is not the UV spectrum of ethanol, period. He then seems to be saying that the potentised remedies are less absorbent than the solvent. I could see no data supporting his contention that he could tell different potencies or different remedies apart. If in fact what he says is true (that ethanol has significant UV absorbance at 320nm which is eliminated when the ethanol is used as the solvent for the production of a potentised remedy), anyone with a spectrophotometer capable of reading at that wavelength would be able to see this easily for themselves. And be queueing up to apply for the million bucks. I could do it myself (I suspect - modern analysers are so specialised compared to the simple spectrophotometers we used to use that I'd have to think about how....). The problem is that it all falls apart when you simply observe that ethanol does not in fact have significant UV absorbance at 320nm. I couldn't understand the Raman spectra he presented in that slide show, but they all seemed noisy, and the scales were inconsistent. Given that he has messed up an ordinary UV spectrometry reading of ethanol quite as comprehensively as he has, I have little confidence in anything he presents in a more complex field. Rolfe. |
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#12 |
Graduate Poster
Join Date: Mar 2006
Posts: 1,433
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The library website at my academic institution has taken this opportunity to fall over, so I can't confirm if it's the same data. But probably it is.
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#13 |
Illuminator
Join Date: Jul 2003
Posts: 3,789
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His claimed ability to distinguish homeopathic preparations by spectroscopy was the thing that made my jaw drop too. I don't know enough about the field to comment, but if this technique is reliable, then homeopaths should have little difficulty identifying their remedies and potencies - one would think that from a quality control perspective this technique would be accessible and adopted/enforced by homeopathic remedy manufacturers as a matter of course.
Also, its a sure fire $million dollar challenge winner. So why has this not happened? (rhetorical question) |
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"Reci bobu bob a popu pop." - Tanja "Everything is physics. This does not mean that physics is everything." - Cuddles "The entire practice of homeopathy can be substituted with the advice to "take two aspirins and call me in the morning." - Linda "Homeopathy: I never knew there was so little in it." - BSM |
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#14 |
Graduate Poster
Join Date: Feb 2006
Posts: 1,306
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More…
Quote:
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#15 |
Refusing to be confused by facts
Join Date: Mar 2002
Posts: 879
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They could take several different approaches to proving homeopathy:
1) Prove that a properly controlled homeopathic remedy cures the proscribed disease in a properly controlled double-blind experiment; 2) Prove that "like cures like", regardless of the potency of the remedy; 3) Prove that some of the substance remains in the solution after properly controlled dilution, which flies in the face of Avogadro's limit and modern chemistry. Only one of these can be tested by the MDC, since Randi cannot do proper medical trials. And that is the approach taken here - proving that something detectable remains in the solution after all the dilution. It seems that they are positioning themselves to apply for the challenge - otherwise they'd just try to prove the stuff works, without regard to the chemistry behind it. It doesn't work and it can't work, no matter how much dirty ethanol they test. They're putting the cart before the horse by trying to come up with reasons why it could work before proving that it does work. There are only two reasons I can imagine why they would do this: 1) They purposefully are trying to obscure the fact that it doesn't work; 2) They want the million dollars, so are trying to find ways to tell homeopathic solutions apart. |
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#16 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Sep 2001
Posts: 21,258
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If material can be shown to remain in the solution after diluting to the point where the supposed concentration is below detectable limits, all that means is that they have not done the dilutions properly. Either they have not carried out the dilutions to the extent claimed, or that the solutions are not properly mixed before diluting again and they are sampling from a high concentration region. The issue of concentration is not arguable. Either it has the concentration they claim or it doesn't. If they do a 30C dilution and there is more than 1 molecule per liter (or whatever their volume unit is), then that solution is not diluted to the level they have claimed. |
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#17 |
Adult human female
Join Date: Sep 2003
Location: NT 150 511
Posts: 50,593
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I suspect it's 3. They're convinced by all the subjective tales of miraculous cures, and believe it works. So they're trying to find a possible explanation. Actually, all you need to do for the MDC is to be able to tell a potentised homoeopathic remedy (ultradilute) from the stock solvent. Which is what Roy is claiming to have done. You don't have to show what it is about the material that's allowing you to tell the difference. It dosn't have to be solute remnants, it could be a change in structure of the solvent. If indeed the remedies did have a different UV spectrum from the solvent, for whatever reason, then it would be a valid claim. It's a weird claim, that the remedies have a lower absorbance than the solvent. I'd have trouble thinking up a reason for that, if it were the case. Fortunately, however, my brain doesn't have to do that work. Because real ethanol has a much much lower UV absorbance than whatever the heck he was testing. Presumably the remedies weren't as dirty as the solvent sample. Nothing to see here, move along. Rolfe. |
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"The way we vote will depend, ultimately, on whether we are persuaded to hope or to fear." - Aonghas MacNeacail, June 2012. |
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#18 |
Critical Thinker
Join Date: Jun 2007
Posts: 430
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I've got the paper...
I particularly love this passage (my comments in brackets):
Quote:
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#19 |
The Infinitely Prolonged
Join Date: Feb 2006
Location: Westchester County, NY (when not in space)
Posts: 15,590
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Assuming this portion is true
Quote:
You still have a problem of the body, itself, not only determining the difference, but determining what to do with the stuff once it does. I doubt that even if UV-VIS spectroscopy was sensitive enough to distinguish the difference, that our own body chemistry would also be able to do so. (These are water molecules, we are talking about, after all.) If homeopathy claims it is efficacious, it must pass proper medical trials, period. |
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#20 |
Graduate Poster
Join Date: Mar 2006
Posts: 1,433
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Quote:
Succussing has extraordinary effects on 95% ethanol: Figure 3a shows a clear difference between succussed and unsuccussed ethanol (6, 12, 30C). That's without any additional compounds present. It looks like the ethanol trace in 3a was reused in 3b and 3c as the control, rather than being run anew with each batch of Nat mur or Nux vom samples. Ok, anyone with access to a UV-spec, aliquot out some of your squeezy bottle 95% ethanol, bang it about and dilute in more 95% ethanol and get some before and after traces. This experiment looks cheap and repeatable. Beats me why nobody has discovered this before. |
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#21 |
Illuminator
Join Date: Jul 2007
Posts: 4,076
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The nanoheterogenous structure of water can be determined by interactive phenomena such as epitaxy (the transmission of structural information from the surface of one material to another without the transfer of any matter),
Um, no. I used to work in an epitaxy lab. In any meaningful sense, epitaxy is about the growth of solids materials, in particular crystalline thin-film structures. Liquid water does not have this kind of order. Is this guy really supposed to be a materials scientist? Commenting on the special issue, Professor Chaplin said: “Science has a lot more to discover about such effects and how they might relate to homeopathy. It is unjustified to dismiss homeopathy, as some scientists do, just because we don’t have a full understanding of how it works.” "It is unjustified to dismiss [ astrology | throwing people in the water to determine their guilt or innocence | foretelling via goat entrails | my lucky socks ] just because we don't have a full understanding of how it works." "In his overview he is critical of the “unscientific rhetoric” of some scientists who reject the memory of water concept “with a narrow view of the subject and without any examination or appreciation of the full body of evidence.” See, that's the problem, doc. They have looked at the full body of evidence. You're the one who wants to throw out physics and chemistry in favor of ever-fainter glimmers in the noise of instruments built by real scientists. You've had two centuries to come up with something. Give it up. |
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#22 |
Persnickety Insect
Join Date: Dec 2002
Location: Sunny Munuvia
Posts: 16,343
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Just on Martin Chaplin - his name appeared in Roy's previous article, so I looked him up. He has a website with a ton of information on the structure of water, including several hundred bibliographical entries... Only one of which (that I could see) references an experimental study, and that one doesn't support his claims.
To call his work "entirely speculative" would be kind. |
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#23 |
Graduate Poster
Join Date: Nov 2006
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#24 |
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#25 |
Graduate Poster
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#26 |
Anti-homeopathy illuminati member
Join Date: Feb 2004
Posts: 5,363
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"i'm frankly surprised homeopathy does as well as placebo" Anonymous homeopath. "Alas, to wear the mantle of Galileo it is not enough that you be persecuted by an unkind establishment; you must also be right." (Robert Park) Is the pen is mightier than the sword? Its effectiveness as a weapon is certainly enhanced if it is sharpened properly and poked in the eye of your opponent. |
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#27 |
Anti-homeopathy illuminati member
Join Date: Oct 2003
Posts: 28,209
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No results from FTIR? FTIR data can be quite hard to fiddle.
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#28 |
Graduate Poster
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#29 |
Adult human female
Join Date: Sep 2003
Location: NT 150 511
Posts: 50,593
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__________________
"The way we vote will depend, ultimately, on whether we are persuaded to hope or to fear." - Aonghas MacNeacail, June 2012. |
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#30 |
Graduate Poster
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#31 |
Banned
Join Date: Sep 2002
Posts: 26,704
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Forgive me, chemist-people and research scientists, but isn't spectrography based on the principle that there ARE specific molecules of test compound in existance that give the peaks in the readings? That is, regardless of the mix of compounds, ethanol always produces peak(s) at certain point(s) due to the fact that they ARE molecules of ethanol.
If so, wouldn't the results that the "homeopathic" ethanol lost its spectra peaks mean that there is no ethanol in that test mix at all? That means it is actually another compound altogether, or that it was a very shoddy test run. The obvious conclusion I would come to is that Rustrum simply failed to maintain strict sterility and separation when he did the ethanol testing. IF he actually did the ethanol testing. So is that not a reasonable conclusion from the data? Or have I missed something here... |
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#32 |
Critical Thinker
Join Date: Apr 2004
Posts: 325
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Just to echo Rolfe's and Zep's comments, laboratory ethanol is a strange beastie. Absolute, pure alcohol, after rigorous drying, becomes 95% alcohol after exposure to air (it sucks up air-borne moisture). Because of statutory controls on the supply of "drinkable" alcohol, it is rare to use this in the lab.
What is generally used in the lab is IMS, industrial methylated spirits, that is regular ethanol that has been "denatured" by the addition of benzene, phenol, methanol, and other things, so that if you drink it, it would send you blind. All of the aromatic denaturants, (benzene and the phenol) have significant absorptions in the UV, and this could be the signal that Rolfe claims is not characteristic of ethanol. At any rate different batches of IMS have different quantities of denaturant. Years ago, my old profs used to add water and lemon cordial to IMS that had not been significantly methylated (i.e. "denatured") for an instant party. I don't know of course what solvent Roy used; anyone can make a mistake, but I would like a clear description of his source of ethanol and how he treated it. |
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#33 |
Graduate Poster
Join Date: Mar 2006
Posts: 1,433
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No clear description given in the paper (see post 20). Presumably, and that's a big presumption, all the ethanol was handled and provided by Hahnemann Laboratories. In fact all that is stated is that the lab prepared Nux vom and Nat mur samples for them, and then sent them by overnight courier. There's no mention that they also sent in a blank sample of the same ethanol used in the succussions.
Did Roy's group use their own ethanol as a control, and not one provided by Hahnemann Lab's? |
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#34 |
Mostly harmless
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Nor Flanden
Posts: 37,690
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I assume the claim is that the spectra are different because the structure of the ethanol has been subtly altered in some way (perhaps by changes in the hydrogen bonding between molecules making bonds more or less polar?). The other explanations you mention are at least as plausible. |
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"You got to use your brain." - McKinley Morganfield "The poor mystic homeopaths feel like petted house-cats thrown at high flood on the breaking ice." - Leon Trotsky |
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#35 |
Critical Thinker
Join Date: Apr 2004
Posts: 325
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I've yet to read the paper, but as you say, a control sample of ethyl alcohol would be key. I don't know what nux vom is either (something to avoid); regarding nat mur, it is a fact that sodium chloride has next to no solubility in 95% ethyl alcohol (it is a standard undergraduate expt to prepare solutions of sodium chloride, bromide, iodide, and then add a squirt of alcohol - and out come the crystals of what?). So what is the actual procedure in making nat mur in ethyl alcohol? The likelihood of contamination by something is very high.
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#36 |
Thinker
Join Date: Jun 2007
Posts: 203
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At least he gets the units of Planck's constant right this time, even if he still can't spell the names of Del Giudice, Gribbin or Auyang.
The article by Teixeira explains clearly why it's all a pair of dingo's kidneys anyway. |
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#37 |
Thinker
Join Date: Jun 2007
Posts: 203
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It's the tree from which we get noted rat poison and murder weapon strychnine.
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#38 |
Mostly harmless
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Nor Flanden
Posts: 37,690
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__________________
"You got to use your brain." - McKinley Morganfield "The poor mystic homeopaths feel like petted house-cats thrown at high flood on the breaking ice." - Leon Trotsky |
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#39 |
Critical Thinker
Join Date: Dec 2006
Posts: 476
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I'm looking at the PDF/PPT file, and I have a question. Does anyone know why the graphs on slide 31 show nux vom in descending order (6c highest, then 12c, then 30c), yet on page 30 the nat mur sample goes from 12c to 30c to 6c? Did Roy try to explain that in the non-powerpoint paper?
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#40 |
Adult human female
Join Date: Sep 2003
Location: NT 150 511
Posts: 50,593
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As far as I can make out, there is no claim at all. He just presents the spectra and notes that they are different. Why they might be different seems not to have entered anyone's head. Having said that, I'm going by the slide show, not the paper. I'll have a look at the paper at lunchtime. The point about ethanol as a solvent for UV spectroscopy is that it doesn't absorb significantly above about 280nm. If you start using some preparation with additives that do absorb above 280nm, you've rather destroyed the point of the whole thing. Which doesn't mean that isn't exactly what has happened. Rolfe. |
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