homeopathic medicine

caz_a

i've seen this also - homeopathy works on skeptics too!

i treated a friend who had been trying for a baby for 3 years. she is a pharmacist and VERY skeptical - i think she just took the remedy to humour me!... but she was pregnant within 2 weeks!

karuna

Last week I took a homeopathic remedy for my headache and this week I have a cold. The two things are obviously related!

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Dilliwala

karuna, you can be as cynical as you like about homeopathy, that's your right. But as a non-user myself (I go to an allopath if I need to), let me tell you a few things I know, based on my mother having used homeopathy regularly for a decade and a half (she still uses allopathic meds for some things, and no, a (good) homeopath doesn't ban them either):

For people whose stomachs can't tolerate the extremely strong stuff allopathy uses (they do exist, you know) homeopathy's kinder, gentler way works better.

Allopathy will often simply suppress an illness by force with its strong meds, to reappear at some point in the future. Homeopathy does actually cure some. Just like in Unani, Ayurved, Chinese medicine or any other school of medicine one cares to believe in. I'm surprised at your (rare) closed-minded view on this subject, as if there was only One Way. I have no idea why I shud believe the persons you quote as authentic authorities, and not equally or similarly-qualified persons who sing hp's virtues (no, I don't have any links, can't be bothered to track em down).

Surely you're aware that hp doctors have to pass government-controlled/supervised/approved exams before they can use the tag 'Dr.', just like everyone else. At least here they do, I don't know about other countries' licensing systems. If they were quacks or even just ineffective, I don't think our govt wud actually build and run hp-hospitals too (my mom's doc works at one in the day).

The placebo effect argument can be reversed too - you believe, as do I, that allopathy works, therefore you are cured. Hell, I can sometimes fix myself without meds, simply by believing I don't need em! But my sister had sinusitis for years too, and no allopathy cured her, homeopathy did - she wasn't a believer either way, btw. As wasn't my mom.
And my 2-year old nephew, when he come visiting earlier this year, was taken to our area hp for the usual kid-illnesses and it worked better than the strong allopathic stuff he got a year earlier (which also fixed him). Now please don't tell me he knows what a placebo is, never mind it's effect.

Contrary to your belief that hp meds are simply sugar and water, different kinds of stuff gets mixed with them, some having been named by other members. As it happens, my mom received a prescription just y'day for arsenic! This not being the first time, I think we can presume it's safe, in limited quantity. And all or most of these 'mixes' are made in factories/labs just like allopathic medicines. jyotirmoy mentioned SBL, there's others like Reckeweg, Hahnemann, etc in India.

Sorry, but I know of way too many people for whom hp works to believe that it is quackery - again, if it's just the placebo effect, then this argument works many ways, never mind what tests prove or disprove. After all, it cud be argued that those tests are aligned to a particular school of thought .
Suffice to say that if I believed it was quackery, I'd be doing my damnedest to stop my family members from using it!

EDIT:
Oh, reading back on some posts about arnica I just remembered - I've used Pomade Arnica ointment (from SBL), in the absence of any other ointment at hand, for relieving pain and it worked wonderfully, just like any other I've used in the past for sports-related injuries (and I've used many, some very good, some totally useless). Worked upto a point, that is - I challenge anyone to find an ointment of any school of medicine that will fix an almost-completely torn anterior cruciate ligament.

kmalik

Generally speaking, I am quite ambivalent and about equally distrustful of all 'systems of medicine'.

The one thing that the allopathic system of medication has going is more investment in generating new medicines and trials to get the patent rights. Also, to the extent it is a more subscribed system across the world, the experimentation takes place on a broader cross section of the population - and the experience and results that come out of that can be leveraged across a larger group of the next set of patients.

On the other hand, the pharmaceutical companies are in the business for discovering patented compounds, so the non-patentable remedies gets ignored - creating an inherent bias against them. The other systems seem to rely on the already discovered stuff (don't know how much research on developing new homeopathic drugs is taking place) or natural remedies. The price of the aurvedic drugs/compounds is rising - but I am not sure about the research or rigorous testing to establish the efficacy.


Therefore, while I find the trials, analysis of the results etc. more comforting, I also find that there might be non-patentable natural remedies or other formulations such as homeopathy that are just as or more effective and have had trials on live patients - jut without well documented and scientifically studied experiments.

So, to my mind, this whole argument about the systems of medicine does not serve us, the patient population, well. I'd rather have one system where efficacy of alternative remedies is tested and documented. But unfortunately there is little mileage (I mean money) in that - and that is the tragic reality we face.

One last point to add on the trials, etc. In the West, the pharmaceutical companies have billions of dollars/pounds/euros at stake - and the costs are large too. So, the science is sometimes helped by the money, ethical challenges as well as huge marketing investments. While some of this might not apply directly to the Indian context, money is factor there too. When actors in the market are not making money with patents, the unscrupulous ones can go into counterfeit the product to make up the margin.

What system would I chose if I had the choice? Depends upon the ailment. If it is common stuff - chances are any of the systems might be fine. In fact, homeopathy, aurvedic stuff might even be superior alternative. If it is in area that is difficult or does not have good remedies in non-patentable domain, I'd go for the allopathic alternative. If I could avoid it - I'd prefer to not use a drug until it has been approved for use for at least 5 years. If I were to use more recently approved stuff (and were in a position to research) I'd look at clinicaltrails.gov (in the US) to checkout the details that marketing does not mention, and even checkout the statistics.

PS: I recognize there are common ideas about the side effects, etc. of the allopathic drugs. The fact is that all drugs - allopathic, homeopathic, aurvedic or natural remedies are all (synthetic or natural) chemical compounds and have side effects. Some are better documented, some are due to poor prescriptive practice, etc. To the extent a drug has been experimented on (I mean prescribed) a large number of patients - it kind of proves itself in the field. So, I'd perhaps take the homeopathic stuff with a greater confidence about the side effects - but do regret the fact that there is little systematic tracking of side effects in these systems.

Uncle_Martin

With respect, if you read Karuna's posts and understood them you would see that the last thing she could be accused of is being closed minded. That accusation might have some relevance to me as I am not very tolerant of quacks who exploit the vulnerable and con working people out of their hard earned cash.

What Karuna points out is that when subjected to the strict tests of both sense and of methodology, homeopathic remedies, unlike many allopathic remedies, show no measurable benefits greater than a placebo.

I try not to let my ideological objection to the profit driven Pharmaceutical industry ripping people off blind me to the nonsense spouted by homeopathic and other alternative healers.

Should I accept the theories behind homeopathy I would be scared to touch a drop of water in case it had come into contact with something horrid and had 'remembered' its subtle influence or been affected by a flow of some non-measurable 'energy' or even been contaminated by a drop of sweat from an invisible pink elephant, whose aura is only visible to the spiritually aware.

Nevertheless what seems to flow from my conversations with health practitioners, both conventional and less so is that one of the hardest problems to crack is persuading people to get better. As Karuna pointed out many alternative practitioners are quite good at doing that. But then as well as that there is the problem of 'denial' which like the 'placebo effect' opens a whole can of worms which can not be flushed from the system by a powerful laxative or mystic chanting.

Dilliwala

Great post, km

camelgirl

I don't believe in it, I can't toss the scientific method on the ash heap.

I wish I could believe in the things so many people go crazy over--but I just can't. I simply refuse to go back to a time before we were lucky enough to have the science & meds we now have.

Just because "everyone" believes in something & can "prove" it works because they just "know it works" will never be good enough for me. I will never turn my health over to some health store clerk. Why everyone wants to rush back to the middle ages is baffling to me. I believe the life span was about 30 y.o.

So all you true believers can chuck out science & go for the snake oil--personal freedom is great!!!

This link is probably way too long to read, but just the first few paragraphs may be interesting to someone...http://www.quackwatch.com/01Quackery...ics/homeo.html

Read am amazing book about London in 1854 (only 150 yrs. ago) about the worst Cholera epidemic in it's history. For anyone who wants to see how much has changed in how we think about diseases, etc. since then, I highly recommend The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson http://www.powells.com/biblio?isbn=1594489254

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kmalik

I too believe in the scientific method. It is, however, important to understand how much of what science investigates in the medical field is driven by money. And, how much marketing direct to the public and doctors, formulary access deals with the insurance companies, etc. are part of the landscape. While not many doctors are bought and paid for by the pharma companies, a vast majority are influenced by very well orchestrated campaigns - and the driving motive in these campaigns is money, and not better science. As such, it is good to have a skeptical eye as well.

Sometimes good solutions can come outside of the spectrum of the traditional therapies. For instance, I made a reference to phage therapy in this thread. This line on therapy dealt with some critical problems, including the treatment of infections in extremities with poor circulation (common in diabetes) - where a lot of people end up losing the limbs.

PS: I have no ideological objection to the money motive in pharma, only to scenarios when more money trumps better therapy. And - it does happen.

PeakXV

Who would have thought that type 2 diabetes can be controlled by simply changing your diet and exercising .... probably there are some that are still in denial about that little revelation or consider it a form of 'quackery'.

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karuna

But Peak, that's been accepted for years. Doctors- those evil doctors in the pay of pharmaceutical companies- recommend it all the time as a first line of defence instead of medicine. In fact "prevention" has become a key word in the UK's NHS. Yes, helping to prevent people getting sick in the first place. This boils down to: "eat right, exercise" for most of the main killer and long term conditions (heart disease, stroke, diabetes, arthritis). The all-powerful Pharmacos missed a trick there, didn't they?

Guess how diet and exercise was proven to work? By using the scientific principle to test it! The very same scientific principle that proves homeopathy doesn't work! Scientists follow where the evidence leads.

Dilliwala I wrote out a great big long essay of an answer to your post and then lost it. I do not intend to post in this thread again because it's pointless. If you are interested in my response to you, PM me and I'll try to explain myself.


kmalik- homeopaths make money from homeopathy. Millions and millions. And there are some trials done by homeopaths that show homeopathy doesn't work. They just don't crow about them.

Dilliwala

karuna, if it requires writing the whole essay again, you might as well post it here.
But you don't have to explain yourself to me, I did understand what you were trying to say, and I wasn't expressing criticism of your position on this subject, just a bit surprised. Like you and others, I've always been skeptical of "alternate" schools of medicine, but at the same time I cannot disregard what I see directly around me. It is a fact that allopathy doesn't work for everyone, sometimes it can be quite detrimental too. What are those people supposed to do, suffer in the name of the scientific principle? As far's I'm concerned, if something works, it works, and if something doesn't work, it doesn't - school of thought be damned. I've come around to the view of "courses for courses" now - hell, my doc once prescribed some ayurvedic med (factory-made) to me, and he's a DM well up on the latest research, he's even empanelled by 4 Indian drug cos. Notwithstanding which, he's a very 'conservative prescriber' - used to scold my dad when he got into one of his "prescribe me something" moods.
And it'll bear repeating - the placebo effect is not limited to any particular school of medicine, and a 2-year old doesn't know what a placebo is.

Also, km's advice of having a skeptical eye needs to be extended to doctors as well - as we all know, there are doctors and there are doctors. I believe too many patients treat doctors with too much unquestioning deference, specially in this country. My father used to have to swallow upto 18 pills a day (at the peak) when he was alive, for every possible life-style disease. I really question still whether the benefits from them were commensurate to the cost and hassle. One doc once prescribed some very expensive stuff which wasn't even being made in India in those days - after swallowing it for a year and a half with unsatisfactory results, another doctor (and a real authority and 'conservative prescriber') said that in the quantities it had been prescribed, it was useless to start with! Another doctor continued over a period of months to prescribe medicine strong enough to treat a horse, almost killed him (my dad, not the horse). Far's I'm concerned, these docs aren't much better than quacks. And many docs, being only human, have a "use by" date - don't want to learn anything new after a point and continue prescribing what other doctors have stopped with.
After my dad had to be suddenly taken to emergency late at night becos of the horse-medicine, it was only then that I seriously started to question the doctor-knows-all theory myself. With this attitude (and a lot of discussion, cross-checking, etc), I was able to get the number of pills eventually cut by 2 or 3. On another hospital stay, another trigger-happy (read knife-happy) surgeon called me in and said "I have to do surgery to 5 areas on his feet NOW, or they'll drop off!!" (ok, that last bit he didn't say, but that was the essence). After putting on my convince-me hat, 15 mins later it had become "3 surgeries spread over a few months".
So all the 'alternate-skeptics' here pardon me if I don't go hook, line and sinker for the scientific principle, I've seen too much (mis)use of it at close range to last a life-time. If the homeopath keeps my mom away from the kind of hospitalisations my dad had to endure, more power to him and all his placebos!

And I don't know which homeopaths make millions, but they are certainly not living in India. My mom's doc can afford to drive a Maruti 800 only, all the docs in Benzes I've seen have been allopaths (unless they're one of those new-age ayurved-cum-reiki-cum-wellness dispenser types ). If consultation charges range between Rs. 15 and Rs. 50 (including the medicine) from one homeopath to another, the only millions they get to see in their lifetime are paisas.

karuna

OK, well, you asked for it! It IS very long so I'll spread it out over several posts.

NB- re "allopath". That is the term homeopaths use to describe mainstream medicine, and is intended as something of an insult. It is also a misnomer- check out its meaning. I will not be using this term; most mainstream medical experts do not.

My Big Essay, by Karuna.
Part 1: Why you did not see what you thought you saw.

Dilliwala, you, and many others in this thread and elsewhere, say that you have to believe in homeopathy because of the effects you’ve seen it have, either on yourself, or family or friends. Sometimes even pets. People can’t understand why I or any other non-believer in homeopathy can’t accept they they have personal proof.

OK, well there's a very good reason why you should not believe what you see when you see homeopathy working, and it has nothing to do with homeopathy being a big fat pile of bullpoo. It's because you're a liar. Now don't go thinking I've singled you out- I'm a liar too. And so are you- yes you, reading this right here. You're a liar. We all are, or more accurately, our brains are. They are amazing things, minds.

Here's how your mind lies to you in the case of homeopathy or any other supposed treatment:

1. The placebo effect. Probably the most amazing thing ever. The idea is that when we are given something- a pill, or any "treatment" that has nothing in it, no benefit to us, we still feel better. There's no active ingredient in the pill, no medicinal chemical. And yet the problem you wanted cured has gone away. It's a psychological phenomenon and it's not quite clear yet just how it works. It's perhaps expectation- you expect and believe the therapy to work and in the process make it work. It's perhaps conditioning- like Pavlov's dogs you associate the act of taking a pill with feeling better until it becomes an automatic response even if the pill is just sugar and water with no active ingredient.

A "normal" pill from a mainstream doctor has within it an active ingredient. This is a chemical that is known to have an effect on the body. Also in the pill are ingredients to hold it together, make it taste better, stop it from going off, and to coat it to make it easier to swallow. When the doctor gives you this pill, two things happen (aside from digesting the non-active ingredients...). First, the active ingredient acts on your body in the way it does- let's say you suffer from stiff joints and you've taken a drug that makes your little finger on your right hand bend more easily. So the chemical in the pill makes that happen. Secondly, your unconscious mind is thinking something along the lines of: "Whoa, that educated person in the white coat just gave me a big pill. It must be very powerful. I remember feeling better whenever I take pills so l will feel better when I eat this" (that's a simplified version!). The end result is that the medicine works, your little finger bends more easily and you are able to correctly hold a teacup in polite English society, which has long been your ambition.

If you take a placebo- something that has no active ingredient- you just miss out the "firstly" part and skip straight to the unconscious mind’s little internal dialogue. You will feel better because your mind expects you to.

The placebo effect can actually make you get better. It isn't just thinking you're getting better; in some cases it can actually push the body into healing itself. This is known to work in what are called self-limiting conditions, ie things that would go away naturally anyway, like a cold or other minor virus, or a small wound. The placebo effect can hasten their demise.

So when people say they swear by homeopathy (or any other disproven therapy) because they've seen it work, what they've seen is the mysterious placebo effect in action. Yes, the people really did feel better. No, it was not the homeopathic pills that caused it, it was rather their belief in the pills.

Not possible! I hear you cry; I've seen recoveries that are too amazing to have been just a psychological effect! Oh yeah? Get this: placebo pacemakers. Yup, you heard me. I went to a talk by the handsome and dashing Dr Ben Goldacre in which he told of a rather unethical sounding trial in which someone had a fake pacemaker fitted. It did nothing to regulate his heartbeat at all, it was totally inert. And yet...it worked. Believing a pacemaker was fitted was all that was needed for the patient's heartbeat to regulate itself. There was not magic property of the fake pacemaker. Pure placebo effect. Tell me you've seen something more miraculous than that!

Chest pain is another one. For years surgeons had been performing a procedure to ease chest pain. I can't remember the details now- I read this account in Trick or Treatment- but they began to question the efficacy of the procedure. So they tested it using a sham procedure. Some patients got the real surgery, others just had an incision that was sewn up again. You can guess the end. The patients with the fake incision felt better just as much as the ones who had the real surgery. The surgery was proven worthless beyond placebo effect. In fact, it's likely they could have made the incision anywhere on the person’s body and had similar results, so long as a plausible cover story was used. Reflexology for example uses the foot to treat all areas of the body.

It gets freakier. Dr Goldacre also spoke about a trial in which doctors told their patients they would be getting a placebo. Each doctor had a short script which went something like;
"I am going to prescribe you a placebo. Do you know what a placebo is? It is a sugar pill that contains no medicine at all. Many people have had positive results from using them and I think it’s the right thing for your condition".

Unbelievably, the patients still felt better. Even when told that there was no active medicine in their pills. The placebo effect- the trust in authority or the conditioning or both- even over-rides conscious knowledge.

In summary, the placebo effect happens whenever you take anything that you think is a medicine. It works when you take "real" medicine, it works when you take "alternative" medicine. It magnifies the actions of a drug, or makes you feel better even when you've taken nothing at all, just a sugar pill. It has been proven to work in some dramatic circumstances, and even when people knew the pill wasn’t real.

2. Mis-attribution and misunderstanding. Very simple and very easily done. Event A happens. Then Event B happens. You assume direct causal link between A and B where no such link exists.

For example, I have a headache. I am sceptical of homeopathy's claims, but willing to try anything I take a homeopathic headache pill, and half an hour later my headache disappears, convincing me that homeopathy works. In fact what I've done is make a huge assumption. What did I use to wash down my homeopathy pill? Water. What's a cause of headaches? Dehydration. Perhaps it wasn't the pill at all, perhaps it was the water.
Simple, and easily done. Then of course, conditioning and the placebo effect come in from then on. The pill "worked" once, so you expect it to work the next time, and lo and behold, it does.

It need not be anything related to taking your pill, of course. Perhaps you had eczema and tried a homeopathic remedy, and at the same time a stressful period at work came to an end. Your eczema improved as a result of the receding stress, but you assumed that the homeopathic medicine did it. It's just making a mistaken link, assuming two unrelated things are in fact action and consequence.

A good example here is a magician. He makes a coin appear out of your nose, and then it vanishes from his hand. How does he do this? Well, perhaps there was a coin up your nose, or he magically made one appear there. Then he actually made it vanish into thin air. That's theory one and it seems to fit the experience we had, in fact it's what the magician wants you to believe in order for the trick to work. The alternative theory seems almost mad. It says that the magician has practiced for months, maybe years, in order to be able to hide a coin in his palm, then bring it out so it looks like it was up your nose, then misdirect you while he transfers it from one hand to the other and opens his empty palm. As ludicrous as it sounds, that is the correct explanation. "But hang on!" cry the unwashed masses completely unaware of how conjuring tricks are performed- "That's not what I saw! I saw a coin appear from out of my nose and then disappear from a man's hand! Why are you so closed-minded that you don't believe me when I have personal experience of it? I SAW IT" Unaware of the powerful illusions created by sleight of hand/the placebo effect, thus are people deceived by magic/homeopathy.

In summary, we may create links where none exist, crediting homeopathy with curing us when it did nothing at all.

3. Regression to the mean. This is a fancy-schmancy way of saying "getting better anyway", and applies to self-limiting illnesses and also "flare-ups" in long-term conditions. This is the idea that we are likely to seek help when we are at our sickest. In other words, your condition is as bad as its going to get, you can only get better from then onwards. You then attribute the getting better to the treatment when in fact it would be happening anyway.

4. Confirmation bias. This is also known as "seeing what you want to see". In no way is this a conscious process. I am not suggesting that any user of homeopathy deliberately lies about their experiences. Confirmation bias is when we unconsciously filter out certain events and magnify others to fit our existing belief system. For example, let's say I've always used homeopathy my whole life. I have a condition, go to my homeopath, get a remedy and find it doesn't work. I return to the homeopath, who asks more questions, gets more details on my particular malady and then changes the prescription. I take it and slowly start to get better. It takes a number of weeks, but after a while I'm completely cured. Sometime later I meet a homeopathy skeptic. When they ask me for proof that homeopathy works, I tell them how wonderful this last remedy was and how much better homeopathy has made me feel. I do not remember that I tried one remedy and it did not work at all, and I do not remember that it took me a long time to heal. Without any effort on my part, my mind has edited the story to fit my existing belief system.

You're probably thinking "I don't do that". Sorry, you do. The point is that it isn't conscious. You don't actively decide to do it, it just happens, and you won't be aware of it. It's probably part of the brain's process of keeping you sane. Everybody needs a belief system to interpret and make sense of the world. Your brain is just doing its job editing reality to keep your system intact.

Now, please be honest. Given all that information, can you be really, really certain that it was something in the homeopathic pills that you saw acting on people? What makes you sure it's the pills and not the placebo effect? Finally, can you honestly say you understand enough about it to really know?

capt_mahajan

Damn. I am just not falling sick again

karuna

My Really, Really Big Essay - I told you it was long, by Karuna
Part 2: Finding out what's real.

So all the above is why critics of homeopathy and other disproven or unproven therapies do not trust "personal experience" as a good indicator of what's really true: we are all horribly unreliable witnesses. Don't fool yourself into believing yourself. We are too easily biased, quick to misunderstand or be manipulated by our marvellous, incorrigable minds. We can have "opinions" about and "experience" of homeopathy until we're blue in the face, they do not mean homeopathy really works. Now, nobody likes hearing this. Alternative therapies play to our egos, telling us we have "innate wisdom" about our own bodies, even "natural healing" processes which we just need to tap into and we'll feel all better (tell that to a person dying from AIDS). We have elevated "personal experience" to a sacred level. No-one dare suggest that we might be wrong about our bodies. We can't admit it at all. You know what? It's real open-mindedness. Even just contemplating the possibility that I might be wrong about what I "experienced" is more open-minded than just accepting what appears to be true without thought. So I did, I read up on tests that have been done on homeopathy, and I found I was wrong. All the positive experiences people have with it can be explained by other means, and the theory behind it has no basis in reality. I was wrong. So I changed my mind. If somehow a new kind of evidence is found and homeopathy does work (I doubt it very, very much), then I will have to change my view. That is open-mindedness.

When people use "open-minded", what they seem to mean is "prepared to accept that any theory might have some truth to it". Yes, potentially any theory might work. I've just invented the theory that fireflies cause volcanic eruptions. It could be true, so now I've said it we need to add it to the list of "things that I might believe in". It would be closed-minded not to! Well no, it doesn't work like that. We don't go around believing in everything willy-nilly because "you never know". The word for that is "credulous", and if that's you I've got a genuine genie in a lamp to sell you, only Rs 1 crore. We thankfully can test things to see if they are true or not, so we know which things to believe in and which to ignore.

Here's another theory- shining pink light on people cures their headache by expanding their blood vessels, increasing the blood flow. What do you mean that's nonsense- it could be true, science doesn’t know everything yet. It's true for me, in my reality, it's rude to tell me otherwise, you're closed-minded.

So how do we find out whether my theory is true? Well, I could Google it, and there I would find Karuna's Pink Light Healing Page of Light Pinkness, which sets out my beliefs- including why I think the lighting industry is covering up the truth- sells my patented pink light generator and contains a forum full of my fellow pink light healers and customers, all of whom agree that my theory is completely right beause they've experienced it themselves. Ahh, but we gots the smarts and we know about all the stupid tricks the mind plays, so we know that personal evidence is seriously flawed. We also know that I make money from selling my pink light, so I have a vested interest in saying that it works. Clearly, I and my website and my motley band of customers are not a good source of unbiased information on my theory.

Perhaps we could go down the personal experience route and get pink light healing done on us? "If it works for me" and all that. But no, now we understand that all of us are subject to the placebo effect so we might get what we think is a genuine response but is just our minds. Convinced that it works and immune to all evidence suggesting otherwise because we believe personal experience trumps all other evidence, we would throw more and more money at me and my healing (yippee!).

So what could we do to accurately find out if I’m telling the truth or not? All we want to know is if pink light shone people dilates their blood vessels like I say it does. Well then let’s figure out a way to test it. Let’s get some people, measure their blood vessels, shine a pink light at them and then measure the blood vessels again and see if they’re bigger. If they are bigger after the pink light healing, my theory is correct- it really does what I say it does. If they aren’t, I’m a phoney and a fake and should hang my head in shame.

But we need to think a bit first. OK, so what are we comparing it against? I mean, what’s a positive result for pink light healing? 50% bigger blood vessels in 50% of people? 60%? And what about the placebo effect? The people taking part in the test will know that they are supposed to be getting some kind of treatment. Their bodies might react even though there’s no active “ingredient” in the pink light, showing it to be effective when it’s just their minds.

OK, there’s a simple solution to both those problems. Split all the people up into three groups. One group gets blue light shone on them (I make no claims for blue light, it does nothing at all, it’s worthless), one pink light, and the last group gets nothing at all. We measure blood vessel dilation in all three groups, in the case of those given light healing, once before and once after the treatment. Nobody in the groups knows which light is the real “healing” light that’s being tested. This way, both groups which have light shone on them will get the placebo effect as both will think they are getting treated. If both groups have roughly the same blood vessel dilation at the end of the test, then I’m wrong. Pink light has no more effect than blue light. In other words, it’s just a placebo. If however the pink light group have bigger blood vessels at the end than the blue light group, then my theory might just be right- there’s something in the pink light! The group getting no treatment acts as a control- this is the “base line” of blood vessel dilation from which we can measure improvement.

Now we’re getting somewhere. There’s one other really major issue- you and me. We’re running this test, and we know that the pink light is the supposed healing light. If we know which people are in the pink light group and which are in the blue light group, it might affect the impartiality of our judgement when we measure their blood vessels. We might favour the pink light group unknowingly. OK, so we arrange it so you and me have no idea which group each individual person is in, so when we assess their blood vessels we can’t be biased.

There are other things we need to ensure, but those are the main boxes ticked for a fair trial of pink light healing theory.

Congratulations, you’ve just formed the basis of a scientific test! Yes, that’s it, in essence. No weird, formulaic, scientific “way of knowing”. All it is is doing it and seeing if it works, in as fair and unbiased way as possible. So let’s apply this to homeopathy.

We give 100 sick people a homeopathic remedy, 100 other similarly sick people a fake remedy that does nothing, and another 100 people with the same condition we give nothing at all. We measure their improvement, without knowing in which group each person is placed. After we measure their improvement and record it, we find out, and publish the results. 12% of people in the homeopathic remedy group feel better. 13% of the fake remedy group feel better. 6% of the untreated group feel better. Our trial here shows the placebo effect- ie those who thought they might be getting treatment felt better than those who got nothing at all, but homeopathy showed no more benefit that a worthless sugar pill. If it had worked, it would make the percentage of people feeling better after homeopathic treatment much higher than the percentage of people feeling better after placebo.

The above test is clear cut, fair, and undertaken on a group of 300 people. Many, many such tests have already been run on homeopathy. Our personal experiences are affected by the placebo effect, confirmation bias, poor memory and misattribution, and they apply only to us or a small group of family or friends. Yet it is this biased personal experience that we choose to believe, mostly. We don’t know that homeopathy has already been fairly tested, or we think that testing doesn’t count because “science doesn’t know everything”.

No, science doesn’t know everything, but it does know about homeopathy because it’s already been tested and it doesn’t work. Or maybe we think that scientific testing doesn’t work on homeopathy, that homeopathy works through some principle science can’t yet detect. But that makes no sense- all the scientific test does is measure the outcome. Homeopathy can “work” through any weird, inscrutable process it wants, the point is that if it is real it will have the result homeopaths say it does- expanded blood vessels, reduced headache, whatever, and it will have these effects on top of any placebo effect.

So what about “it works for me”. This makes no sense. A whole school of medicine “works for you” but not me? How is that possible? How ludicrous would it be if millions of people said "You know mainstream medicine? Doesn’t work for me. I just don’t respond at all. Even drugs that are completely unrelated to each other and treat things as different as cancer and the flu. Maybe it works for you, but not me".
Aspirin is a painkiller. It is for you, and for me. When you take it it doesn’t suddenly change into an antibiotic, or cease working completely.

Why does homeopathy have special rules that allow it to work on some people but not others? Not just one remedy, mind, but every single one- all of homeopathy just doesn't work for some people. This is nonsense. If a chemical has an effect, it has an effect and will continue to have an effect, on 99.9% of people, except a very few anomalies.

karuna

Sorry Captain, this is the last part, I promise.

My enormous essay, by Karuna.
Part 3: extra notes and points.

1. The anecdote about homeopathy leading to pregnancy. The story here was “woman trying for baby gets pregnant”. Hallelujah. If it were “celibate man takes homeopathic pregnancy medicine, conceives twins” I might be a little more excited. My mother waited twelve years for me (you can’t help but be a bit of a disappointment after that long a build-up) and managed to get pregnant without the aid of any pills or potions, so even a long wait doesn’t mean it won’t happen.

2. Homeopaths sometimes say that scientific trials aren’t the right way to test homeopathy, that it works in a way not measurable by the kind of test I outlined above. They usually say this when some trial results show that homeopathy doesn’t work. However, if they can find any scientific trials that appear to support homeopathy, they will immediately quote them as proof. Spot the hypocrisy?

3. Nobody believes mainstream medicine is perfect. However, it is not logical to say that because mainstream medicine is flawed, homeopathy must be true. That's another misunderstanding of cause and effect. If hopping on the left leg doesn't cure cancer, that doesn't prove that hopping on the right leg does. Don't trust homeopaths just because they're not mainstream doctors! That makes no sense!

No, medicine is not perfect, but it is based on the scientific principle which can prove if something works or not. It is the only way we have to truly sort out what's real from what's imaginary. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

I know it's fashionable to reject mainstream science and medicine. I know its de rigeur to be credulous and believe in mysterious forces and the innate natural wisdom and things. But don't drop one faulty paradigm only to pick up another one. We're not being super-smart and wise when we question science, we're being super-smart and wise when we question everything.

I'm not a scientist or doctor. I learned everything I know about medicine (which is the tip of the iceburg) through casual reading. I researched, I even learned how to critically assess clinical trial reports. I didn't just accept my own lack of knowledge and my personal experience, I questioned it.

That, if you don't mind me sounding arrogant, is true open-mindedness.