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RE: Homeopathy
November 6, 2009 at 9:15 pm
False positives are a big problem and can occur in the best studies. The biggest problem for homeopathy is that the results can't be repeated. The studies that follow are often higher quality and take into account possible weakness in design, numbers, blinding etc. and the results are different.
Homeopathy is very interesting. It is very much like a religion. You have the prophet (Hahnemann) and followers take his words as if they are from the bible. Their beliefs do not change over time. Nothing can change their minds and if you hear their words you too can see the light.
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RE: Homeopathy
November 7, 2009 at 9:38 am
If you look at a summary of all homeopathic studies over the last 200 years, you will find that a statistically irrelevant proportion of them showed positive results, whilst the others all showed either negative or results typical of standard placebos.
Further, all tests conducted on supposed "water memory" have failed after potential room for bias was removed.
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RE: Homeopathy
November 7, 2009 at 11:00 am
Even if water has memory, there is no evidence that it has anything to do with homeopathy. Most of the experiments given as evidence for water memory are attempts to tell the difference between ultra high dilutions and distilled water. As Adrian mentioned bias is a big problem along with small sample size, design, and instrumental error. This pattern holds for all homeopathic research--the higher the quality of the study to more likely the result is negative.
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RE: Homeopathy
November 7, 2009 at 12:41 pm
The Horizon show was a blow to homeopathy. The show may have educated some who knew nothing of homeopathy. The believers dismissed it right away. They blamed Randi saying that he was able to fix the results. Can you trust a magician, who wants to show that it is crap? It's an easy way out. The other way out was for them to blame the design of the experiment. They found many problems and think they were set up for failure.
I think the show strengthened many of the believers faith. They perceived their system was under an organized attack by the skeptics and they need to fight back. Big pharma (the devil) was paying for the attack. This reinforces their belief that homeopathy is so great that if people only knew truth people would leave real medicine for homeopathy. This would cost big phama millions.
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RE: Homeopathy
November 7, 2009 at 12:43 pm
I'm afraid you may be correct. Such is the mind of the faithful that you would have more luck in explaining the colour red to the colour blind.
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RE: Homeopathy
November 7, 2009 at 2:28 pm
I don't think it is possible to convince many people who are heavily involved with homeopathy to change their minds. This seems to be something in common with believers in pseudosciences of all flavors. There will be a few drop outs, but most cannot be influenced by anything.
My hope is that through education there will be fewer numbers that are completely taken in. In theory over time the numbers will go way down. It may take generations.
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RE: Homeopathy
November 8, 2009 at 3:05 am
That whole water memory thing doesn't even make sense in the most basic logical sense.
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