[Closed] World Homeopathy Awareness Week

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

Oh look, homeopathy works

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

Come at me brah

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 .

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.

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 ?

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

[/i]

Which one isn't it acceptable to laugh at?

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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

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?

[i]isn't God a bit Homeopathic?[/i]

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

I suppose he would be spread quite thin 😀

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?

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. 🙂

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

Do they retain a memory of the evil?

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.

[i]no real idea what homeopathy is [/i]

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

[img] [/img]

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.

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.

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.

[i]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]

I refer you to this bit:

[i]or even understand what's happening[/i]

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

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. (-:

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

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 [i]because it demonstrably doesn't work beyond placebo [/i]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.

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

Bazinga!

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

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

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 [u][b]no[/b][/u] effect" isn't a scientific viewpoint, it's emotional, non?

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.

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) "[u]is having [b]no[/b] effect[/u]" as bigrich said - it quite clearly [u]is[/u] 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!

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

I'm reasonably sure that anyone with half a clue will put forward the argument that "Homeopathy has no effect beyond placebo" rather than simply "Homeopathy has no effect," unless they're just oversimplifying or generally carefree with their choice of words. No?

Has anyone here actually claimed "it has no effect" or have you got the Straw Construction Kit out again?

Well Cougar - Bigrich said it on this page, its been said twice on the first page of this thread, again on the second page, and the first post on the thread uses the quote "there is absolutely no medical benefit of homoeopathy" without the follow on qualifier from the original quote of "other than a possible placebo effect."

There's a lot of faith being put in this "placebo effect" on this thread.
Anyone care to throw in a few pointers to it's proven efficacy.

[img] http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSINnhWy7X1Pwb54WT9Joqy7930bGWIDczSU7k9XBtwL60Q73LQ [/img]

Loum - couple of examples:

http://www.jwatch.org/jw200804290000001/2008/04/29/placebo-effect-and-irritable-bowel-syndrome
http://blogs.jwatch.org/hiv-id-observations/index.php/the-extraordinary-power-of-placebo/2010/03/10/

And it seems to be so good that 97% of UK doctors use it:

http://www.nhs.uk/news/2013/03March/Pages/97-percent-of-GPs-admit-prescribing-placebos.aspx

Thank you.

ninfan surely that just proves that 97% of doctors will giving irritating hypochondriacs any form of pill just to get them out of their surgery.

Apart form achieving that goal it does not show it worked 😉

FWIW I would happily prescribe a broad spectrum placebo to these fools and they would probably be grateful...can we do it in such a way as we profit from the prescription charge? 💡

So in summary, pretend medicine can help a pretend illness?

ninfan surely that just proves that 97% of doctors will giving irritating hypochondriacs any form of pill just to get them out of their surgery.

Yeah, but if you're going to do that, then you might as well give them nice cheap sugar pills rather than expensive real drugs - 😀

Loum - here's a good one, a nice meta-analysis: http://psycnet.apa.org/index.cfm?fa=buy.optionToBuy&id=1999-11094-001

Edit:

can help a pretend illness

No, in fact I think that its incredibly arrogant to call, for example, depression or chronic pain a 'pretend illness', these are real conditions that affect the quality of life of tens of thousands of people up and down the country, the NHS spends a fortune dealing with them, the fact that they can often be improved by tricking the mind of the patient is a bonus, not a criticism.

Its not just stupid people that respond to the placebo effect!

If homeopathy advocates put forward a study with conclusions as weak as the second one on Ninfan's list, we'd be all over it like a (psychosomatic) rash.

Loads of doctors prescribe off-label (one of the 'placebo' situations in the survey), for example prescribing an adult drug to a child outside the strict terms of its marketing license. Doesn't mean they're looking for placebo effects.

Well Cougar - Bigrich said it on this page, its been said twice on the first page of this thread, again on the second page, and the first post on the thread uses the quote "there is absolutely no medical benefit of homoeopathy" without the follow on qualifier from the original quote of "other than a possible placebo effect."

This quote is a misquote, as a follow-up poster later explains. (EDIT - as you said, sorry, I initially misread your post.)

I've had a brief scan through for the other posts you refer to and can't immediately see any of them(*).

The only thing I can see from Bigrich which you might be referring to is where he states "it his having no effect"; the sentence immediately preceding this (emphasis mine) is "there is no statistical difference [b]with the controls[/b]", ie, when compared to placebo.

(* - are they homeopathic posts?)

It's intuitively nonsense but for the tiny percentage of folk on here who haven't made their mind up about everything, here's an actual New Scientist article worth reading... http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1532-bizarre-chemical-discovery-gives-homeopathic-hint.html

there is no statistical difference with the controls", ie, when compared to placebo.

Cougar - however as i pointed out in the next post, there's more than one type of control, the ie. is your own supposition... as to the homeopathic posts: Ctrl-F for 'no effect'

Here's a point of course - if nobody thinks that things that are really, really diluted can have any effect, why do they get so upset when I have a crafty one in the swimming pool 😉

Because the bacteria and virii in your shit can cause real life threatening infections?

Don't dis placebos the mind is a powerful thing. Real life experiment; tickle yourself under your armpit, nothing. Let your wife do the same thing, bloody ticklish. 😀

Yeah, but if you're going to do that, then you might as well give them nice cheap sugar pills rather than expensive real drugs -

Actually you should give them really expensive sugar pills as the placebo effect increases if the patient believes the treatment is more expensive :>