As you probably know, that is not the only exception skeptics take with homeopathy. However, yes that is one point against it.



It would if we could agree that the experiments are valid. We can't, however. All of the experiments you refer to have been challenged in different ways. If you take a look over at hpathy, you will find my review (much disputed, but that's another story) of one experiment with Kirlian photograpy. I find that study fatally flawed.



I have not studied that experiment, but generally: Even if some phenomenon was found, it would still only be part of the way to vindicate homeopathy. You still need to prove that there is a vital force and that like does actually cure like (as a universal principle).



Right, it does not. You cannot prove a negative. However, it is still a problem of homeopathy when well-designed studies fail to show results.


If there is no known mechanism to support a theory, and well-designed experiments consistently fail to support it, there comes a time when science is justified in making the assumption that the theory is wrong. At this point it remains up to the supporters of the theory to provide new evidence.



Actually, that claim is not mine. That is the claim we are consistently met with whenever we suggest a double-blind trial. Then we are told that those moderate modifications to standard procedure, that are needed to implement a double-blind protocol, will make the result useless.



You know, this is the standard claim: "It works, except when it doesn't."



Yes, I would have to dismiss it as anecdotical evidence.



Do you realize that that statement supports my position better than yours?


If homeopathy has no effect at all (my position), then yes, it will do no harm. ... And the cures you observe are due to other reasons.


If homeopathy has a distinct (even magic) effect (your position), then it is really absurd to claim that a faulty prescription will do no harm. And you are in fact in disagreement with many homeopaths, who will say that a faulty prescription can indeed cause harm.


Hans

__________________
<i>You have a right to your own opinion, but not to your own facts.</i>

I was over there and I found that what was fatally flawed was your understanding of the study - not the study itself. You and another chap went on and on without actually understanding what the instrumentation and image processing that was used. If you had understood the instrumentation you would have realised that the researcher had actually addressed a number of issues that you had raised such as the random nature of kirlian photography.

Now, isn't this shifting the goal-post a tad ? Why throw in vital force ? The study was to show that like cure like. The vital force mechanism was only an attempt to explain the phenomenon. The ISSUE is whether LIKE CURE LIKE.

So your objection in this case is NOT VALID.

One strategy(dirty if you like) is to expand an issue at hand by bringing in extraneous issues or fact.


There are 2 objections to what you have raised. The so-called well-designed studies are studies that conform to your scientific standards. Science is linear for all intents and purposes and when it is used to study a system that is non-linear it is often found wanting. When science failed to find evidence it is the failure of science. Science is blind and if you know why this is so then you would be a bit more circumspect in the conclusion that science offer.

You claimed consistently found nothing that's because science had consistently used a reductionistic yard-stick.

In chinese medicine there's a saying - A single herbs cure a thousand symptoms, a symptom cured by a thousand herbs.

The chinese use "thousand" to indicate many. Homoeopathy is also the same. This is why in homoeopathy as in chinese medicine or ayurvedic medicine that there's NO DISEASES. There are a set of related symptoms or conditons.

How does the scientific method begin to address that ?

One evening I decided to pen my insight on chinese medicine and homoeopathy and it can be found here.

http://nch.ipbfree.com/index.php?showtopic=1263

Do have a look at it.

One of your objection to anecdotal evidences was that a lot of healing happen by itself. Let me give you another anecdotal evidence and you decide if it is "coincidence".

My mom had a chronic cough condition - very bad and she suffers greatly. My sisters took her to see modern medicine doctor and she was prescribed cough medicine that did squat for her. I decided to research her case. I found Amonium Carb which fitted her symptom very well. I gave it to her - did not work. I went back to the books and found Cactus 30C. The day I decided to give her this she was coughing very badly. I gave her one dose. And I waited for well over half-an hour. Her cough STOPPED.

But she had oedema and again western medicine did deedly squat for her. I tried anica which someone had suggested - nothing happened. Then one day I had an insight - in chinese medicine the lung is responsible for expelling fluid from the body and when the lung is weakened you will suffer fluid retention(lung in chinese medicine refers to the entire meridian and not only the organ). Since cactus had helped her lung by tonifying it I decided to give her 2 additional days of cactus and voila her oedema disappeared.

If this was coincident that her cough came back together with some oedema in her leg again a few weeks later. I did the same thing for her but this time I gave her cactus 30C for 3 days in a row - 3 doses each day. And her condition stabilised again.

Coincident ?

My sister always had very bad sinus and for years had visited allopathic doctors.When I first suggested homoeopathy she didn't believed in it and was even afraid of taking the medicine. After a lot of convincing she tried 2 remedies but it did not work at all. One day she was very desperate
and made an appointment with a specialist in Kuala Lumpur....Kuantan is a small town. Her sinus was so bad that she had terrible migraine and her eyes felt like popping out. 2 days before she went to Kuala Lumpur for her check up with the specialist , one final remedy I urged her to try before going arrived. I gave her one dose. That day and the next her symptom aggravated very badly - I knew I found the remedy. The day she went to Kuala Lumpur all her problems of months disappeared. When she visited the specialist she was symptom free and the doctor did not find any growth.

Until today after about 3 weeks now she's still symptom free. After for months on all kinds of western medicine remedy for sinus, headache and eyes popping out, shooting pain in the back - she had to consumed bags of western medicine and nothing helped her.

Coincident ?

I'm quite analytical as you would have known by now. How do I reject such evidences ?

Hans, you are grasping at straw. How could you conclude that just because something can cure it must do harm as well. Let's take elevated blood sugar as an example. Take 1/2 a tsp of cinnamon twice a day and you can see your blood sugar plummet. But a lot of cinnamon is used in a lot of cooking in the far east here. What harm had come to them ?

What the other homoeopaths are saying is that if we take a particular remedy over extended period of time then we will prove the remedy. As for harm, we can take many doses of the wrong remedy and no harm will come from it. However if there's disharmony the remedy will balance it out.

That's what I think the homoeopaths are saying but I may be wrong. I don't know what they are doing - just as you don't really know what they meant unless you clarify with them.

Well if you believe so much in evidence-based medicine then here's something for you to chew on. I posted this in soc.culture.hongkong etc.

------
According to a British Medical Journal Clinical Evidence review of 2,404 conventional treatments, only
15% were rated as beneficial,
22% as likely to be beneficial,
7% as trade off between benefits and harms,
5% as unlikely to be beneficial,
4% as likely to be ineffective or harmful

and

47% of unknown effectiveness.

www.clinicalevidence.com/ceweb/about/knowledge.jsp



In every clinical study the accepted criteria for effectiveness beyond chance is 1 in 100. This standard is below other scientific endeavour. To put this statistics in perspective (in a simple minded way - taking away all the statistical calculation of probability) if 100 people are treated and 2 are found to benefit while in the control group out of 100 only 1 benefit. Then the 1% improvement is then considered as an event beyond chance or placebo. Such studies can then be used to apply to FDA for approval even if 6 or 7 other studies indicated otherwise.



Such evidence of efficacy had failed to recognise that the drug failed to help the other 98 % of the people. In a number of statin
drug trials the effectiveness was even less than 1%.



Such studies will also not reveal that the drug could actually cause harm to almost all of them, in one way or another.



If efficacy is measured in such minuscule , homoeopathic level (I'm just kidding) then how could anyone ever claim that modern medicine has evidence of benefit when the evidence of lack of benefit is even greater. If we have to pay so much money for so little chance of a benefit we are better off buying lottery.



If next time your physician tell you that this drug is a 50% improvement in chance (1/2) ask him what's the ABSOLUTE rate of efficacy. The relative rate of efficacy had always been marketed because it looks large and impressive but when you ask for the absolute number of people helped out of how many went into the trial you will get the real picture.



Then ask for the side-effects. And the cost would be more than the cost of the drug you pay for.
----- End of quote----

--Chiong
http://djhampa.spaces.live.com

Heheh, well, Neil (this other chap) is in denial at the moment, and you can choose to join him, but I have to tell you that I understand the trial quite well. I'm an electronic engineer and I make and review test protocols for a living.

The problem with the paper, apart from their choice of a frankly hopeless measuring method, is that they make a statistical significance test on selected data, and you are not allowed to do that.

Like does cure like. ....In specialized cases. However, for homeopathy to function, as a system, it must work as a universal principle. To claim that you can cure any disease (or even most diseases), by taking a symptom profile and prescribing a similum, is to claim that like cures like is a universal principle.

I did not throw in the vital force, Hahnemann did. The vital force is the current explanation in homeopathic doctrine to why like cures like is a universal principle. If you want to replace it with something else, be my guest, but you have to have something there.



Yes, they are, because:

1) Those are the kind of studies we have.

2) Those are the kind you must expect to satisfy if you want scientific recognition.

Homeopaths are free to invent a different test method, but they must then show that it is valid.

Linear? Non-linear? Those are just words. What do you mean by them?

Or it could be because there IS no evidence.

You know, that is, logically, the same as saying that there is no conenction between herbs and cures .


That is, basically quite simple: Apply the modality, and see if there is an effect. In other words, do the patients get better, or don't they?

My basic objection about anecdotical evidence is that it cannot be verified, and a cause and effect cannot be established.

Typical stories. You tried various things, and one day one of them coincided with improvement. So you conclude that since improvement happened after that treatment, it was caused by it.

You can't make such a conclusion.

By learning real analytical methods.

No, that is not what I said. I chalenged YOUR blanket claim that homeopathy does no harm. How can you make such a claim? How do you know this? In your opinion, homeopathy has a distinct effect on the body. How can you be sure that this effect doesn't have the potential to do harm?

Cinnamon can treat diabetes? Wow! You should publish this, you'd be eligible for the Nobel Prize. ... Seriously, why do you think people are struggling with diabetes, including in your own country, if a simple, and as you note abundant, spice could help them?

Analyzing skills, again: Because one thing works in a certain way, it doesn't mean everything works that way.


I have clairified with them. I have been debating with homeoapths for years. Some think, like you, that remedies are harmless, others don't.

No, that is not the way things are evaluated. You should read up on statistical significance studies.

If the study is only designed to show beneficial effects, then thati s what they will show. However, all phase 3 studies are designed to also disclose adverse effects.

And that is not how it is. Apparantly, you don't understand statistics.

Hans

__________________
<i>You have a right to your own opinion, but not to your own facts.</i>