Das ist nichts für schwache Nerven. Hier gibt es Fraktur. PZ Myers langt zu. ENDLICH!
Natürlich ist das nur ein Vorgeschmack. So richtig mit der Kelle wird im Original ausgeteilt, weil da die vielen Links erscheinen! Also: ab zu PZ Myers. LESEN!
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/02/ums_open_shame_the_center_for.php[*QUOTE]
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UM's open shame, the Center for Spirituality & HealingCategory: Skepticism
Posted on: February 4, 2010 11:30 AM, by PZ Myers
I
'm quite proud, under most circumstances, to be affiliated with the University of Minnesota: it's an excellent university (and the Morris campus is the best within the system, although some of the other campuses argue about that), we've got great students, and we are a secular public institution dedicated to giving an affordable education to anyone. However, there is also one thing about the University of Minnesota which causes me great shame, and which I consider a betrayal of reason and evidence.
I am speaking, of course, of the Center for Spirituality & Healing. Center for Bullshit & Quackery is more like it. It's the cesspit of the university, where all the pseudoscientific fuzzy-headed crap that fails is excreted, polished, gilded, and held on high as a beacon of New Age light to lead the gullible into a sewer of feel-good futility. If I were president of the university (only possible if genies are real), my first act would be to shut down the whole institution and send the dishonest rascals running the show back to their profitable nostrum-peddling, crystal-gazing, finger-waving tea rooms and sideshow tents.
What prompts my crankiness this time is that the CSH is offering a workshop, Homeopathy Acute Care Workshop.
Homeopathy? At my university? In the health sciences building? The stones of that building should writhe in revulsion and vomit forth the participants.
Stones can't rebel, but the faculty and staff can. One scientist here wrote a short note in response to the organizer of this shameful nonsense.
Homeopathy is a completely bogus therapy. I am astounded that you are presenting this misinformation here at the university. This is a disgrace, and an insult to the real work being done at the U of M.
And he got a reply!
Dear Michael, I have taken a few days to sit with your hostile and critical email, as I wanted to give it a fair evaluation time. I was quite stunned by the vehemence of your note, and must question exactly how much you know about Homeopathy, and where you learned that.
It is my role as faculty advisor for the IHEAL to support the student's interests, and help them in finding resources and information. As a CHIP committee, IHEAL is a student group for sharing interdisciplinary interests in integrative healthcare--that includes exploring other systems of medicine and other approaches to healing from those they are exposed to in conventional medical education. We encourage all of our students to be explorers. They should investigate unknown areas with curiosity as well as academic rigor. I am proud and impressed by the initiative this year's IHEAL group in seeking out and organizing the educational opportunities they desired--including Homeopathy. The faculty they have brought in to present on this topic are both top notch practitioners and teachers--bios attached.
I do not know what the basis is of your rigid judgment, but would like to offer the opportunity for there to be increased understanding and awareness, if you are interested. I will not, in this venue, go into trying to explain or justify the practice of homeopathy, but I have attached two documents summarizing some significant research publications that may be useful to you (the brief list, and the complete one.) I also would refer you to the free, on-line book by Dr. Jacob Mirman, MD (graduate of UMN medical school)
http://bookonhealing.com/component/content/article/46/137.htmlI would also recommend "Homeopathy: Beyond Flat Earth Medicine" an introduction to homeopathy, a primer for both patients and students.
Many physicians and scientists reject Homeopathy without any knowledge, because they say there is no plausible mechanism that can explain HOW it works, regardless of experiences and studies that have shown its impacts. Remember that we don't know how the majority of biomedical interventions, including drugs, work. Additionally, at one time we didn't know about germs and didn't believe that hand-washing had a mechanism of action that could explain how it impacted stopping the spread of disease--so it was fought against for decades. True, science has not yet created the technology to explore homeopathy in a way that can be understood. That doesn't mean we stop asking the questions.
This may be a long-winded answer to your comment/accusation, but I hope that you find it enlightening.
Yours in academic rigor,
Karen Lawson
Faculty Advisor, IHEAL
She's wrong in many things. One is that we reject homeopathy without any knowledge; we certainly do have knowledge of homeopathy and its principles, and that's the reason it is rejected! There is no mechanism for highly diluted substances to work as they claim, and the principle of treating like with like is simply medieval sympathetic magic. It doesn't work.
There are no significant studies that show any real effect, either. If there were a consistent pattern of homeopathic remedies doing anything, then we'd be interested; instead, we've got lots of studies that show no statistical difference between homeopathic solutions and water. At best, the proponents can cherry-pick all the studies done for ones that are either methodologically weak or that show a chance variation in their favor.
Which always raises a question in my mind: if homeopathy is so difficult to assess using those reductionist techniques of modern science and medicine, how the hell do homeopaths know they work? That's one of the fundamental principles of science, that you can't just get by on assertions — you have to be able to explain how you know something, and homeopaths can't. They just pluck some magical association out of their butt and prescribe it…and then after the fact, they claim that it works for their patients. But if it actually works for their patients, then it would be amenable to clinical trials.
They can't claim that it works, and simultaneously that it doesn't work when examined rigorously.
Even when they're trying to argue that there is evidence for homeopathy, they always seem to begin with a lot of waffling about how science can't really examine their discipline.
Homeopathy is not a modality or therapy, but an entire system of medicine, with its own paradigm of understanding health and illness. That paradigm directs the process of evaluation and treatment. Therefore, in order to accurately assess the effectiveness of the intervention, researchers need to design studies that are congruent with the way homeopathy is practiced clinically.
This means that the gold-standard, biomedical research model for drug interventions (one disease or symptom, one drug, double-blind, placebo-controlled, prospective trial) is not an ideal research process for homeopathy.
That kind of noise just enrages me. I want to grab that person by the collar and demand, "Well, then, asshole, how do you know your magic pills work?"
I know. They use wishful thinking, instead. In a description of a weak study that showed a small improvement of homeopathic remedies over placebos, they get to write "Homeopaths felt clinically had they been able to prescribe the individually matched remedy to each case, the recovery rate expected would have been as high as 90%". Well, sure, and if they'd been following my magic procedure of hopping up and down on one foot while taking their pills, I believe the recovery rate would have been 105%, therefore proving the effectiveness of monopedosaltopathy.
The screwball giving the workshop in homeopathy, Jacob Mirman, offers his own case for homeopathy. Again, it opens with superstitious bullshit.
You could read further, but trust me, that's the reasonable part. It gets loonier and loonier, ending up ranting about his enemies, who are fundamentalist Christians and atheists (atheism is a religion, he says), which are beliefs from the devil, yadda yadda yadda. He's a complete raving nutter.
Read Ben Goldacre instead. It'll be better for your mind.
I would also like to point out that President Bruininks of our university has been diagnosed with prostate cancer. His prognosis is good, because he will get the best possible medical care using the scientific methods of his own institution…but not the superstitious spiritualist nonsense of the Center for Spirituality & Healing. He will get real medicine; how he can tolerate this parasitic quackery riding along on our university is a mystery. Is it OK for the stupid and gullible people to get worthless treatments, if they want?
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http://scienceblogs.com/mt/pings/131041Comments
#1
Posted by: mikelatiolais | February 4, 2010 11:37 AM
It is an utter embarrassment. Didn't someone challenge homeopaths recently by attempting to OD on their "medicines?"
#2
Posted by: The 386sx Society | February 4, 2010 11:39 AM
She is shocked, I tell you, that someone would reject it, and has no idea of the basis of the rigid judgment, I tell you!!
#3
Posted by: Reginald Selkirk | February 4, 2010 11:41 AM
Many physicians and scientists reject Homeopathy without any knowledge, because they say there is no plausible mechanism that can explain HOW it works, regardless of experiences and studies that have shown its impacts.
Studies! Great, Lawson can provide us with the results of well-designed, well-run controlled clinical trials showing that homeopathy has efficacy better than placebo.
Can't she?
#4
Posted by: Glen Davidson | February 4, 2010 11:41 AM
Or in other words, ID once was thought to be worthless non-science, but now we have Behe, Meyer, and the whole DI showing how it is a reasonable explanation for life revealing that it has only become more stupid over time.
I'm sure that homeopathy may have every bit as much success as ID has finally produced.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p#5
Posted by: mothra | February 4, 2010 11:42 AM
Homeopathy, a kinder, gentler form of Psychopathy.
It would be interesting to find out to what extent the faculty and staff of the Center for Spirituality & Healing utilize western medicine in their daily lives. Did any of them get the H1N1 vaccine, take multi-vitamin supplements, or even eat a high fiber cereal?
#6
Posted by: Abdul Alhazred | February 4, 2010 11:42 AM
People like magic even without religion.
#7
Posted by: vanharris | February 4, 2010 11:44 AM
Jumpin' Jeezus,
Taking Charge of Your Health invites visitors to expand their options with complementary and alternative therapies; become more informed and involved healthcare consumers; and care for overall body, mind, and spirit
Well, that's internally inconsistent.
The Center has been designated by the NIH as a Developmental Center for Research on Complementary and Alternative Medicine, a distinction attained by only five institutions in the U.S.
What the feck is the NIH doing? Surely they know there's no evidence for this kind of crap?
#8
Posted by: Benjamin Geiger | February 4, 2010 11:45 AM
When I was a lot younger, someone tried to get me to accept homeopathy. And to be honest, the rationale they gave actually made sense: they used the example of ipecac. If you've swallowed (a certain class of) poison, you take ipecac to induce vomiting. Basically, it's an example of 'like cures like', but indirectly: it's more like 'like prompts your immune system to get off its cellular ass and fight like'.
Then they started in on the dilution bit, and that's where my skeptical brain (even before puberty) started saying "wait wait wait hold on what the frell are you smoking?" They tried to explain it using much, much stronger dilutions than actually used: 1C at weakest. They actually tried to pull the "it gets stronger the more you dilute it!" bit. I lol'd.
(PS: Did you hear about the homeopathic terrorist? He brought an eyedropper of poison to Lake Mead.)
#9
Posted by: alistair.coleman | February 4, 2010 11:48 AM
It is an utter embarrassment. Didn't someone challenge homeopaths recently by attempting to OD on their "medicines?"
Yes - the 10:23 campaign in the UK held a mass overdose last weekend.
The results were as expected: Some participants experienced a sugar rush, but eventually succumbed to sleep later that evening.
#10
Posted by: tsg | February 4, 2010 11:49 AM
There is no mechanism for highly diluted substances to work as they claim,
[...]
There are no significant studies that show any real effect, either.
In other words, no explanation and no effect to be explained by it. How surprising.
#11
Posted by: David Marjanović | February 4, 2010 11:49 AM
What
the
fuck!?!
#12
Posted by: Sanction | February 4, 2010 11:50 AM
From Mirman:
All true spiritual philosophies teach that we are created in the image of God, which means we have freedom of choice in everything: action, expression, thought, creation, etc... To me, God is the essence of limitless freedom and possibility, the height we must strive to reach. Devil, on the other hand, is the essence of limitation. He does not want us to be free. He wants to make us afraid and hide in our box. He lies to us, and often we may think we hear God's words, when in fact it is the devil talking to us from the pulpit or from our subconscious. This is the essence of disease.
The CSH is offering a workshop with this loony? What the fuck is wrong with the U of M?
#13
Posted by: vanharris | February 4, 2010 11:50 AM
Dr. Jacob Mirman - is that a shortened corruption of Myrmidon?
#14
Posted by: marcus | February 4, 2010 11:52 AM
PZ Myers: "It's the cesspit of the university, where all the pseudoscientific fuzzy-headed crap that fails is excreted, polished, gilded, and held on high as a beacon of New Age light to lead the gullible into a sewer of feel-good futility." Dear PZ, I wish that you would stop equivocating and tell us how you really feel. That sentence alone is pure gold.
#15
Posted by: raven | February 4, 2010 11:53 AM
Homeopathy is just magic.
Wish magic would work. It would solve all problems.
In the meantime, we all just have to go to work at our usual places.
#16
Posted by: Phodopus | February 4, 2010 11:53 AM
A weird mix of indignation and patronizing behavior...
This is exactly the reaction I would usually get when discussing religion with fundies - Their conviction was that surely I simply hadn't given it enough thought, or otherwise I would have automatically accepted JC long ago...
#17
Posted by: Celtic_Evolution | February 4, 2010 11:54 AM
There needs to be a more organized, formal protest of this, PZ... we can not allow our publicly funded Universities to become bastions of quackery! I hope you and some of the other faculty at UMM will band together in a formal protest.
#18
Posted by: Tulse | February 4, 2010 11:55 AM
The conference is on homeopathy in acute care? As in "I've got something terribly wrong with me that needs to be addressed right away or I may be permanently damaged and/or die"? And they want to give such patients water?
These folks would have their licenses revoked if they actually had any.
#19
Posted by: alistair.coleman | February 4, 2010 11:57 AM
Video of the London Mass Homeopathy Overdose here:
http://www.1023.org.uk/the-1023-overdose-event.phpMmm... tasty, tasty expensive sugar pills
#20
Posted by: vanharris | February 4, 2010 11:57 AM
Dr. Jacob Myrmidon
can view Vital Force as an interface between the soul and the physical body. The soul is a purely spiritual entity.
What a feckin' eejit! Groooooooan
#21
Posted by: vanharris | February 4, 2010 12:00 PM
He will get real medicine; how he can tolerate this parasitic quackery riding along on our university is a mystery. Is it OK for the stupid and gullible people to get worthless treatments, if they want?
If the Mayo Clinic is behind this, is it money that's at the root of this evil?
#22
Posted by: gre | February 4, 2010 12:02 PM
Yeah, I think that the Homeopaths admiting that their "Products have no active ingredients" after the 10^23 overdose campaign (
http://www.1023.org.uk/)this week should be more than enough to shut them up finaly.
And they promote this quackery at a University?
#23
Posted by: Abdul Alhazred | February 4, 2010 12:07 PM
It is possible to OD on homeopathic remedies, and there's even a word for that.
It's called "drowning".
#24
Posted by:
https://me.yahoo.com/hairychris444#96384 | February 4, 2010 12:10 PM
Fucktards.
Ben Goldacre's article seems to be pretty much what he used in his 'Bad Science' book. Which I can recommend, if only for his enjoyably venomous tone!
#25
Posted by: black-wolf72 | February 4, 2010 12:13 PM
Going by how a current discussion I'm having with a homeopathy believer is going, it's apparently sufficient proof of homeopathy's efficacy to demonstrate that it's not actually poisonous to swallow the stuff.
"See, people x,y and z claim it's helped them, and in this study right here the scientists found no actual causality between this woman's death and her intake of this homeopathic liquid. So how can you keep saying it doesn't so anything".
Of course I explain the placebo effect, but according to believers it can't be a placebo if it says "diluted from substance Q plus alcohol 6%".
There's just no way to get through to them, because they simply don't know how science works, why it works, why the scientific method is even considered in discerning good results from bad ones. I think such believers, from homeopathy to Christian Science, have just grown obscenely lazy in their understanding of the world. Generation after generation, they've seen no massively lethal epidemics, no starvation, no horrendous child mortality rates. They have simply forgotten about how all of this was pushed back after millenia of suffering, pushed back from a state of the world in which their present mindset was prevalent and determined how problems were approached. They aren't alternative scientists, they are simply pre-scientists who are being accomodated by a society that has out-progressed them but is tolerant and rich enough to suffer their presence.
#26
Posted by: MolBio | February 4, 2010 12:15 PM
Damn PZ, what will UoM have next? Alternate biology and cosmology with guest lecturers from the Discovery Institute?
When are scientists going to be more vocal, the only reason these quacks get away with this rubbish is because not enough of us are able to either mobilise to bunk these claims, or politically savvy enough to not give them credibility by taking them on.
"Can't be tested by double blind studies" What? An untestable clinical phenomenon is one that does not exist. Do these people know what double-blind is?
Oh well, maybe it's time to become a Leprechaunologist. I have tiny invisible leprechauns that can't be tested by science, but they work better than nano-particles. :p
#27
Posted by: Benjamin Geiger | February 4, 2010 12:15 PM
"Get in the fooking sack."
#28
Posted by: SC OM | February 4, 2010 12:16 PM
I've talked about this lecture on my blog, but here's Alan Sokal on homeopathy (starts at 15:00, through around 22:00):
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/audio/2008/mar/03/alan.sokal.podcast#29
Posted by: MolBio | February 4, 2010 12:17 PM
Actually death from homeopathy products is called "haemolysis"... where too much water in the blood stream causes blood cells to rupture under osmotic pressures.
I guess there's a reason homeopaths don't have hospitals or work in ERs.
#30
Posted by: bbgunn071679 | February 4, 2010 12:20 PM
Will Yanni be performing?
#31
Posted by: fishyfred | February 4, 2010 12:20 PM
Remember that we don't know how the majority of biomedical interventions, including drugs, work.
This is what really gets my goat. The arrogance to say something like this is astounding.
"Oh yeah? Well we don't know how drugs and other modern treatments work, so NYEAHHHH."
No. YOU don't know how they work. The mechanisms of how specific drugs work are well-known, especially by the doctors who prescribe them.
How do you think they were engineered in the first place? Do you think the folks at Eli Lilly throw darts at the wall to figure out what they put in their products?
#32
Posted by: BoxNDox | February 4, 2010 12:20 PM
Homeopathy Acute Care Workshop? Seriously? Do these nitwits also assign a different meaning to "acute", because if they are using it in the conventional way we're talking about stuff like an inflamed appendix about to burst, heart attacks, stokes, seizures, that sort of thing.
It's one thing to drink some water thinking it is going to help you with your insomnia, or make your migraine go away, or even help with mild diabetes. It's quite another to advocate using water to treat an imminent threat to life, especially when in many of these situations the person gettting the treatment will be unable to give informed consent.
If nothing else, the university should be deeply concerned about liability issues here.
#33
Posted by: davej | February 4, 2010 12:20 PM
I'm sure the "Center for Spirituality and Healing" is well funded. I would think the university could require that they keep a few real scientists on staff just to monitor whether any actual healing ever occurs.
#34
Posted by: Tabby Lavalamp | February 4, 2010 12:21 PM
I'm horrified that Jacob Mirman quoted Douglas Adams to try and prove his point, and just before he went into his bold text rang.
#35
Posted by: ButchKitties | February 4, 2010 12:22 PM
@alistair
Thanks for the link. For a second I thought people were trying to overdose on water, which can be very dangerous. Good to know it was the pillules.
#36
Posted by: Tabby Lavalamp | February 4, 2010 12:22 PM
DAMN IT! "Rant", not "rang"!
Oh, how I hate not being able to edit.
#37
Posted by: eeanm | February 4, 2010 12:24 PM
Well it's not the place of a university president to be blocking events and talks from happening. They do sometimes and usually for the wrong reasons.
But yes, why is the president allowing the funding of a freakin' organization founded on miseducation and fraudulent pseudoscience?
#38
Posted by: kittywhumpus | February 4, 2010 12:25 PM
Thanks for this. When I saw it listed in our Campus Brief, all I could do was sputter out a "huh... what?"
When the AHC put out their new website announcement, the first thing I did was look for a link on the homepage to this Center. Fortunately, I don't see it as a highlighted item, for now, but that's merely a small consolation.
#39
Posted by: Randomfactor | February 4, 2010 12:26 PM
PZ, you must immediately tell the university officials that they have to increase funding for the homeopathy work.
Make it stronger and stronger until it doesn't exist anymore.
#40
Posted by: Moggie | February 4, 2010 12:27 PM
#29:
I guess there's a reason homeopaths don't have hospitals or work in ERs.
The UK's NHS has one: the Royal London Homeopathic Hospital. It's a disgrace. It has "state-of-the-art treatment and research facilities", apparently.
"Our treatments are state of the art"
"But they don't bloody work!"
"Well, that is the state of the art!"
#41
Posted by: scribe999 | February 4, 2010 12:28 PM
Frankly, you're too easy on them PZ.
As far as I'm concerned, homeopaths are thieves at best...and murderers at worst, like Thomas and Manju Sam of Australia.
#42
Posted by: Celtic_Evolution | February 4, 2010 12:30 PM
Remember that we don't know how the majority of biomedical interventions, including drugs, work.
Really? *Snicker*
Additionally, at one time we didn't know about germs and didn't believe that hand-washing had a mechanism of action that could explain how it impacted stopping the spread of disease--so it was fought against for decades.
Hand-washing was fought against for decades?
Are we sure this isn't just the transcript of an old Monty Python skit?
#43
Posted by: raven | February 4, 2010 12:30 PM
Remember that we don't know how the majority of biomedical interventions, including drugs, work.
Actually we do know how the vast majority of drugs work, even aspirin these days.
It is standard, routine science.
Read the damn FDA "label" (often a small booklet) that is provided for every approved drug or hit pubmed.com., the National Library of Medicine.
#44
Posted by: MolBio | February 4, 2010 12:32 PM
The UK has a homeopathy hospital?
What kind of idiots are we putting in government?
Maybe we need a country for scientists only.
#45
Posted by: Givesgoodemail | February 4, 2010 12:32 PM
See my open letter to the Center, and to the UM president.
It's okay for the stupid and gullible to seek worthless medical treatments. It's not okay for my tax dollars to support a group that supports those treatments.
#46
Posted by: Fred The Hun | February 4, 2010 12:36 PM
That kind of noise just enrages me. I want to grab that person by the collar and demand, "Well, then, asshole, how do you know your magic pills work?"
And now a word from the mild mannered Dr. Myers... "Get in the Feckin Sack!" Wham!
#47
Posted by: Abdul Alhazred | February 4, 2010 12:36 PM
Homeopathy gets extra respect in the UK because the queen likes it.
#48
Posted by: Steve N | February 4, 2010 12:37 PM
For some reason I am reminded of the Mythbusters episode where they proved that it is indeed possible to "polish a turd". However, I would like to suggest that next time they have one of these events you "volunteer" to give a talk. Perhaps a small dose of PZ amidst the larger volume of nonsense will cure them of their dilutions?
#49
Posted by: Rutee, Shrieking Harpy of Dooooom | February 4, 2010 12:40 PM
Man, why do universities have to cater to this bullshit? It's ridiculous. You should ask her for her studies, and see if they controlled for the Observer Effect and the Placebo effect, at the absolute least.
Maybe we need a country for scientists only.
Who's going to build it?
#50
Posted by: rob | February 4, 2010 12:41 PM
their version of a double-blind study is jamming steak knives into their eyes and claiming epistemological differences.
#51
Posted by: ambulocetacean | February 4, 2010 12:43 PM
Homeopathy has to be the most retarded kind of woo that actually comes in a pill or a potion.
The internets aren't working properly. Shouldn't the fact that it's now so easy to find out why homeopathy is bullshit have killed it stone dead already?
Among the many things about alt-med that shit me to tears is the fact that homeopaths are allowed to sell pretend "vaccines" for things like malaria.
#52
Posted by: Anri | February 4, 2010 12:44 PM
Remember that we don't know how the majority of biomedical interventions, including drugs, work.
And this isn't even a correct statement.
We do know how drugs effect the body - through chemistry. We may not know every detail of each chemical reaction that every substance has in every cell in every patient, but we do indeed know the mechanism.
This is, indeed, the exact same mechanism that homeopaths claim actuates in homeopathy - that the water retains the chamical 'imprint' of the initial substance, and can therefore use standard chemistry to create changes.
That's not where homeopathy falls apart, of course - it's in the initial assumption of the water taking on the properties of the substance.
No mechanism for this has ever been so much as posited. (That I know of.)
No experiment has ever demonstrated this occuring.
Psuedoscience doesn't get much more content-free than that.
Making the claim that we don't know the mechanism by which drugs affect changes is either deeply dishonest, deeply ignorant, or some 'perfect storm' combination of both.
#53
Posted by: SplendidMonkey | February 4, 2010 12:45 PM
Maybe this department is a real cash cow for the U. They would get rid of the craziness but, you know, "they need the eggs".
#54
Posted by: ChipPanFire | February 4, 2010 12:46 PM
Probably been posted up elsewhere up on Pharyngula, but anyway... For my money Mitchell & Webb nailed the whole stupidity of it
#55
Posted by: William_J_Keith | February 4, 2010 12:50 PM
Have you considered organizing a protest? A few dozen faculty members standing outside in the cold in order to broadcast the message that UMM's *real* scientists don't condone this nonsense should help embarrass the University into disavowing this sort of quackery in the future.
#56
Posted by: Sastra | February 4, 2010 12:51 PM
Which always raises a question in my mind: if homeopathy is so difficult to assess using those reductionist techniques of modern science and medicine, how the hell do homeopaths know they work?
That's easy -- personal experience. They know it works because they've seen it work, again and again. And they think this is what science really is. You try things for yourself, and see if they work. And when they do, you accept the evidence, which you've seen for yourself, when it worked.
As blackwolf72 wrote above, "they simply don't know how science works, why it works, why the scientific method is even considered in discerning good results from bad ones." Their idea of a test is "try it out." They don't need a control group. They don't need a controlled situation. They believe in themselves. They're going to be careful.
Whenever you have terms like "spirituality" or phrases like "good for mind, body, and soul" affixed to medicine -- hell, affixed to almost anything -- it's going to be crap. I make a possible exception for the arts.
We encourage all of our students to be explorers. They should investigate unknown areas with curiosity as well as academic rigor.
Where's the rigor? There is none. They want people to approach factual knowledge about the real world the same way they approach religion: with smiles and sighs and an eagerness to affirm what's unique about people and their choices. It's like exploring the foods of different countries, or rituals for different holidays. There's no one "right" way.
They've framed the scientific method as a form of bullying. It stops people from being who they want to be, and believing what they want to believe. It excludes personal, private knowledge and casts doubts on heartfelt beliefs, lowering self-esteem.
The rhetoric they use to go after skeptics, is the same rhetoric they use when arguing against bullying. The concept of universal progress in shared knowledge is therefore rejected in favor of "personal journeys in becoming yourself."
In medicine, people will die because of this approach. That, too, will be explained as part of someone' personal journey towards spiritual activation. Nobody ever really dies in the spiritual world-view, you know. They transform to the next level. It's a hell of an attitude to approach healthcare with.
#57
Posted by: MolBio | February 4, 2010 1:06 PM
Wait, this may be so simple... if the water retains "memory" of impurities. If this were so, shouldn't the water evapourate at the same reduced temperature at high impurity as at no impurity.
If not, memory is bunk (obviously it is).
We should all be dead due to the salt we dilute in our water. It's not safe to drink. :p
#58
Posted by: arrakis | February 4, 2010 1:07 PM
I thought that my university was free from this sort of nonsense...then I found out that a friend of a friend was a pre-chiropractry major. My pride for my institution was instantly dashed.
#59
Posted by: aratina cage of the OM | February 4, 2010 1:08 PM
Yours in academic rigor
Shouldn't that be "Yours in academic rigor mortis"? Karen might as well have said she would pray for Michael or at least could have had the decency to tell Michael (and the whole of science) to fuck off.
#60
Posted by: Rorschach | February 4, 2010 1:10 PM
Didn't someone challenge homeopaths recently by attempting to OD on their "medicines?
http://thelinc.co.uk/2010/02/sceptics-take-mass-overdose-to-prove-homeopathy-is-a-hoax/Obligatory link to Mitchell&Webb :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMGIbOGu8q0Clownshoe Karen Lawson sez :
Remember that we don't know how the majority of biomedical interventions, including drugs, work.
If that was true I would not have had to spend a year of my life memorizing a big fat Pharmacology book, that explains how *gasp* drugs work !
What utter nonsense.
#61
Posted by: miketv | February 4, 2010 1:11 PM
First line of his "case" for homeopathy. "Homeopathy is in an interesting position, because it is being hated, shunned or feared by very diverse groups of people"
Just like, say... how diverse groups of people might (rightfully) fear a monkey with a scalpel?
--
I also like
"Therefore, in order to accurately assess the effectiveness of the intervention, researchers need to design studies that are congruent with the way homeopathy is practiced clinically."
In other words... Fraudulent claims need to be affirmed by fraudulent science.
#62
Posted by: IaMoL | February 4, 2010 1:11 PM
And again for Sastra a WIN.
Who believes in homeopathy? The homeopathetic.
#63
Posted by: Peter G. | February 4, 2010 1:14 PM
Astrology was, once upon a time, a legitimate field of study overlapping astronomy. One day this spirituality and healing bunk too shall pass.
#64
Posted by: spicersh | February 4, 2010 1:15 PM
I see, all this time I was confused about homeopathy and it was simply a misundestanding in terminology. Pharmaceuticals have been testing homeopathic remedies against their products for years, they just called them the control group.
#65
Posted by: Recovered Catholic | February 4, 2010 1:17 PM
I must be a closeted homeopath because these fuggers sure make me homeophobic.
#66
Posted by: QuarkyGideon | February 4, 2010 1:17 PM
PZ you must go to the convention and demonstrate it's stupidity for a "balanced" view!
Seriously it'd be great!
#67
Posted by: Cuttlefish, OM | February 4, 2010 1:18 PM
It's a wholly different system--
There are data, but you missed 'em,
In the infinite dilution of our minds!
Modern medicine is bleaker
Cos our evidence is weaker,
Which is stronger, as our different system finds!
All those articles and studies
That you put out with your buddies,
Which you think will make your evidence more strong?
It is our determination
Through our less-is-more translation,
Each one proves that Western Medicine is wrong!
While you losers have fun losing
We're diluting and succusing,
Gaining power modern science can't assess--
And our strongest contribution
May be found in this solution:
Common sense (at just one molecule, or less)!
http://digitalcuttlefish.blogspot.com/2010/02/homeopathic-science.html#68
Posted by:
https://me.yahoo.com/a/BXoeEAt2zpK5OFL_gVSsDiBYtu9C8eke_ZcwMgn89XJnGvK.Qks-#0ab8e | February 4, 2010 1:23 PM
I have taken a few days to sit with your hostile and critical email, as I wanted to give it a fair evaluation time. I was quite stunned by the vehemence of your note, and must question exactly how much you know about...
Straight out of the anti-Dawkins playbook. Its the equivalent of "I have spent years of my life learning about really tricky spiritual stuff so my opinion is far more weighty than yours."
Wrong. Learning more about woo is just to pile it higher and deeper.
Talking of which, Typekey and Google logins are not working. Perhaps the admins should sacrifice a bigger chicken?
#69
Posted by: davep | February 4, 2010 1:32 PM
fishyfred @ 31
"The mechanisms of how specific drugs work are well-known, especially by the doctors who prescribe them."
It's actually not that uncommon for the "how" not to be known. One really doesn't need to know "how" for a drug to work. One determines whether or not a drug works by measuring the effect (eg, in a double-blind controlled study).
(Of course, knowing how a drug works is interesting and useful.)
The problem with homeopathy is that there are no good indications that the drugs work at all. Another problem is that homeopathy's "how" goes against a huge amount of established science. That is, homeopathy has a "how" but it's clearly wrong.
#70
Posted by: recovering catholic | February 4, 2010 1:32 PM
How horribly embarrassing for the U of M!
Parkland College in Champaign, IL offers continuing "education" courses and workshops in homeopathy and other such nonsense. And there is great pressure from certain faculty to have these "disciplines" incorporated into the regular Health Professions curricula, which means that prospective or continuing nurses could take them for professional credit!
Keep fighting the good fight, Parkland--you know who you are.
#71
Posted by: AJ Milne | February 4, 2010 1:33 PM
Other comments have noted this, natch, but man, that phrase 'homeopathy acute care' really does raise the hairs on my neck--not to mention naturally suggesting Mitchell and Webb's bit...
But also as noted, perhaps it's just that we're misunderstanding their meaning of 'acute'... As in, no, they're not gonna be waiting in the ER with bottles of water at the ready to dose trauma victims (and in this bottle, we have the diluted essence of the fender of the truck that hit the patient)... Or so, I guess, we must hope...
No, see, these patients are people with an acutely vague sense of unease and an urgently large ratio of cash-on-hand to common sense, of which they must immediately be relieved...
(/Code 111! Code 111! We've got a wide-eyed sense of open-minded gullibility that's off the charts, and a wallet ready to blow here, people--so let's get this thing together and make every second count. Nurse! Get me that Visa machine. Stat!)
#72
Posted by: Stwriley | February 4, 2010 1:36 PM
I actually took a look at the studies Miriam listed as "evidence" on his website. I know I should have just run when he started waxing crazy about god and the devil, but I'm an historian so I'll always take a look at someone's sources just to give them the benefit of the doubt (and brother, I've got a lot of doubt.)
There's not a one of them that, even to my eye, is worth a bucket of warm spit. Sample sizes are all tiny, methodologies are so poor than even a non-scientist like myself can see the flaws, and some are so patently silly that you wonder how Miriam could believe them himself. My particular favorite is the one from the International Journal of Veterinary Homeopathy (talk about publication bias) on still-birth in pigs. It uses a study group of, I kid you not, twenty pigs and crows about a difference of 10% in the rate of still-birth between "treated" and control groups. Even I know a case of random statistical variation within a non-predictive sample when I see it, but apparently belief in homeopathy renders you incapable of understanding basic statistics. None of the other studies looked much better.
The worst part is that Miriam doesn't even present these supposedly favorable studies accurately. Once you read into these articles, it becomes apparent that the ones from respected journals don't actually reach the conclusions he claims they do, much less support homeopathy. He seems to be either at that level of self-delusion that makes fabrication automatic, or else he's a lying charlatan who knows exactly how much he's distorting fact to bilk his clients.
#73
Posted by: tsg | February 4, 2010 1:40 PM
but apparently belief in homeopathy renders you incapable of understanding basic statistics.
Actually, it's more probably the other way round.
#74
Posted by: Margaret | February 4, 2010 1:41 PM
Perhaps the admins should sacrifice a bigger chicken?
No, a more diluted chicken.
#75
Posted by: Hairhead | February 4, 2010 1:41 PM
Aarrgh! Here's how much I hate homeopathy and homeopaths:
I am friends with a wonderful woman who has spent her entire working life with children with learning disabilities. She has helped literally hundreds of children who would either be in prison or in minimum-wage jobs to become successful, happy, well-educated, productive members of society. She is a wonder and a treasure and well-loved by all. She is well past retirement age, but continues with her work because she loves it -- but she hasn't worked for a year now. Why?
Homeopathy.
A year ago, she was taking high-pressure medication to stop her from having a stroke. Of course, like all powerful medications there were some other effects which were not comfortable, but they were preferable to a comfortable death. So she goes to a homeopath who sells her a set of vials of clear water. She drinks them, stops taking her regular medication, says she feels wonderful, which she does, having none of the "side-effects" of her previous meds.
And of course she has a stroke, found by neighbouts before she dies, in hospital six weeks, back home, has another stroke, a fall, almost bleeds to death, in hospital again, and now she's back home, recovering. She is taking her doctor-prescribed medication and recovering well, but she fusses that she can't afford to buy her homeopathic waters anymore because she hasn't worked for a year . . .
And she's impervious to reason . . . I'm sure to be attending her funeral soon, if I'm not the one to find her rotting body, because as soon as she can work, she intends to take her homeopathic meds again. She won't tell me the name of her homeopathic murderer/doctor because she's sure I'm going to run over there and punch him in the face . .
Aaarrgh!
#76
Posted by: davecortesi | February 4, 2010 1:42 PM
Well, who were the "faculty they [students?] have brought in to present on this topic...bios attached." UMN faculty?
#77
Posted by: davep | February 4, 2010 1:44 PM
raven @ 34 "Actually we do know how the vast majority of drugs work, even aspirin these days."
Well, asprin works whether or not anybody knows how it works. There is no requirement for knowing how something works in determining whether or not it works. Indeed, even if one knows how something works, one still needs the double-blind controlled study to determine if it really works!
(Note that I'm not arguing that knowing how is not a good thing!)
#78
Posted by: Peter G. | February 4, 2010 1:46 PM
@67 Superb Cuttlefish, as usual. I'm beginning to think that the reason you are able to crank out these wonderful rhymes with such speed is that you are in fact a super computer hooked up to a thesaurus buried in some secret underground facility.
#79
Posted by: wisnij | February 4, 2010 1:46 PM
Homeopathy? At my university?
It's more common than you might think.
#80
Posted by: SteveN | February 4, 2010 1:47 PM
I do hate homeopathy so very, very much. Living in Germany, I'm surrounded by the rubbish and even some of my scientific colleagues fall for it, and they should know better.
I recently posted the following on Steven Novella's Neurologica blog in a post he did on homeopathy because it occurred to me that the 'mechanism' of homeopathy is even more ridiculous than generally thought:
--------------
This has almost certainly been pointed out by someone else sometime, but something occurred to me the other day that makes an even greater mockery (if that was needed) of the whole homeopathy scam. Advocates of homeopathy, in an attempt to get around the embarrassment of Avogadro’s number, usually claim that water molecules have a ‘memory’ of molecules they have come into contact with and it is this that gives the therapeutic effect.
However, let’s look what happens with a 30C preparation of a homeopathic preparation: For the sake of argument, I will assume that the ‘active’ ingredient (substance X) has a molecular weight of 600 (most will have much higher MWs, but that only makes it worse for the homeopath’s case). If the homeopath takes 1 gram of substance X and adds it to 99 mls of water (a 1C dilution) there will be 10^21 molecules of substance X dissolved in 100 mls of the 1C preparation. The 2C preparation (one ml of 1C added to 99 mls of water) will have 10^19, the 3C preparation 10^17 and so on. The 11C preparation will have 10 molecules and the 12C preparation 0.1 (i.e no) molecules. Therefore, the only water molecules present in the 12C preparation that have had any chance of contact with substance X will be those transferred in the 1ml from the 11C preparation. 1 ml of water contains 3.35×10^22 molecules of water, which means that the 13C preparation will have 3.35×10^20 ‘memory’ water molecules, 14C has 3.35×10^18 and so on. By 24C, there will be not a single molecule of water remaining that had the chance to come into contact with even one molecule of substance X. By 30C, a very common homeopathic dilution, there will be a 1 in 3×10^13 chance that even a single water molecule ever came into contact with the active substance.
I can only assume that homeopaths believe that water molecules can pass on their ‘memory’ to other water molecules. A whole new level of woo.
-----------------
Another point made recently on the 'Righteous Indignation' podcast by one of the organisers of the 1023 overdose event is that homeopaths will claim that scientific methodologies cannot be used to test homeopathy but in the next breath will trot out a series of (badly performed) scientific studies that appear to show some postive effect. Such hypocrisy!
#81
Posted by: claw | February 4, 2010 1:48 PM
"But... what's the harm?" people ask me
http://whatstheharm.net/homeopathy.htmloh. well then.
unfortunately the quacks will point out everyone ever treated by a doctor dies, too.
#82
Posted by: ric.baker1 | February 4, 2010 1:49 PM
I fucking love Cuttlefish.
#83
Posted by: ThirdMonkey | February 4, 2010 1:57 PM
"Therefore, in order to accurately assess the effectiveness of the intervention, researchers need to design studies that are congruent with the way homeopathy is practiced clinically. "
Right...
And I can turn completely invisible, but only when no one is looking. Science just hasn't come up with a way for me to measure or explain it yet (because that requires an observer which makes me visible). But just because science can't prove that I can turn invisible doesn't mean that I shouldn't keep saying that I can or making money off of people with it...
And I'm really hurt by people who say that I can't. They just don't understand how my power works and just because they can always see me doesn't give them the right to say that I can't turn invisible. Those big meanies.
#84
Posted by: slignot | February 4, 2010 1:57 PM
"We encourage all of our students to be explorers. They should investigate unknown areas with curiosity as well as academic rigor."
This sort of all-points-are-valid thinking, and its acceptance in society at large, leave me spluttering. I hear things like this and wish that I had the sort of discretionary income necessary to purchase bulk volumes of Ernst & Singh's book, Trick Or Treatment: The Undeniable Facts About Alternative Medicine. That way when confronted with people that believe there is any evidence for the efficacy of homeopathy, etc. I can help.
I particularly am irritated the insistence that the rejection of alternative therapies like homeopathy are based on a misunderstanding of the principles on which a treatment purportedly operates. The fact of the matter is, high-quality clinical trials have no bearing on whether the reasons something works are understood.
The earliest trials (for example, Lind's tests for scurvy tratments) had no attempt to understand why a treatment worked, only to establish efficacy.
Homeopathy is rejected not because we know it's just water or sugar (depending on the medium of dilution) but because it has been shown in high quality research and reviews (Cochrane and others) to be no more effective than placebo.
False hope can lead many to miss out on necessary treatment.
#85
Posted by: RickK | February 4, 2010 1:57 PM
Just amazing and sad.
Ms. Lawson - you are putting money into the pockets of frauds. You're teaching young minds how NOT to think critically. You're promoting this century's version of belief in witchcraft.
Ms. Lawson - did you know there are people who will pay you a million dollars if you can tell the difference between a "proper" homeopathic remedy and an identical sugar pill? Did you know that every "30C" dilution has exactly the same health effects as sugar pills and water? Did you know your tax dollars funded some of the studies that proved that?
Finally, Ms. Lawson, why are you working so hard to weaken generations of young minds? Why do you teach superstition and magic as equivalent to science and evidence?
Karen Lawson - what makes you hate our children and our country so much?
#86
Posted by: abb3w | February 4, 2010 2:04 PM
PZ: There is no mechanism for highly diluted substances to work as they claim
This is at most a minor problem for homeopathy as science; and PZ, I'm sorry to say that Ms. Lawson is correct so far as noting the relative unimportance of this problem.
PZ: There are no significant studies that show any real effect, either.
THIS is the major problem; and Ms. Lawson's claim "of experiences and studies that have shown its impacts" is (especially in absence of citations) suspect at best and bogus at worst.
#87
Posted by: Die Anyway | February 4, 2010 2:05 PM
A couple of years ago I got to wondering about that Homeopathic Hospital in London. Seemed to me that if homeopathy was the bunk that we say it is, then the back door of the hospital should have a line of hearses waiting for a stream of dead patients. You would think something like that wouldn't go unnoticed for long and since that didn't seem to be the case, I was curious to know what was really happening. I researched it briefly and found the answer. The hospital uses real medicine and real medical procedures and uses homeopathy as a complementary treatment. So, for example, you get your normal coronary bypass surgery with normal anesthesiology, normal blood thinners, etc. but after the surgery you get some homeopathic concoctions to (supposedly) help ease your recovery. It's a con job. They know that they need to use real medical practices to heal/cure people but they throw the homeopathy stuff on top for... whatever motive... brings in bunches of gullible patients, makes the practioners feel like they are doing something extra, they can get more reimbursement from the government... something.
#88
Posted by: skylyre | February 4, 2010 2:06 PM
@ rob
that sounds familiar
#89
Posted by: RickK | February 4, 2010 2:08 PM
"Homeopathy gets extra respect in the UK because the queen likes it."
Well then, give the Queen and her son the very best in homeopathic anti-malaria treatments and send them on a tour of African nature parks.
#90
Posted by: arensb | February 4, 2010 2:09 PM
vanharris @#7:
What the feck is the NIH doing? Surely they know there's no evidence for this kind of crap?
Well, the NIH does have a woo center. Its page on homeopathy tries to put as positive a spin as possible on woo without actually lying. In that respect it resembles a lot of religious apologetics.
#91
Posted by: frisbeetarian | February 4, 2010 2:13 PM
Did you look at the link of studies? The first two were of 'flu-like' symptoms. Wouldn't you check to see if any of the people actually had the flu to know if the treatment worked? A bunch of vague symptoms make a good study? I assume the UofM will require that the homeopaths do their housecalls on unicorns. I wonder if there is a homeopathic rabies treatment if I get bitten by a Bigfoot?
#92
Posted by: Spiro Keat | February 4, 2010 2:16 PM
Molecular memory?
Water is used to carry sewage from toilets to processing. It is then cleaned up and diluted with more water before being piped to our houses to be drunk.
So, homoeopaths drink strong solutions of shit, which is why they talk so much of it.
#93
Posted by: RBH | February 4, 2010 2:18 PM
Having earned both my BA and Ph.D. at the U of Minnesota, I'm now officially ashamed. I've sent a critical email to that Center, copying the Dean of the Medical school. Pure unadulterated bullshit is the best one can say about it.
#94
Posted by: Quotidian Torture | February 4, 2010 2:22 PM
Homeopathy? At my university?
It's more likely than you think.
#95
Posted by: Kausik Datta | February 4, 2010 2:28 PM
Celtic_Evolution:
we can not allow our publicly funded Universities to become bastions of quackery!
Too late, I think. The 'quackademic medicine' is taking over soon, and I think all of us ought to be seriously concerned about this.
#96
Posted by: Peter G. | February 4, 2010 2:31 PM
No doubt everyone has seen this but what the hell.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMGIbOGu8q0#97
Posted by: waldteufel | February 4, 2010 2:33 PM
That a modern universtity should promulgate this sort of eighteenth century nonesense is mind boggling.
The entire science faculty at UMM should be loudly protesting.
The website of the "Center for Spirituality and Healing" is a dispensory of utter bullshit.
#98
Posted by: DTL | February 4, 2010 2:36 PM
Long-time reader, ever since I first read about the Creation Museum a few weeks ago. Gotta love those creationist 'scientists' with all their 'proof'.
Nice post on exposing homeopathy. Interesting to see the letter defending homeopathy.
#99
Posted by: Joe Cracker | February 4, 2010 2:38 PM
WHAT? First line from his CASE:
"Homeopathy is in an interesting position, because it is being hated, shunned or feared by very diverse groups of people"
What the hell? What kind of argument is this? Just replace Homeo with something else.
"Slavery/racism is in an interesting position, because it is being hated, shunned or feared by very diverse groups of people"
#100
Posted by: Knockgoats | February 4, 2010 2:40 PM
The website of the "Center for Spirituality and Healing" is a dispensory of utter bullshit. - waldteufel
Yes, but you fail to take account of the many uses of bullshit in traditional medicine: for example, it's an excellent emetic, and a great way of keeping disease-carrying flies out of the kitchen (just try putting a heap of it in the sitting-room!).
#101
Posted by: Kausik Datta | February 4, 2010 2:42 PM
MolBio @29:
I guess there's a reason homeopaths don't have hospitals or work in ERs.
May be not in many places in the US, but certainly quite a few in India (such a crying shame!), UK, Canada, Argentina, Australia, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Malaysia, Switzerland, as well as a few in the US.
The woo is all-pervasive.
#102
Posted by: Lynna, OM | February 4, 2010 2:43 PM
Sastra @56
The rhetoric they use to go after skeptics, is the same rhetoric they use when arguing against bullying.
Great post, Sastra, but I just wanted to pull that sentence out and repeat it. Very insightful
#103
Posted by: Menyambal | February 4, 2010 2:53 PM
Additionally, at one time we didn't know about germs and didn't believe that hand-washing had a mechanism of action that could explain how it impacted stopping the spread of disease--so it was fought against for decades.
And after a few decades of resistance to--not fighting against--hand-washing was shown to work, and was accepted. And the fact that it worked led to research, and to the discovery of why it worked, and to the modern understanding of disease.
And handwashing was aesthetically acceptable, and kind of intuitive, like washing one's hands before eating. Shit on the fingers tastes bad, and makes you feel sick . . ..
Homeopathy, on the other hand, has been fought against for well over a century, and has never been shown to work. Yes, I know some folks think that they have seen it work. But to keep their belief that it works, they have to make some radical assumptions, and to abandon several basic precepts of science, such as double-blind testing.
The rules and mechanisms by which homeopathy supposedly works are three. All three are unusual and unobserved, and rather bizarre.
First assumption is that "Like cures Like". No other form of medicine uses that assumption or works that way. At very closest, a purgative can make you vomit up poison--purging is not used much these days. But Hahnemann taught that a poison that caused symptoms, could cure a disease which caused similar symptoms. He was not addressing the root cause of the symptoms, just the symptoms, so there is a second assumption hidden in there.
The second rule/assumption is that water has a memory, and that dilution leaves a memory of the "cure". Again, water having a memory is unique to homeopathy, goes against all science, and the dilution business makes that two assumptions in one. This totally ignores the possibility that the water has a memory of all the shit, animals, and discarded medications that it has encountered. (How does one erase water's memory, and where is that step in producing homeopathic remedies?)
Third rule/assumption is that of succussion. Supposedly, banging a bottle of water on the table jars its memory into shape. Again, unique to homeopathy, and completely whacko otherwise. And how much whacking is ideal, and which hand do you use when whacking?
Obviously, except to homeopaths, the preparation of homeopathic "cures" is extremely vulnerable to cross-contamination in the prep process--one droplet of the wrong stuff drifts across the lab, and a cure goes horribly wrong.
Which brings up another oddity of homeopathy. How can one tell what is in the bottle? By all tests, it is water. Perhaps it is only water, perhaps it is contaminated with another remedy, which, by the rules of homeopathy, will take over the "cure".
Sure, the makers may have done a good job, but how can the consumer know that? There is no oversight of any kind. And, remember, the homeopaths are the ones who firmly believe that all drug makers are heartless bastards concerned only with making money.
#104
Posted by: Tulse | February 4, 2010 2:53 PM
I guess there's a reason homeopaths don't have hospitals or work in ERs.,
May be not in many places in the US, but certainly quite a few in India (such a crying shame!), UK, Canada
Whoa there -- the Canadian listings are definitely not "hospitals" or "ERs", but random "institutes" and "training" centres. There are no homeopathic hospitals or ERs in Canada.
#105
Posted by: longhorn10 | February 4, 2010 2:54 PM
Love the tone of the post PZ. Cuttlefish, your poetry rocks. Spiro Keat #96 - you owe me a new monitor and keyboard.
#106
Posted by: timothy.green.name | February 4, 2010 2:55 PM
I wanted to post to Mitchell & Webb, but I think at least three people got in ahead of me. So I'll give you Tim Minchin's "Storm" instead.
"Storm" is an excellent attack on all kinds of woo, and specifically mentions homoeopathy at one point. How does water "somehow forget all the shit it's had in it"?
TRiG.
#107
Posted by: Celtic_Evolution | February 4, 2010 2:57 PM
for example, it's an excellent emetic, and a great way of keeping disease-carrying flies out of the kitchen
...and it's a great way to stay in shape.
[/family guy]
#108
Posted by: davep | February 4, 2010 3:10 PM
slignot @ 84 "The fact of the matter is, high-quality clinical trials have no bearing on whether the reasons something works are understood."
Yes. It's interesting that some people, even people here, don't understand that basic fact.
slignot @ 84 "Homeopathy is rejected not because we know it's just water or sugar (depending on the medium of dilution) but because it has been shown in high quality research and reviews (Cochrane and others) to be no more effective than placebo."
Actually, it is completely reasonable to reject homeopathy for this reason, since the rational expectation is that it would be no better than a placebo. One can't afford to test everything. It makes sense not to keep testing "nothing".
#109
Posted by: llewelly | February 4, 2010 3:10 PM
I would also recommend "Homeopathy: Beyond Flat Earth Medicine" an introduction to homeopathy, a primer for both patients and students.
"Flat Earth" == Crazy.
"Beyond Flat Earth" == Beyond Crazy.
At least they got the title right.
#110
Posted by: Louis | February 4, 2010 3:10 PM
You guys are commenting fast. This must be because of the homeopathic doses of cocaine you have all ingested, which is obviously more potent than allopathic doses of cocaine.
Hey, don't judge me. I was young. I wanted to know what all the fuss was about. ;-)
Louis
#111
Posted by: Menyambal | February 4, 2010 3:11 PM
after a few decades of resistance toseeing no need for--not fighting against--hand-washing
I wanted to fix that for myself.
Part of my grudge against homeopathy is the presence, in Washington, DC, of a huge monument to Hahnemann. The only monuments to one person that are larger than it are for presidents of the USA. Ghandi, for instance, has a near-life-size statue of a nearly-naked old man, walking with a stick and a bundle, on a small pedestal on a street corner. Seriously, Hahnemann's monument is hugely ornate, pretentious and in Latin, although the statue itself is about life-size.
I did, solemnly, whack the statue over the head with my cane.
#112
Posted by: Kelson | February 4, 2010 3:17 PM
@86, The problem of there being no mechanism for molecular "memory" is a fairly significant problem for homeopathy. This is mostly because we know a lot about atoms and their properties. The only way that information could be theoretically passed from one molecule to the other is by electron mobility. (since these are the only elements that can be shared) and in a 30C dilution there are 10^31 "water" electrons per molecule of original substance, which will have most likely less than 100 electrons. Even with a blatantly fraudulent interpretation of electron spin and entanglement it's impossible for 100 electrons to have any effect on 10^31 other electrons. Its like saying that if I touch a Intel CPU to a 500kV power line, the power line will spit out PI at the next transformer.
#113
Posted by: NitricAcid | February 4, 2010 3:21 PM
Homeopathic cocaine....
If you take a tiny sliver of a banknote and place it under your tongue, will that cure you of depression, lack of coordination, psychosis, and all the other things that cocaine can cause?
#114
Posted by: NotMyGod | February 4, 2010 3:24 PM
"Is it OK for the stupid and gullible people to get worthless treatments, if they want?"
The government should not give its blessing to Homeopathy in the interest of protecting us from getting sicker.However, people have the right to do stupid things, as long as they are not hurting anyone else. If I were to chug Drano, that's a stupid thing-- not an illegal thing! I'd be wrong to sue Drano assuming I survived, right? That's pretty much how I feel about smokers suing the tobacco industry: your stupid mistake, not theirs.
Point is, government can only protect us so much.
Cuttlefish, I love your poem:)
#115
Posted by: Kel, OM | February 4, 2010 3:30 PM
She's wrong in many things. One is that we reject homeopathy without any knowledge; we certainly do have knowledge of homeopathy and its principles, and that's the reason it is rejected! There is no mechanism for highly diluted substances to work as they claim, and the principle of treating like with like is simply medieval sympathetic magic. It doesn't work.
This frustrates me too. If I reject something like homoeopathy, it means I mustn't understand it. Because otherwise I must be a believer, right?
About a year ago I was travelling up to visit my dear sweet mother, and as chance would have it I ended up sitting next to a homoeopath on the bus. I held my tongue but when he said "Homoeopathy is a science" I mentioned that it lacks a biochemical mechanism. When I finally got to my Mum's, I was ranting to her about it (the guy takes those with cancer off treatment and gives them homoeopathic "remedies"), and my Mum got taken aback. S
