[Closed] Beloved relatives posting pish about homopathy on FB.

As an aside if you googke "spaghetti bridge" there are some quite amazing structures.

This bad boy won the [url= http://www.okanagan.bc.ca/Programs/Areas_of_Study/engineeringtechnologies/spaghettibridge/history/heavyweight.html ]2012 – 29th Annual Spaghetti Bridge Competition at Okanagan College[/url] by supporting a weight of 384.09 kg:

[img] [/img]

😀

My Mum is convinced by homoeopathy - keeps trying to shove Echinacea down my throat every time I visit.

Then again, she believes in God.

What's weird?

It's weird that rather than going to see your GP (or Austrian equivalent) with whooping cough you went to see a surgeon friend (who doesn't seem to be qualified to deal with the issue), and they recommended you take sugar pills rather than telling you to see a GP straight away. 😕

[quote=iolo ]... This includes brain spotting ...

The creator of Brainspotting has an interesting bio. Couple of excerpts:

Dr. Grand is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with a PhD from International University
He has taught scene-work at the New Actors Workshop as well as privately coaching both stage and screen actors.

Not saying it doesn't work (I guess I'm intimating my scepticism) but he doesn't seem like a hard hitting psychology sort of fellow.

I took the sugar pills, I stopped coughing. Fact.

[img] [/img]

aracer - Member

Just as an aside, I've had a cough since November (though it's never made me sick) - should I be going to see a doctor? Thought I might as well ask here!

Worms. Probably terminal by this point, I wouldn't bother.

Google would suggest either there are not that many Drs in Austria or that only Drs can proscribe homeopathy not that all Drs have to be trained in Homeopathy.

The creator of Brainspotting has an interesting bio.

Ooh, I completely buzzed past that, I assumed it was just some sort of local slang for counselling. I'll have to look into that, ta.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainspotting

Brainspotting is an advanced form of psychotherapy that uses the field of vision to access subcortical parts of the brain that are often hidden from our awareness.

Talk:Brainspotting

This page was nominated for deletion on March 12 2009. The result of the discussion was delete.

I looked at that too.

In the end I thought iolo's Dr/Surgeon/counsellor was getting enough gyp without introducing more witchcraft to the debate.

I did 12 months of cbt. That was a waste of time for me.
I'm currently doing mindfullness training wich again is not really working.
Brainspotting works for me.
It's that simple. I can control my triggers and mood swings so much better.

If it works for you, for whatever reason, then it's good 🙂

Beloved relatives posting pish about homopathy on FB

Biscuit anyone?

Are you the knower of all things in the universe and how everything works from a quantum level to astrophysics?

Is that the generally accepted standard of knowledge one needs before one can comment on an issue? By that standard no one would be qualified to comment on anything.

If not, do some research first before thinking you know everything

I have. I'm not aware of any study that shows that homeopathy works better than placebo. Do you know of any?

...do some research first before thinking you know everything

Biscuit anyone?

If I dunk will my tea remember?

Spin - Member

Is that the generally accepted standard of knowledge one needs before one can comment on an issue? By that standard no one would be qualified to comment on anything.

I have. I'm not aware of any study that shows that homeopathy works better than placebo. Do you know of any?

If I dunk will my tea remember?

🙂

Quite why that's so scary for people to admit is another story.

Because it would stifle all discussion if you had to be an expert on everything befor you could comment on anything.

So yes, real knowledge comes from knowing you know very little and going from there.

That is what Daniel Dennett would refer to as a Deepity. Real knowledge (to use your term) comes from weighing up as much of the available evidence as you can and forming an opinion on that. With the important caveat that new evidence should cause you to reevaluate your standpoint.

Yeah http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dana-ullman/homeopathic-medicine-_b_1258607.html

You mean the report written by homeopaths, edited by academics at a private University that teaches alternative medicine and, to quote the Swiss governments assessment of the findings, "It is very obvious that all or some of the authors have a positive attitude towards the treatments in question or are convinced about their efficacy. Unquestionably, strict proponents of the usual hierarchy of evidence will regard the presented evaluations as scientifically untenable and unreasonably positive…"

That report, right, hmm, not convincing me so far.

Yey 6079's back.

I'm not aware of any study that shows that homeopathy works better than placebo. Do you know of any?

How do you test this ? How do you make a placebo for a placebo ?

From the actual paper cited by the woo-peddler that wrote the huffpost article (woo-peddler had forgot to read it or perhaps has homeopathic glasses):

[i]"As regards the second project, in the view of the authors of the meta-analyses, [b]the available placebo-controlled studies on homeopathy do not demonstrate any clear effect over and above placebo[/b]. For phytotherapy, in contrast, a positive result is shown, as in the evaluation report, and for traditional Chinese herbal therapy an unequivocal assessment is not possible. Here, too, the validity of the conclusions of the meta-analyses should be regarded as limited from a methodological perspective."[/i]

Quite why that's so scary for people to admit is another story.

Not in the least. I love learning things.

So yes, real knowledge comes from knowing you know very little and going from there.

So.. let's see. If you know nothing at all about a particular treatment, what would you do? You would probably organise a double-blind trial on its efficacy, wouldn't you? Well, that's been done many times with homeopathy, and it's been found to be useless.

So why would you continue to believe otherwise? In the face of such overwhelming clinical evidence?

""TheSwissgovernment hasa longand widely-respected history of neutrality, and therefore, reportsfromthisgovernment oncontroversial subjectsneed to be takenmore seriously than other reports""
This opening sort of gave the game away. Might as well have put here comes some rubbish please turn off any critical analysis.

Yeah http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dana-ullman/homeopathic-medicine-_b_1258607.html

I've spent the last hour or so checking out that report (admittedly not the original as I don't care quite enough to learn German). Are you aware of the many criticisms levelled at both the report and homeopaths' innacurate use of it?

Not that this necessarily negates all of what the report says, just that at the very least you should be careful of suggesting it shows homeopathy works better than placebo.

I don't like to get into tit for tat link posting but here are a few you might find interesting:

http://www.smw.ch/content/smw-2012-13594/
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/the-swiss-report-on-homeopathy/
http://www.zenosblog.com/2012/05/that-neutral-swiss-homeopathy-report/

Thank you 6079smithw for prompting me to refine my understanding of this issue.

I'd be a bit circumspect about trying it since I learned this evening that one of the founding fathers of homeopathy was recently tragically killed. Apparently he died of an underdose.

I'll get my coat.

Fopster, an unbelievable truth. 😆 Wish my joke (above) had been as good.

flap_jack - Member

How do you test this ? How do you make a placebo for a placebo ?

You add more of the main ingredients, to make it no longer homeopathic.

Thank you 6079smithw for prompting me to refine my understanding of this issue.

If nothing else 6079smithw's posts do remind me to be more careful about believing things without checking them out for myself first.

It's accidental though I think

Because all the stuff I've recently checked out for myself that turned out to be complete bollocks, have been things that he's posted

Anyone who wants to test their internal bullshit meter needs to read this http://www.brainspotting.pro/page/what-brainspotting apparently written by its founder David Grand PhD,i.e. Doctor of Philosophy not medicine.

In the spirit of homeopathy (and STW) I've only read the original post and then been careful not to read all of it therefore having only a very diluted understanding of what has been said and thus am now in the perfect position to offer a full opinion.

OP look at it like this - the more she relies on homeopathy the sooner she'll be dead and leaving you something nice in her will.

There is a Terry Pratchett quote about water that has passed through so many kidneys and is therefore extremely pure that seems fitting.

Anyone who wants to test their internal bullshit meter needs to read this

“Brainspotting is based on the profound attunement of the therapist with the patient, finding a somatic cue and extinguishing it by down-regulating the amygdala. It isn’t just PNS (Parasympathetic Nervous System) activation that is facilitated, it is homeostasis.” -- Robert Scaer, MD, “The Trauma Spectrum”

Here be woo woo.

As I previously said all doctors must study fairy dust sugar pills to quailfy.

This looks a bit noodley:

I love the Daily Mash take on Homeopathy

Available on Amazon

[url= http://www.amazon.co.uk/Daily-Mash-Homeopathy-Shirt-Large/dp/B008EKJRWK ]In all sizes[/url]

Hey, I get why you're all sceptical about homeopathy. Your education, the news, the mainstream science reports and articles... I get it.

I just wish you had the same level of scepticism towards the multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical corporations who, guess what, would rather you take their pills than try something natural that thay can't profit from. Prescription drugs kill more people than illegal drugs and road traffic accidents.
Therefore you should be happy your relative isn't popping toxic pills.

Anyway, back to homeopathy. It works. Since science is highly politcised, which of course it shouldn't be, no you're not gonna see a mass admission about this from the mainstream. Criminals try hard to not incriminate themselves you know.

Those saying there's no evidence of it working... well there is of course, otherwise why would it still be in existence?
And it's not placebo because it works on animals.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/jul/15/homeopathy-works-scientific-evidence

You are Kaesae and I claim my £5.

Live and let live.
Why get so frothed about it?
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If someone had given the Dude a homeopathic white Russian I bet he'd be pretty pissed off

Hey, I get why you're all sceptical about homeopathy. Your education, the news, the mainstream science reports and articles... I get it

No mate, just the evidence of a couple of hundred years of the application of scientific method which has brought us from dying like flies as kids or in our 30s and 40's and getting around the world staring at the back end of a horse to the comfortable 21st century lifestyles and enhanced lifespans we enjoy now.

Those saying there's no evidence of it working... well there is of course, otherwise why would it still be in existence?

Anyway make sure you ask for [s]water[/s] the special medicine next time your ill. It will reduce the burden on the NHS.

I get it.

You asserted this on the aliens / crop circles thread. You were wrong then as well.

I just wish you had the same level of scepticism towards the multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical corporations

Oh, we do. However, critically, the efficacy (or not) of Big Pharma is wholly independent from that of homeopathy. You can't prove something is good by holding up something that you believe is bad and arbitrarily comparing the two. A nailgun to the hand is better than one to the head, does that make the former suddenly desirable?

Prescription drugs kill more people than illegal drugs and road traffic accidents.

Evidence of that statement if you will, please. Ideally cross-referenced with statistics of how many people are saved by those same drugs.

Anyway, back to homeopathy. It works.

Evidence of that statement also, please. Because, you know, it really doesn't beyond placebo. (Note, a journalist's anecdotes are opinion, not evidence.)

I strongly recommend you read Ben Goldacre's books. The first, "Bad Science," will help you understand the scientific method and how testing these things is quite tricky (but important) to do well. His second is "Bad Pharma" which is an exposé on the pharmaceutical industry, you'd love it.