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Comment in The Guardian

Badly Shaved Monkey

Anti-homeopathy illuminati member
Badly Shaved Monkey
Joined
Feb 5, 2004
Messages
5,363
A nice little piece by Ben Goldacre

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1558417,00.html

There was a letter in reply by Lionel Milgrom published yesterday, but I don't seem to be able to find a web version to link to. Can anyone else? He espoused his usual twaddle about how homeopathy must be explained by quantum physics. There was also a reply from someone in Germany citing the suppsed success of homoepathic belladonna in vitro in rat ileum and querying why "only the negative" studies for homeopathy get headlines. Maybe he never reads the Daily Mail!
 
Nice article, thanks for the link.

He espoused his usual twaddle about how homeopathy must be explained by quantum physics.
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Does Mr. Milgrom also require that the placebo effect can be explained by quantum physics?

And why with all the quantum everything anymore? It seems anything 'new-agey' has somehow got its "verification" through quantum physics. Is this because the subject seems typically to be ambiguous to most people?

Not to derail, but my girlfriend works for a "psychic" that has made up some new belief system called Theta Healing and it uses everything from quantum mechanics to hawaiian kahuna rituals to explain what's really going on around us. It's almost as if a person belives in one new age system, they automatically believe in all of them... :(
 
" It's almost as if a person belives in one new age system, they automatically believe in all of them."

What do you mean "almost"?!

"Believing" is a mind set. It may even be the default human mindset. If you believe in reflexology then you pretty much have to believe in all the others. You've already gone outside the realm of reason so it's not much of a step.

I'm just really grateful that early scientists formulated the thought processes and procedures of science to free us from such rubbish.
 
I deal with woo in the house almost every single day of my life. My girlfriend believes in a lot of things paranormal. That said, she's still quite skeptical of some things. For instance, she believes in that whole water-energy thing where you put a picture of a "water crystal" under the glass of water and it imbues your drink with things like love, purity, happiness, etc. I find that to be extremely outside rational thought. However, immediately after hearing about Ramtha (J Z Knight) she said the lady was a total crock and how could any person believe it? At that point I made a snide remark under my breath about the obvious lack of consistency in thought on her part, but it went unheard. Good thing, too, I'm sure =]

I guess what I'm trying to point out is that while a person is able to believe in some things woo, that doesn't guarantee a belief in all things woo.
 
So we now have "woo" - irrationality in beliefs about the world - and metawoo - not being rational about irrational beliefs about the world.
 
Badly Shaved Monkey said:
A nice little piece by Ben Goldacre

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1558417,00.html

There was a letter in reply by Lionel Milgrom published yesterday, but I don't seem to be able to find a web version to link to. Can anyone else?
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/letters/story/0,,1559473,00.html

This letter is a marvellous illustration of the first sentence of Ben Goldacre's article: "Sceptics, and the placebo effect, are easily misunderstood."
 
I see the cowards haven't had the balls to print Badly Shaved Monkey's letter in reply to that.

BSM, why don't you post it here? I thought it was a cracker.

Rolfe.

PS. You might want to leave off your real name and address, this time! :D
 
3 idiots, 2 time-wasters and someone with a brain

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/letters/story/0,6903,1562384,00.html

A set of letters from The Observer this time.

The 3 idiots between them have presented a summary of the kind of bad logic espoused by woo advocates- they use it in animals so it must work; my wife got better so it must have been the homeopathy; argument by blatant assertion.

I find the smugness of the TV producer to be the most depressing and inexcusable.
 
I especially liked this paragraph from Milgrom's letter:
First, the observation problem. Physics teaches us that reality and our observation of it cannot be separated. The corollary - that any attempt at such separation can essentially destroy the "reality" under observation - is precisely what is perpetrated during blinded trials of homeopathy. Consequently, the double blind placebo-controlled trial, as applied to homeopathy and CAM, is the scientific equivalent of Nelson putting a telescope to his blind eye.
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So homeopathy works because of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle! And further extending his logic, we cannot be sure of anything we thought we knew whose results come from clinical trials or epidemiology. Cigarettes causing lung cancer? Sorry, when we observe that smokers get lung cancer at much greater rates, simply attempting to observe these higher rates changes the reality. The data is not valid.

Does he really believe this? Surely someone with a passing familiarity with science can see that a double-blind trial is the same thing as counting, right? And he says that counting is not valid. Huh.
 
Re: 3 idiots, 2 time-wasters and someone with a brain

Badly Shaved Monkey said:
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/letters/story/0,6903,1562384,00.html

A set of letters from The Observer this time.

The 3 idiots between them have presented a summary of the kind of bad logic espoused by woo advocates- they use it in animals so it must work; my wife got better so it must have been the homeopathy; argument by blatant assertion.

I find the smugness of the TV producer to be the most depressing and inexcusable.
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The letters demonstrate further bad logic (dare I say "lies"?):

My wife had a private hospital operation to remove four wisdom teeth.
On discharging her, the hospital insisted on a course of antibiotics and pain killers in spite of my wife's insistence that she would be taking the homeopathic remedies for infection and for the bruising control.
The unopened conventional pills were returned to the hospital for the only post-operative visit when all was declared to be well.
The drugs prescription cost £ 91; the arnica and calendula cost a few pence.
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Here, the author fails to recognise that post operative infection, whilst common, is not invariable, and fails to appreciate that there may have been no "infection" for the homeopathic remedy to "prevent".

He also implies that prevention of infection via antibiotics is expensive - more than the "few pence" for the homeopathic alternative. Firstly, I guarantee the homeopathic preparations cost several pounds, not pence, and I know of no standard pain killers and antibiotics that would cost £91 for a course of treatment. The most expensive antibiotic used for dental sepsis is probably co-amoxyclav (augmentin). This costs £14.63 for a week's course at high dose. As regards pain killers, Tramadol, one of the stronger opiates, costs £1.84 for generic compound 50 tabs, and the most expensive proprietary equivalent is Zydol at £36 for 60 (but I doubt a dentist would prescribe this or so many in the first place). I could easily concoct a conventional drug course that would work out cheaper than any standard homeopathic course for rubbish like calendula and arnica. (One web site I looked at, entirely at random, advertises calendula pillules at £15 for 100c)

If infection did occur it would not have been prevented by calendula, and would have entailed a far more expensive sequel to the whole affair with follow up visits to doctors/dentists and more antibiotics than would be required in the first place.

ETA: I see it was a "private" hospital, so they may well have tried to squeeze profit out of their prescription, particularly if their own pharmacy filled it. But that is nothing to do with the principle at issue (and does not explain why the patient agreed to the prescription in the first place if she didn't want it - all she had to do was say no).
 
Blue Bubble said:
Seconded. BSM, I too would be interested in seeing the letter posted here.
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OK:

"Lionel Milgrom's invocation of quantum physics (Letters, August 31) does not explain homeopathy. His published works misapply quantum theory when he claims that quantum entanglement of observer and observed explains why homeopathy fails under properly controlled conditions. It is well known, though sometimes denied by advocates of homeopathy, that the better the quality of clinical trials the less likely they are to show a benefit from homeopathic remedies. In other words, if you allow the whole rigmarole of a homeopathic consultation with individualised prescribing of remedies to proceed, but give some patients the 'real' remedy and compare their outcomes to others given a placebo then the effect of the 'real' remedy disappears. This is not mysterious.

A properly parsimonious explanation of homeopathy accepts that homeopathic remedies are nothing but water or sugar pills and any true power of homeopathy derives from the benefits of a sympathetic listener and a nice cup of tea.

The policy problem for the NHS is how to provide an appropriate service of sympathetic listeners, complete with tea-making facilities and a few potted plants to decorate the office, without needing to pretend that those little white pills have magical powers.

However, as a veterinary surgeon my concern is that even if the owner is happy with the warm reception they get from the therapist and enjoy their cup of tea, the animal has still only received water or a sugar pill."
 
Badly Shaved Monkey said:
However, as a veterinary surgeon my concern is that even if the owner is happy with the warm reception they get from the therapist and enjoy their cup of tea, the animal has still only received water or a sugar pill."
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I think it's a bloody disgrace that they didn't print this. I am SO ******* tired of hearing homoeopathy proponents declare that "it works on animals"!

Any vet can attest that it's frighteningly easy to persuade an owner that their pet is getting better when it isn't. At least for a while. They're desperate for that to be true, and when the authority figure tells them that it's happening, they usually swallow it hook, line, sinker and rowboat. Oh yes, and actually most patients do get better - they would have got better even if you'd just given them a nice pat on the head. Now, do you admit that to the client - or not?

It's a real temptation that professionals have to be on their guard against, to soothe the owner of a sick animal into thinking that things are going better than they are, or to accept (or even claim) the credit for a coincidental recovery. Responsible vets try to avoid this. As far as I can see, quacks milk it for all it's worth. Then, of course "it works on animals!!!"

Actually, it's even more subtle than that. It's horribly easy to persuade oneself that a useless intervention is having a beneficial effect. Again, ethical vets are aware of this and will re-evaluate procedure and dump a treatment if it is subsequently shown not to be doing what we thought it was doing. Anybody ever heard of a quack treatment being discontinued because it had been found that it wasn't doing any good?

*&$#! If I hear "but it can't be placebo because vets use it on animals and it works" one more time, I swear I'll do someone an injury.

Rolfe.
 
Heheh, then better stay away from the NCH homeopathic forum. We only have one really active homeopath there, so I'd hate to see him/her injured :p.

Hans
 
MRC_Hans said:
Heheh, then better stay away from the NCH homeopathic forum. We only have one really active homeopath there, so I'd hate to see him/her injured :p.
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Hans, are you referring to "fitness" ? I'm not sure whether she (I think she's a she based on earlier postings) actually is an active homeopath. I think the seeds of doubt have been sown, though ...;)
 
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