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In Reply to: No, he proved that it doesn't work, homeopathy is a complete fraud nt posted by Soundmind on October 25, 2005 at 17:09:57:
What he proved was that the dilution was so extreme that there was no currently measurable difference between the homeopathic sample and pure water, and the starting point for that was one scientist's claim that there was a measurable difference.Note that I did say 'currently measurable' because we get progressively capable of making finer and finer measurements over time, and we also occasionally find new things to measure. Despite these results, and I have no doubt about the results of the tests that were conducted, there is no absolute guarantee that somewhere down the track someone won't be able to revisit this particular issue and obtain a different, repeatable, result. It's probably extremely unlikely but no one can guarantee what will or won't happen in the future.
And that result doesn't prove that homeopathy doesn't work. It proves something about the claims for the way that homeopathy works. To prove that homeopathy doesn't work would require an analysis of treatment results with actual patients. That wasn't done in the show I saw.
And lest you think that I'm muddying the water there, I'll refer you to the history of cauterisation of wounds. This has been practicesed therapeutically and extremely effectively for centuries, in fact for at least 2 millennia, and over that time many different explanations have been given for why it works. We now believe that all of those explanations, other than our current explanation, were wrong. Yet having a wrong explanation had no effect on whether or not cauterisation works or not.
The standard explanation for how homeopathy works has been shown, by the tests you refer to, as being impossible unless some different result for this test is ever available due to new technology at some future date. That's on a par with showing that cauterisation doesn't work because it destroys demons or devils in the wound. Whether or not homeopathy works - ie produces improvement in certain conditions - wasn't addressed at all. I don't know whether it does or not, I've never used it for any condition and I have no intention of using it at any time in the future, but it has to be said that the study you referred to proves nothing about it's efficacy. Any conclusions you draw about the efficacy of homeopathy from that study are an inference only, and may be mistaken because there may be some other mechanism involved though what that mechanism could be is anybody's guess. Still, the fact remains that the only way to show that homeopathy doesn't work is by the same kind of trials that are used to show whether or not some other pharmaceutical treatment works or not, and that kind of study wasn't conducted here.
I'm quite happy to give Randi credit for what he actually proves, but I don't think we should play loose with what was proven and claim it to be anything other than what it was. You can't argue against bad science with bad science, and claiming this study disproved homeopathy is bad science - that wasn't what was proven at all. It certainly gives us very good reason to be very sceptical about homeopathy but that's all.
David Aiken
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Follow Ups
- No, he didn't prove that it doesn't work - David Aiken 10/26/0514:41:55 10/26/05 (0)
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