From the You have got to be kidding file.
M H Haider in the Daily Star (Dhaka) talking about homeopathy in an absurdly “gosh how can one possibly tell either way” manner.
The Law of Similars holds that substances that cause healthy people to get symptoms can cure the medical condition that has these symptoms.
When you dice onions, you have watery eyes and a running nose. When you have hay fever, you face similar problems. A homeopath will tell you that since onions have had similar effects on you when you were healthy, onions should be able to cure the problem that is showing those very effects of running nose and watery eyes.
How does that follow? And if it did follow, why would that mean it applies to everything? A mosquito can transmit malaria, therefore a mosquito should be able to cure the malaria? How is that any kind of “Law”? Who cares that something “holds that” something; the issue is whether that’s accurate or not.
What’s hard to accept is the levels of dilution homeopathic remedies see. The original substance, the real medicine that is, goes through colossal dilutions (and a unique vigorous shaking). Often, the homeopathic remedies are diluted to the point where the original substance becomes chemically non-existent.
Then why on earth would homeopathy work, naysayers rightfully argue. The answer is not very clear. Homeopaths believe that even though the substance is not there, the ‘energy’ of the substance is; and it is this ‘energy’ that aids the healing energy and mechanisms of the body. The dilution and the vigorous shaking create the healing power homeopathic remedies have.
A proper understanding and knowledge of how it works is still underway, and many think that the answer may even lie in the realm of quantum physics.
Again, who cares what homeopaths “believe”? It’s an empirical subject; empirical investigation has not found evidence to support what homeopaths “believe”; the fact that quacks are still marketing the stuff doesn’t change that.
Maybe it’s the placebo effect, Haider concedes. And yet…
But may I ask you, good sir, that if placebo effect is what homeopathy is all about, how can it work with infants and animals? Hence, the placebo effect may not be a strong argument.
It can’t.
This kind of fatuous “who can tell either way” nonsense is why drugstore chains are selling homeopathic asthma “treatment” right next to actual medicine. It’s a fucking scandal.
With your permission Ophelia – I’ll reproduce in full an article I wrote last year on homeopathy. I hope that you find it useful….
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It’s sympathetic magic. It’s amazing people can honestly believe in it.
It ‘works’ for infants and animals because the results are being claimed by the ones administering the potion.
It’s the Law of Stoopid. If Homeopathy can cause the stoopid then Homeopathy can cure the stoopid. You just have to wait for it. Results are coming along any day now. Wait for it. Wait for it. OK, send me some money. That should speed things up.
Umm… Because animals experience a placebo effect, maybe? See also here, here and . And that’s just animals.
I presume infants can display a placebo effect simply by gauging their reactions on the reactions of the adults around them (being such amazing sponges of surrounding information).
So… homeopathy doesn’t work. Because the placebo effect isn’t exclusive to humans. So there, we’re not that special after all!
Then why on earth would homeopathy work, naysayers rightfully argue.
No, naysayers aren’t asking how homeopathy works, they’re saying it doesn’t work: the clue’s in the word ‘nay’.
The answer is not very clear. Homeopaths believe that even though the substance is not there, the ‘energy’ of the substance is; and it is this ‘energy’ that aids the healing energy and mechanisms of the body. The dilution and the vigorous shaking create the healing power homeopathic remedies have.
If this is what homeopathists believe we should be studying homeopathists not homeopathy since psychologists can learn much about the brain from studying people with delusions.
A proper understanding and knowledge of how it works is still underway, and many think that the answer may even lie in the realm of quantum physics.
I doubt that ‘many’ includes any quantum physicists.
I know from personal experience that chopping onions while suffering from watery eyes and a running nose makes the eyes water more and the nose to produce copious amounts of watery mucus. Maybe I should vigorously shake myself.
Then why on earth would homeopathy work, naysayers rightfully argue. The answer is not very clear.
To the contrary, the answer is very clear. It fucking doesn’t. If it did, everything we know about chemistry, physics, pharmacology and several other sciences is not just wrong, but shockingly wrong.
Okrent’s Law: The pursuit of balance can create imbalance, because sometimes, something is true.
Al Dente
Just make sure you also drink copious amounts of water beforehand. For the proper dilution.
Well it can – as placebo – actually it’s easy to see how it might work “better” on animals and children. Parents/owners are nervous about their little darling, and gives them some homeopathy. Relieved that they could do something about their dog/child, they relax. Since they are now more relaxed, they worry less about their little snookums, and presto – the remedy “worked”. You will notice that the state of their animal/child is irrelevant to this equation.
You mean like how it worked for the baby of a couple of homeopaths who let it die of entirely treatable eczema?
rq – I followed only one of your links, the one to SBM, but it doesn’t say placebo works in animals.
mole @ 1
Heh heh heh.
Homeopathy is pure bunk, of course! But there is something to chiles clearing up congestion[1].
[1]http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/08/110825164933.htm
By coincidence, there was just a Horizon show about placebos. Some of us can see it on iplayer, I expect.
Chiles?! Good lord, of course there is. That’s not woo. I eat food as hot-spicy as I can when I have a cold.
I love/hate chiles for that exact reason.
On the one hand, I can breathe.
On the other, I can’t feel my face.
I wear varifocal contact lenses. Not only are they based on sound science but they also – entirely coincidentally – protect my eyes from sin-propantheal-S-oxide, the chemical emitted by onions which causes eye irritation and makes people ‘cry’ when they slice them.
But it doesn’t work! What is more, we already have a proper understanding and knowledge of how it doesn’t work. Mere belief strikes again.
Any “Law of Something” with a capital-letter name is a mysterious fact of nature that no one can explain and you just have to memorise and use. Unfortunately, that’s what science is to a lot of people: After all, that’s how it works in way too many maths, physics, chemistry and biology books and lessons. No explanations, no deriving how stuff works from observation or previous knowledge without a fancy name, no thinking about what mechanisms apply when, just Laws.
This kind of article is what such a way of science teaching produces.
Ophelia – the first link actually addresses it, and the third one is an emotional personal experience helping one’s dog via placebo effect (it’s a bit… weird, but has two references at the end, one of which is my first link, that are interesting). The fourth link didn’t go through, but that one speaks of rats, specifically. :/ Sorry about the mess.
The Law of Similars holds weapons-grade stupid.
“Chiles?! Good lord, of course there is. That’s not woo. I eat food as hot-spicy as I can when I have a cold.”
Didn’t Buddy Hackett coin the term “Jewish Dristan” as a nickname for horseradish?
Okay, I really have come to despise the term ‘placebo effect’. It’s got two entirely different sub-meanings, that get conflated as a last defense by the woo-meisters.
1: The belief that my symptoms are better, despite having received no actual treatment. It doesn’t mean my symptoms ARE better–I may still be running the same fever, or still have a mass growing in my lymph nodes, or whatever. I just am tapping a form of cognitive dissonance to be able to say that these symptoms are no longer as bad. This form of Placebo Effect basically is only useful for pain management and other forms of subjective symptom relief. I may still have a rash; I’ve just gotten better at ignoring the itching sensation. It can feel beneficial, especially in the case of transient conditions–if I can suppress the aches resulting from a fever for a period, then when the fever passes, I’ll be done with it.
2: “Mind over body” claptrap that suggests I can actually will my tumor to shrink, my temperature to drop, my arteries to clear, and so on. That’s what the original article being quoted is trying to conjure up. This is bunk of the first order, but it’s what a lot of people think of when they hear the term “Placebo Effect”–ie, “I thought I’d get better, so I did.” Has THIS sort of Placebo Effect, countering actual physiological conditions like bleeding, tumor size, etc, ever been observed?