Viewing 40 posts - 81 through 120 (of 136 total)
  • World Homeopathy Awareness Week
  • crankboy
    Free Member

    Thanks atlas I was actually wanting to see if carlthomas agreed with that proposition.

    6079smithw
    Free Member

    Oh look, homeopathy works

    Conclusion: The objective results reinforce earlier evidence that homoeopathic dilutions differ from placebo.

    http://www.bmj.com/content/321/7259/471

    Come at me brah

    crankboy
    Free Member

    6079s have you read the study very small sample limited period the participants allowed to use real medicine as well and it categorically does not say homeopathy works .

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    konabunny
    Free Member

    The attempts by homeopaths to appropriate the placebo effect are laughable: for one thing, if it’s only a placebo effect, then the substances involved are meaningless. If the talking and discussion are the key to healing then that shows a pent up demand for therapy that is accessible and affordable. But most of all it ignores the fact that the placebo effect is part of modern/real medicine that can be consistently observed and applied with legitimate scientific methods.

    TurnerGuy
    Free Member

    If people already know it’s only a placebo, does it lose it’s effect?

    I would have thought that everyone on here would have seen that recent Panorama on Placebos and the bit where they gave a placebo to a former nurse to treat her symptoms (for some debilitating issue) and it gave her relief for the 3 weeks she was on it.

    They told her it was a placebo and, being a nurse, she knew what that meant and was very surprised when her symptoms disappeared.

    When the placebo ran out her symptoms returned (chronic pain) and she was desperately trying to buy some more placebo, but obviously nowhere sold it.

    Homeopathy is no less effective than prayer.
    Why is it acceptable to laugh at one, but not the other ?

    Homeopathy is no less effective than prayer.
    Why is it acceptable to laugh at one, but not the other ?

    Which one isn’t it acceptable to laugh at?

    atlaz
    Free Member

    It’s acceptable to laugh at both of them as far as I’m aware. I find the idea that you chat to your mate in the sky and he fixes things idiotic but I know people who get some solace from it (including a lapsed jewish colleague who “made a deal with God” about going back to the faith if his mum got better, she did so he did) and I’m happy they do but it doesn’t make it any less risible.

    It’s basically the same as homeopathy. Take a tablet of optimism and hope for the best, except if you die after putting your faith in God, it’s down to His plan, not quack medicine of course so who knows which is better or worse.

    toys19
    Free Member

    Homeopathy is no less effective than prayer.
    Why is it acceptable to laugh at one, but not the other ?

    It is perfectly acceptable to critically examine either.
    If you are an opinionated bigoted bastard like me, you would laugh at both.

    martinhutch
    Full Member

    The attempts by homeopaths to appropriate the placebo effect are laughable: for one thing, if it’s only a placebo effect, then the substances involved are meaningless. If the talking and discussion are the key to healing then that shows a pent up demand for therapy that is accessible and affordable. But most of all it ignores the fact that the placebo effect is part of modern/real medicine that can be consistently observed and applied with legitimate scientific methods.

    The situation isn’t entirely laughable. If any patient achieves better results after a visit to an alternative practitioner compared with their GP and conventional medicine, then we need to understand better which element of their experience is responsible for this powerful placebo, given that, as most of us with a sprinkling of scientific knowledge have pointed out, in the case of homeopathy, it’s highly unlikely to be an active medication. So is it the setting, the talking therapy, the act of seeking out alternative treatment? Perhaps it mainly applies to a very small subset of patients?

    I don’t think we can say that we understand enough about placebo to apply it consistently in practice rather than just observe it.

    Also the present NHS isn’t geared up to delivering half-hour chats in pleasant settings – it isn’t accessible or affordable in the current primary care system.

    atlaz
    Free Member

    My aunt believes in healing crystals and laying on of hands. Except for when she’s ill, then she’s down the doctor’s office as quickly as she can get there. Says it all for me.

    Which one isn’t it acceptable to laugh at?

    It depends on context.
    Here on the internet, it’s pretty much anything goes and it’s OK to laugh at anything.
    I was thinking more of real life.
    If someone at work announced that they have got some illness and were taking homeopathic remedies for it, then it would be quite normal for at least one person in the room to laugh about them drinking plain water.
    If they said they were praying, it would generally be considered offensive to make some joke about their invisible bearded friend in the sky.

    toys19
    Free Member

    If someone at work announced that they have got some illness and were taking homeopathic remedies for it, then it would be quite normal for at least one person in the room to laugh about them drinking plain water.
    If they said they were praying, it would generally be considered offensive to make some joke about their invisible bearded friend in the sky.

    This is an excllent illustration of the difference between the internerd and RL.
    I wouldn’t laugh at either case for fear of making enemies. On here, I don’t care. It’s a free forum for people to say what they want. (Unless it reduces revenue for Mark and Chipps)

    I don’t think I would laugh at either of them.

    Not to their face, anyway.

    slowoldman
    Full Member

    But I’d laugh like a drain at either down the pub. Come to think of it, isn’t God a bit Homeopathic?

    Cougar
    Full Member

    I suspect most people who have replied to this thread have no real idea what homeopathy is

    I suspect most people who have replied to this thread know exactly what homeopathy is, and anecdotes are not evidence.

    But for the sake of debate, why don’t you explain what we’ve all evidently missed?

    isn’t God a bit Homeopathic?

    Given that the universe is infinately large and God is supposed to be omnipresent?

    I suppose he would be spread quite thin 😀

    jamiep
    Free Member

    Is it likely that any water molecule has at some point in existence come in contact with many other molecules? Shouldn’t a glass of council pop thus retain the memory of countless molecules and be effective at curing all aliments?

    martinhutch
    Full Member

    Given that the tap water we drink has very likely passed through a few digestive tracts in its time, who knows what it’s doing to us. 🙂

    wwaswas
    Full Member

    I often worry that I’m breathing air molecules expired by the greatest villains from history.

    Do they retain a memory of the evil?

    pictonroad
    Full Member

    Not necessarily yourself but I suspect most people who have replied to this thread have no real idea what homeopathy is or have any experience of what it can achieve.

    no real idea what homeopathy is

    This is the problem. It isn’t anything. You genuinely 100% totally undeniably and without question take in more of the supposedly active parts of homeopathic medicine just eating, drinking and breathing than taking homeopathic medicine.

    If you can’t accept the arguments that there’s nothing in the medicine that isn’t in your lunch and the dust you breathe at night then it’s a pointless argument.

    slowoldman
    Full Member

    I’ve been telling people for years they should drink good old tap water. If you want to drink Evian, go and live in Evian.

    surroundedbyhills
    Free Member

    My experiences of reflexology was that I quite enjoyed a foot massage bit that was it. Acupuncture however did relive pain in my hip and thigh after a pretty significant injury it was administered as part of my therapy by the Sports Injury Clinic of Glasgow university, not some quack in their front lounge.

    wwaswas
    Full Member

    the Sports Injury Clinic of Glasgow university, not some quack in their front lounge.

    no, it was some quack in posh surroundings that lent enough credibility to the process that it worked for you 😉

    martinhutch
    Full Member

    I’m guessing that at the time, he didn’t care why it worked, though. 😉

    atlaz
    Free Member

    Trimix
    Free Member

    bigrich
    Full Member

    the good thing about science is that if you believe it or not, or even understand what’s happening, it doesn’t stop being true.

    Cougar
    Full Member

    Is it likely that any water molecule has at some point in existence come in contact with many other molecules? Shouldn’t a glass of council pop thus retain the memory of countless molecules and be effective at curing all aliments?

    Ah, no, you see, you also need to tap the bottles in a special way. It’s got to knock the memory in, a bit like parents in the 70s.

    Cougar
    Full Member

    the good thing about science is that if you believe it or not, or even understand what’s happening, it doesn’t stop being true.

    I don’t think those two things have any bearing on each other either way. That is to say, it doesn’t stop it being false, either.

    Science and nature will carry on being scientific and natural regardless of what we think about it. Most of us might not be able to properly comprehend some of the bigger concepts like, for instance, The Big Bang Theory and what happened before it, but fortunately for the rest of the universe our comprehension isn’t required in order for it to work.

    bigrich
    Full Member

    I don’t think those two things have any bearing on each other either way. That is to say, it doesn’t stop it being false, either.

    I refer you to this bit:

    or even understand what’s happening

    if it’s not statistically relevant, then it’s not science. Hope this helps.

    Cougar
    Full Member

    I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make?

    Come to that, I’m not sure what point I’m trying to make, either. (-:

    wwaswas
    Full Member

    It’s alright, you don;t have to understand it for it to be true 😉

    Cougar
    Full Member

    Oh yeah.

    Dismissing Homeopathy as nonsense purely because we “don’t fully understand how it works” is faulty logic. There are plenty of things we don’t fully understand but still give credence to, and Homeopathy does not require our understanding in order to work or fail to work.

    Dismissing Homeopathy because it demonstrably doesn’t work beyond placebo however, is a perfectly logical and valid argument.

    Dismissing the method cited by Homeopaths as to its mode of operation is valid, I feel, by nature of the fact that this claimed “memory effect” of water is in direct conflict with our current understanding of the physical universe, and there is no evidence or any demonstrable effects to suggest that it may be true.

    Cougar
    Full Member

    It’s alright, you don;t have to understand it for it to be true

    Bazinga!

    bigrich
    Full Member

    if you take homeopathic remedies, there is no statistical difference with the controls: it is having no effect.

    you can say it goes beyond our current understanding, but that isn’t a scientific viewpoint, it’s emotional.

    ninfan
    Free Member

    if you take homeopathic remedies, there is no statistical difference with the controls: it is having no effect.

    you can say it goes beyond our current understanding, but that isn’t a scientific viewpoint, it’s emotional.

    Which control? Placebo control or no treatment control?

    If you set up an experiment with Homeopathy, placebo and a no treatment control group, then its been well proven that the results for the placebo and homeopathy will be pretty much identical – the problem for your argument is of course that in most cases those outcomes *are* both statistically better than the no treatment group, often by a pretty large margin!

    Therefore your argument that “it is having no effect” isn’t a scientific viewpoint, it’s emotional, non?

    jamiep
    Free Member

    ninfan

    Which control? Placebo control or no treatment control?

    If you set up an experiment with Homeopathy, placebo and a no treatment control group, then its been well proven that the results for the placebo and homeopathy will be pretty much identical – the problem for your argument is of course that in most cases those outcomes *are* both statistically better than the no treatment group, often by a pretty large margin!

    Therefore your argument that “it is having no effect” isn’t a scientific viewpoint, it’s emotional, non?

    I suspect that you are misunderstanding scientific method.

    In your proposed experiement, placebo and homeopathy are confounded in the ‘homeopathy’ group.

    The ‘homeopathy’ group is essentially a second placebo group: any impact of homeopathy relative to the ‘no intervention’ group is due to it being a type of placebo rather than the action of homeopathy.

    Statistically, all the experiment shows if that two different types of placedo are more effective than doing nothing.

    ninfan
    Free Member

    I fully understand the method!

    placebo and homeopathy are confounded in the ‘homeopathy’ group./

    No, they’re not confounded (or perhaps you mean compounded?) in the homeopathy group, they’re two distinct groups, as they would be if you ran a study with ‘X compound’ plus Placebo control and a no treatment control.

    any impact of homeopathy relative to the ‘no intervention’ group is due to it being a type of placebo rather than the action of homeopathy.

    Well done!

    all the experiment shows if that two different types of placedo are more effective than doing nothing.

    However this remains a completely different thing than saying that Homeopathy (or treatment with any other placebo) “is having no effect” as bigrich said – it quite clearly is having an effect.

    So, for example its not unknown for the placebo group to show nearly as much of an improvement in patient condition as the compound – if thats the case, then you might be better giving the patient a placebo rather than the real drug because of side effects (bearing in mind that you might see nocebo side effects in the placebo group as well) – this fulfils the ‘do no harm’ rule and would save the NHS a fortune – if there is no improvement under placebo, then you can still resort the real drug if necessary.

    Lets look at the expansion – we know that its possible for two placebo pills to work better than one, or even different colour placebo pills to have statistically different results – so you might actually find that homeopathy works better than another placebo (or vice versa) – though its still working through the placebo effect.

    Its a fascinating phenomenon – that we can use to our advantage, either to improve or complement the delivery of ‘conventional’ medical treatment!

    pondo
    Full Member

    As long as we all acknowledge that it’s just the placebo effect, I’m happy. 🙂

Viewing 40 posts - 81 through 120 (of 136 total)

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