Aww, the students of Campus Atheists, Skeptics, and Humanists have warmed the frigid, friable cockles of my black heart. They’re having a protest of homeopathy on the Twin Cities campus this Friday! They’re hosting a lecture debunking that nonsense, and are planning to poison themselves with homeopathic dilutions.
Take that, Center for Spirituality and Healing! We all see right through you.
Homeopathy is renowned for both its popularity and the overwhelmingly incorrect pseudoscientific tenets it purports. In the UK, the growing 10/23 protest has called for the end of government support of such unsupported blather. It’s about time the United States joined her sibling. This October 28th, join CASH at the University of Minnesota- Twin Cities and the Center for Inquiry at Michigan State in protesting the pseudoscience of homeopathy and its faulty ‘regulation’ by the FDA.
The Food and Drug Administration regulates the homeopathic industry not to lend credibility to such products, but to supposedly protect consumers from products that can kill them. This is not enough. Just like with actual medications (as homeopaths liken their products to), testing of the claims made by such companies must be both accurate and rigorous. Without such standards, homeopaths openly use the stamp of FDA approval to advertise for the effectiveness of homeopathic remedies.
Join the growing numbers who are taking a stand for science-based medicine. Join us on October 28th in confronting homeopathy and demanding that the FDA require peer-reviewed, scientific research in order to garner its approval. Participation is easy!
Protest on October 28th at your local university, hospital, or drugstore that dispenses homeopathic remedies. Conduct an ‘overdose’. Give a statement to your local media. Write a letter. Sign the petition. Take a stand for science.
The following materials may be of interest as well:
CFI’s industry-wide petition (no signatures):
http://www.centerforinquiry.net/media/newsroom/pdf/petition_to_fda_re_standards_for_homeopathic_drugs.pdfCFI’s Walmart-directed petition (signature-based):
https://secure3.convio.net/cfi/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=251Secular Student Alliance activity packet:
http://www.secularstudents.org/node/4015More information from CFI:
http://www.centerforinquiry.net/news/cfi_and_csi_petition_fda_to_take_action_on_homeopathic_drugs/Updated information from CASH:
http://cashumn.org/main/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=146&Itemid=100167Join CASH and CFI in taking a stand for science-based medicine on October 28th. Making evidence-based thinking a movement and not a counterculture requires effort, and the efforts of many hands can move more mountains than the faith of a few.
Sincerely,
Chelsea Du Fresne
Campus Atheists, Skeptics, and Humanists
University of Minnesota- Twin Cities
cashumn.org
(Also on Sb)
Homeopathy: Magic for the diluted.
Glen Davidson
Be careful though, because where I live, homeopathic medicine can sometimes be real medicine + a “homeopathic” thing. Like pills for headaches that contain normal amounts of acetaminophen and diluted tax forms (known to cause headaches).
I will offer a FREE Homeopathic Cake* to any reader who attends this protest.
I swear by homeopathy: It’s f**king useless
* Homeopathic Cake may not actually exist
Here at my unnamed university in San Francisco, we’re surrounded by the woo. The two major stores that are within walking distance of the campus/dorms are notorious for selling that crap. It’s unfortunate. I’d hoped that close to an institute of knowledge there would be a sort of “bullshit-free” zone, but clearly I was wrong.
I do make a point of mentioning it every time I go in the stores though. Something like, “Still selling magic pills today?”
:P
There’s a little — perhaps a lot — too much blame being placed here upon the FDA. I’m pretty sure they’re forbidden by law from evaluating the effectiveness of anything labeled “homeopathic”. Just as they are from regulating dietary “supplements” and their bogus health claims. The blame belongs to Congress, not the FDA.
As I teach a number of students who aspire to be nurses, I always mention what a crock homeopathy is when we discuss dilutions.
Since homeopathy can essentially be debunked by simply stating what it is, that makes at least preparing the first half of the lecture pretty straightforward.
Ah, homeopathy. One of the few things most skeptics, be they atheist, agnostic, or theist, militant or accommodationist, liberal, conservative, or libertarian, feminist or MRA, can agree is utter bullshit.
You’d think the accommodationists would be giving the homeopaths medals for bringing us all together.
Dara O’Briain on homeopathy:
Aren’t homeopathic products and advertisements required to use the disclaimer (“these statements have not been evaluated by the FDA, not intended to treat or cure disease”)?
I don’t know because I wouldn’t buy homeopathic remedies if my head was cut off. But I recently got a catalog full of “medicinal mushroom products” with that disclaimer at the bottom of the first six pages. (Not sure why I would buy any “medicinal” product that doesn’t treat disease.)
I suspect educating people about what homeopathy really is would make a difference. I didn’t really know until a few years ago; I assumed it was some holistic mind/body/spirit thing that at least had some grounding in science. My daughter, who is 30, had no idea until she read my blog post explaining/ridiculing the idea.
It still blows me away that practitioner/defenders make this big deal about supposed “water memory” and then offer pills from which the water has evaporated away. In other words, the pills contain none of the water that contains none of the supposedly “active” ingredient.
Why October 28th instead of October 23rd?
To be fair, I don’t think even the homeopaths claim they can treat decapitation, though they’d probably blame the difficulty in succussing a lawnmower blade rather than the fundamental methodology.
@feralboy12
Very wise choice, homeopathy is strongly counter-indicated in case of acute beheading.
Indeed. I basically “deconverted” my mom in a few days by simply explaining to her in detail what homeopathy is. Usually, that is complicated by the fact that people will simply think you are making fun of them, so absurd is the truth. When they find out that you aint, the work is complete.
She simply thought, as did I until I saw a talk by James Randi years ago, that it was just a name for natural herbal stuff. Everyone thinks that! How did they do that? That must be one of the most effective marketing campaigns ever.
A complimentary therapy that works WCTB
This new or perhaps ancient complimentary therapy genuinely seems to work in perhaps not all but many cases. It is cheap and doesn’t involve bashing things against horsehair pillows. It works on the placebo principle the same as homoeopathy, but doesn’t try to kid you that it is anything other than a placebo. Having said all that WCTB works.
There is this faulty notion that many quack remedies are immune from the law because they existed and were peddled before the laws came in. (Hey, how come the quack remedies are excused but the opiates and other such things aren’t?) It is clearly in the public interest that quackery be controlled so we must accept that quackery deserves no special privilege and any claims or hints of medical efficacy must be regulated. Now there is the issue of vitamin supplements as well; I think they should have labels informing the users that they don’t do any damned good unless the user has a deficiency. I wouldn’t expect that to harm sales but perhaps future generations will be more aware of the true benefits of vitamin supplements.
MadScientist,
the art is not to sell a treatment or medicine at all, but merely some expensive lactose candy which, by folk wisdom, can cure various things.
That treatment seems heavily culturally dependent. For people who speak English but aren’t English, you may want to substitute something else. For instance, there is no such beverage description as ‘wee’ in spoken Canadian English, and there’s no corresponding size anyway. If it’s not so large a volume as to require a cupholder in the centre rather than the side of the vehicle to prevent rollovers, it’s considered mosturising lip balm rather than an actual drink.
And how did I miss this earlier:
How convenient! That certainly beats hoping the white kid with pimples and dreadlocks twirling diablo sticks in the park isn’t an undercover cop. Where did you get it? My copy of High Times has the last fourteen pages ripped out, presumably because the previous owner ran out of rollies.
I feel like no discussion on homeopathy is complete without these two gems:
http://xkcd.com/765/
Julien,
A splendid skit, they really know what they are talking about.
For a treatment of theodicy vs. pareidolia, there’s THERE IS NO GOD.
But there is no need for them to hold such a protest – I’ve already had teeny-tiny protest and firmly shaken my head, and so by the rules of homeopathy that is magnificently more powerful than they could hope to achieve.
tim,
That is a common, but fatal rookie mistake. Homeophathy does not work this way. It’s like cures like, not like begets like. So, you have to nod affirmatively in a teeny-tiny act of support. All you did was strengthen homeopathy enormously.
Actually, I’m certain we touched on that at some point. I clearly remember using the words “acceptable substitute”. Coffee, milk, fruit juice…
Naturally, we’re all for extending the therapy to places where it’s not yet available, but of course we’d need to do a €1.2 mil preliminary study funded by the EU.
But Alex, surely I strengthened the protest? I mean, I concussed myself and everything. Isn’t that right? Maybe I did it too hard. Ii sseeeemm toto bbee sseeeeiinngg ddoouubbllee.
Another gem from a UK satirical news site: http://www.newsbiscuit.com/2011/04/22/new-age-terrorists-develop-homeopathic-bomb/.
I know people who insist that homeopathy must work, because they use it all the time in Europe. When I explain what homeopathy is, I get told that this must be some stupid North American version of homeopathy, because European homeopathy works, and what I’ve described is ridiculous.
A bottle of Jameson’s and an eightball?
“Ah! Similarly then, you’ll be adopting socialism?”
NitricAcid,
tell be about it. The stuff is insanely popular in Germany and Switzerland, with basically zero education about what it is. I think the target audience is the same crowd who buy vegetables without genes, and electricity without atoms. I sound a little cynical, because I am.
tim,
Of course, a little protest strengthens the protest. But imagine how much more even less support can do. If you support homeopathy half-heartedly for 1/100th of a second, via the law of potentiation, you hurt their cause as much as with more than three minutes of protest. If you think of ten other things at the same time, you are up to an equivalent of half an hour of protest!
@Brownian #27
I’m in Canada (and not Alberta any more), so that argument doesn’t have the intense results that it would have in parts of the US.
@MadScientist #15
Because MORPHINE FUCKING WORKS.
That’s why. :D
In the UK… It’s about time the United States joined her sibling.
When did the wayward colonies promote themselves from daughterly status?
Has the Queen given assent?
I think that just applies to the “supplements” industry, who are allowed to spend a full half hour infomercial claiming they can cure anything as long as they stick that disclaimer on the bottle.
Again, complaining or petitioning to the FDA is useless — you’re preaching to the choir. It’s Congress that needs to make the change. Good luck with that.
The deal with homeopathy is you can’t overdose on it. But you can fucking drown.
Actually, it is possible to kill yourself by drinking excessive amounts of water.
http://chemistry.about.com/cs/5/f/blwaterintox.htm
John Pieret #33
Don’t tell me, tell O’Briain.
@19
It was actually the first Mitchell and Webb skit I saw (the one I linked) and I think I got the link from here.
I really loved the one you linked too. I haven’t watched most of their stuff yet but it is on my rental list.
Another remark about homeopathy that I do not remember the origin of goes like:
“If homeopathy works by dilution why do they tell you on the packet: take one pill and if it doesn’t work take another one.”
The instructions probably should go something like:
“take one pill and if it doesn’t work tough luck you should only have taken half a pill”.
Instead of protesting, I think we should go in the opposite direction. Treat it like real medicine. Regulate it. Make it only available with a prescription given out by a real doctor. Since most doctors in their right minds would ever prescribe the stuff, it would end up going away on its own. Especially after the first bunch of malpractice suits.
I applaud the protest and would attend, but did they have to schedule it Halloween weekend?!?
I make plans months ahead of time for halloween dammit!
Just wanted to emphasize this point. Seriously, please everyone subjecting themselves to an ‘overdose’: do be careful of what’s in your ‘homeopathic remedies’! Not all the “active” ingredients may be in negligible-to-non-existent concentrations. Stay safe, kids :)
But I love homeopathy! It’s without a doubt the single most expensive substance on earth. I don’t mean the sugar pills, of course, though those are pretty damn pricey. No, I mean the price per actual molecule of “active” ingredient (which is not listed as active ingredients, incidentally). The probability of finding one molecule in a 30c bottle of homeopathic dilution is about 1 in 10^30 (will vary between about 1 in 10^20 to 1 in 10^40, depending on the compound and dilution methods – very rough estimate). Continuing on from here, one would need to buy one nonlillion bottles of this crap to get a single molecule ingredient. And I thought those ruthenium catalysts were pricey at $800 for 5g…
Be careful with taking overdoses. I went to an acupuncturist for relief from the pain of a shoulder injury. It does work by the way. At least I could give up popping paracetamol for a couple of weeks.
Little did I know till afterwards the acupuncturist was also a homoeopath and he gave me two bottles of pills as I departed. The main ingredient of both of them was sugar. An overdose would definitely dangerous for a diabetic.
Oh well back to paracetamol and codeine.
My boyfriend and me just had a debate with my mother over this stuff the other night. It makes me kind of sad, that she just doesn’t want to see how illogical it is. :/
At least she doesn’t force it on us, her kids. But still.
Yo Katzentier,
What were her debating points? Let me guess – “But it worked for my …” and “Science does not know everything”
My mother overdosed on her homeopathic medication.
She forgot to take it.
Since ALL water has touched ALL OTHER water, isn’t ALL WATER a cure for ANYTHING??!? Is there a limit to how long water has a memory for? Or am I just asking the wrong questions?
I mean, wastewater is now known to contain traces of just about every pharmaceutical being prescribed. So when that hits the ocean, isn’t the entire ocean a treatment for anything, of the strongest kind no less?
WCorvi,
I think this class of objections is circumvented by homeopathic doctrine by the algorithm: the potentiation of course only works if you do it step by step, and in between each step, perform a precisely specified manipulation called succussion. This ensures somehow that only the ingredient you start with in a high concentration in step 0, gets the potentiation, whereas all other things that are already dilute to begin with, not having been diluted with repeated succussions to begin with, are thus not potentiated in the same manner. Of course this is still unconvincing even if one agrees to play Devil’s advocate, but there is at least in principle a distinction built in between the arnica extract with which you start, and the urine from the bladder of oliver cromwell.
My grandfather has swam in the ocean everyday since childhood and look how healthy he is. There’s your proof all you pseuodoskeptic materialists!!eleventy-one!!!
I am prone to using a cup of tea as a headache cure. Part of it is pure psychosomatic, the ‘ritual’ of making the tea is something that I find relaxing, and that helps with the tension that is part of my headaches. Drinking a hot liquid is also relaxing. And there are properties in the tea leaves that do help with headaches.
And I admit, when I’m feeling a bit down with a case of the blah, going for a swim at the lake can be helpful. Nice setting, bit of exercise, helpful.
My cousin thinks this means I am into homeopathic remedies. She can’t understand the difference between a cup of tea for a slight tension headache and taking sugar pills for cancer, and I can’t understand how she can be that stupid.
Given the state of German sewage treatment at the time of WWII, i.e., dump it all in the river and from there, into the sea, do keep in mind that, whenever you swim in any ocean, you are swimming in Hitler’s pee! HITLER’S PEE!
ZOMG, they Godwined the ocean!
First on safety: go ahead and take large quantities of homeopathic remedies, but do it only once. They have no active molecules in them, so they won’t cause harm. But don’t take them frequently and for a long time. This can induce a proving (see my site for more info) and may not be pleasant (There is something in them alright!)
Let’s set matters straight. Atheism is a form of religion. Atheists are religiously sure there is no god. Science has no proof either way so this belief is a matter of faith, therefore religion. Some atheists also have a religious belief that homeopathy does not work. They don’t bother to evaluate the available data because they believe religiously that the whole idea is ridiculous. It is interesting that two specific groups hate homeopathy: both fundamental religions: some atheists and some ultra-religious Christians. The first because they have religious faith that homeopathy does not work, the second because they know it works but don’t understand it, and feel it is from the devil. They should really form an alliance to make their work more effective! People who feel they are of science should look at the data and discuss data in open forums, not behave like brainwashed imbeciles. You can find double blind placebo controlled research on effectiveness of homeopathy on my site (Book>appendix). Performing ridiculous acts like swallowing large amounts of homeopathic remedies proves only that one never looked at the data and has no understanding what they are arguing against. It is unbecoming of a scientist. Want to do it properly? Let’s do it like scientists, in front of an audience, all statements should be backed up by research, no insults allowed, then see what the audience thinks. But then again, I’ve been offering to do this for years, and there are no takers. Fear of failure? I guess,it is impossible to argue against a religious belief, so I might as well shut up. Jacob Mirman, MD, DHt, classical homeopath and internist.
Yay, we have a live one ! Quack, quack !
Sure, so let me pray for you.
So many mistakes, so little time. Faith does not equal religion, faith is belief without evidence, in anything, while religion is a system of applied belief in one or more imaginary beings with superpowers.
So you might say that atheists have “faith” that there are no gods, but that doesn’t mean what you think it means. The burden of proof is on those who make the extraordinary claim, in this case that there exist invisible supernatural beings that can and do interfere in human affairs. What atheists do is to conclude from the lack of evidence for these beings, that they do in fact not exist. If evidence for any gods would ever be forthcoming, we would certainly look at it. But the thing is, in that case (of there being evidence for gods) there would be nothing supernatural left to these beings, because if we can measure their effects in our physical universe, then they become natural phenomena. Still no gods, see.
Please cite the evidence and studies that prove this phenomenon you assert.
Let’s set matters straight. Atheism is a form of religion.
Like bald is a hair color.
Atheists are religiously sure there is no god.
Look, asshole, the least you could do is ASK US what we think before you pull tired, stupid bullshit out of your gelatinous ass.
Fuck you for presuming to know anything about what we think.
FUCK YOU. Got it?
Science has no proof
Science doesn’t deal in proof, you braindead waste of DNA! It deals in EVIDENCE!
Your mother dropped you on your head to jump start your tiny brain–right?
either way so this belief is a matter of faith, therefore religion. Some atheists also have a religious belief that homeopathy does not work.
YOU need to provide evidence that it does, moron. The evidence says that it doesn’t, and it can’t. If you had the faintest notion of what science was, you’d fucking well know that.
They don’t bother to evaluate the available data because they believe religiously that the whole idea is ridiculous.
It’s not religious, no matter how many times you vomit that lie, you disgusting, dishonest fuckface.
THEY GO BY EVIDENCE. NOT DATA. NOT YOUR PWECIOUS MORONIC FEELINGS.
EVIDENCE!
Get that through the tiny shriveled pimple on your spinal cord that passes for a brain!
It is interesting that two specific groups hate homeopathy: both fundamental religions: some atheists and some ultra-religious Christians.
We don’t hate it. We hate lying sacks of shit like you who try to give people water to cure serious diseases and conditions. It’s dangerous!
And we’re pissed because, unlike you, we care about people, and making sure they are getting effective treatments for their diseases and conditions.
The first because they have religious faith that homeopathy does not work
Because it doesn’t, fuckface.
People who feel they are of science should look at the data and discuss data in open forums, not behave like brainwashed imbeciles.
Massive fucking projection. You’re the brainwashed imbecile, and too fucking stupid to know it.
The science isn’t done in forums, you dishonest, ignorant sack of shit. It’s done in the peer-reviewed literature. That you don’t know that is yet another example of how colossally fucking stupid you are.
You can find double blind placebo controlled research on effectiveness of homeopathy on my site
Fuck you. Give us the links to the sites themselves not to your fact-free scumbag site.
To the literature, dumbass.
And I can guarantee you this: 1) Your links are to things that have absolutely fuck-all with your bullshit so-called remedy. 2) There weren’t double blind studies of your fake water. If your fake water WORKED, it would be fucking science, moron.
Performing ridiculous acts like swallowing large amounts of homeopathic remedies proves only that
one never looked at the data and has no understanding what they are arguing against.your bullshit fake remedy is a crock of shit.Fixed that the fuck for you–to reality.
It is unbecoming of a scientist.
Being unbecoming to you is a veritable honor, you unscientific moron.
Want to do it properly? Let’s do it like scientists, in front of an audience, all statements should be backed up by research, no insults allowed, then see what the audience thinks.
For the last fucking time: SCIENCE IS DONE IN THE PEER-REVIEWED LITERATURE, NOT IN DEBATES OR GIVING IT TO DOUCHEBAG MORONS LIKE YOU TO DECIDE ON. THEY–LIKE YOU–DON’T KNOW JACK SHIT ABOUT SCIENCE OR HOW IT’S DONE.
If you knew anything about science, you’d know just how full of shit you are.
But then again, I’ve been offering to do this for years, and there are no takers.
You haven’t been looking, you dishonest sack of shit. Your snake oil is water. Nothing else. It does NOTHING!
Fear of failure?
Well, you’re the one running from reality, so the failure is yours.
I guess,it is impossible to argue against a religious belief
As you so amply demonstrate.
so I might as well shut up.
Good idea.
Jacob Mirman, MD, DHt, classical homeopath and internist.
1) After all the bullshit lies you vomited up, we’re certainly not going to believe that moron like you is an MD.
2) Where did you get your “MD”? From the back of a cereal box? Draw a picture of a turtle?
3) There are lots of MDs who are fucking morons–as you so clearly demonstrate. Having a degree doesn’t make you an authority. So it doesn’t matter if you are one. You’re clearly brain damaged, and are too fucking stupid to know it.
Yes because we all know that science is done in front of untrained crowds where their opinion determines fact or validity.
You are a poor scientist Dr. Venkman.
I just have to laugh at that again.
Hard.
You’re no Doctor and surely no Scientist.
Why should I have to prove that you don’t have a dragon in your garage?
I want this on a T-shirt. Right now.
I think maybe he has “scientist” confused with “circus animal”. That’s only natural.
Oh, this guy is the real deal ! From his website :
The only secret here is that people like Mirman are dangerous quacks who should have their medical licence revoked.
Yes, giving people bacterial infections is not really a great way to get rich in medicine, so let’s dilute it until there’s only water left, make up some imaginary process whereby the water retains a memory of the original substance, and voila, we have a winner !
I cackled.
@Jacob Mirman, MD;
I’m just gonna leave this link right here.
Ah, hell, I missed mol day.
Well I’ll drink some homeopathic remedy in my beaker mug tomorrow.
/snark (Coffee, it’ll be coffee)
Let’s set matters straight.
Atheism is a form of religion.
why is it so often the case that when someone starts off with a phrase like:
Let’s set matters straight…
what follows is inevitably full of lies and misinformation?
it’s like they think that by saying:
“What follows is TRUE!”
that somehow it will make people actually believe it.
pathetic.
Ichthyic, yeah!
That and “FACT!” – which seems to be a favourite of the Climate-denier crowd. Two forms, either:
“FACT! – *Bullshit*”, or
“*Bullshit* – FACT!”
Anyway, I’d love to see this quack explain how he can take the time to type this:
While simultaneously believing that the same pills can still produce a definite, tangible, actual, positive healing effect!?!?
How does that work?
In his head, I mean. Not in real life – obviously…
@Aquaria
You win the internet for the week.
Thank you for saying what we were all thinking the way we were all thinking it!
(Oh, don’t you all start on “How do you know what I’m thinking” – you know what I mean)
That was one of the most entertaining takedowns I have ever seen.
Bugger.
How do I close the blockquote?
I guess thirst counts as human suffering.
still funny
Jacob Mirman, Massive Delusionist:
Oh, bullshit. I take homeopathic remedies all the time, at least two quarts a day. As it’s imprinted with chlorine, it helps cure my massive chemical burns. I know it works, because I haven’t had any massive chemical burns in years.
See, this is the bit of logic that disproves homeopathy: if it were true, drinking water from different sources would have all kinds of side effects. I mean, besides giardia. The fact that snake-oil salesmen like you spin like my grandpa’s Frank Sinatra records every time you open your mouths is pretty much proof that you know this, too.
Y’know what that makes you, Sweet Pea? A huckster. A con man. A leech on the fat happy buttocks of society, willing to allow others to come to harm so you can profit from their illnesses, while they do not seek proper, evidence-based medicine.
You are lowly scum, a despicable man devoid of morality and ethics. All evidence and logic indicates homeopathy simply doesn’t work, so you spin fairy tales to explain why the evidence shows homeopathy to be nothing but bilge.
Your idiocy is quite humorous, though. If you weren’t so dangerous, I’d be happy to let you continue in your intentional delusions for the sake of my own amusement.
“Atheism is a religion.” No matter how many times I hear that, I just have to laugh. It’s so cute, like when a 5-year-old says “fuck” for the first time. You know they don’t have a clue what they’re saying.
Lol! Do you have any idea where you are? You must be lost.
I’ve always wanted to ask a homeopathic “professional”, why isn’t tap water a cure all, what with the “memory” of all the piss and shit and bacteria and other nastiness that it come into contact with?
I’ll second getting this on a t-shirt. Maybe with a picture of Ken Hams ugly mug on it.
Jacob:
Oh, see, you’ve got it all wrong. We don’t hate homeopathy – we generally think it’s hilarious and useless. The notion that one molecule of anything in a significant amount of water can have a noticeable affect on the body is just silly and not worth hate. Besides, most people could stand to drink more fluids.
What we do despise are people, such as yourself, who make unsubstantiated claims about the effectiveness of treatments from a position of implied authority. You see, people listen, and follow your recommendations instead of getting useful, tested, proven treatments, and then suffer or worse.
And that makes you, personally, responsible for their suffering. Because you had the power to do something differently, to say something differently, and make people’s lives better. Instead, you spouted nonsense and drivel about dilutions and such, and made the world a slightly worse place.
Science is about testing more than whether or not something works: it’s about proposing a reason for how it works and testing that in ways to make sure no other potential how is more accurate. Yes, some people who take homeopathic medicines get better – but some people (the same percentage, mostly) get better whether they take any medicine at all or not.
The burden of proof is on you to prove it works, not on us to prove it doesn’t. However, because scientists are generally good people, we’ve done some of the hard work for you. Of course, you won’t like the answer, but who cares about that?
If you honestly care about facts and helping people, do the double-blind studies with high rigor and see what the results are. Get independent, impartial observers involved to help maintain the rigor. Publish the results, whether you like them or not. Anything else – including blabbing on a personal blog about being oppressed – is bullshit and just a distraction, and implies you know that your methods won’t be supported by such a trial.
Go ahead. Prove us wrong. Beat us at our own game. We’ll be here waiting.
If a healthy person ate this meat, he or she would develop severe symptoms: diarrhea, vomiting, fevers with foul smelling sweat, restlessness, body aches…A patient who has not ingested rotten meat, but has these symptoms for some other reason, will be helped by Pyrogenium.
The symptoms described can be due to a number of underlying illnesses, but the most common reasons for GI upset is food poisoning and viral gastroenteritis. Both are self-limiting, i.e. will stop if you do nothing about them. So a patient who took a water pill that once had “Pyrogenium” waved at it will probably feel better shortly thereafter-not because of the pill but because the illness is improving on its own. But they might attribute feeling better to the pill. And, tada, a true believer is born.
Atheists are religiously sure there is no god.
At risk of someone taking away my atheist card (good for one free baby at local chapters), I’m not. If the stars spelled out “Repent, Dianne” tomorrow, I’d believe…something. Not sure what, but at least something different from what I do now. There is simply no evidence of any supernatural being or any need of one to explain the universe. Hence, my atheism. Revokable with convincing enough evidence.
I type out my screech of joy, but, well, it wouldn’t have the same effect.
Wait, you’ve killed him haven’t you?
This guy employed all the classic canards. One of my favourite is the, ‘you just don’t understand it’. Oh, there’s so much good fodder there.
Jacob Mirman, please come back! You would if you knew how awful it is to deal with MRA scum.
Let’s set matters straight. Saying that Santa doesn’t exist is a form of religion.
There, that’s your logic, dimwit. Of course, you might actually follow it to Santa “agnosticism,” given the rest of your idiotic patter.
Glen Davidson
Matt Penfold, what evidence am I supposed to present to you that murder is used as I’ve said? A google capture? You’re being really obtuse. It’s so obvious that murder is used outside of the definitions you’ve provided. You’re being ridiculous.
Haha, I think I’ve cross posted! Oops.
still funny
I am really loving this discussion! What a cultured exchange of ideas!
I especially like the comments by Aquaria. “Fuck you. Give us the links to the sites themselves not to your fact-free scumbag site.”, etc. Such eloquence!!!
Rey Fox, I love you too! I didn’t even think of the tee shirt idea. I should copy-write it.
I see you all are very sure of your knowledge and wisdom. It is so good to be so sure in this uncertain world! Just like my friends the Pentecostals, who think I am from the devil. They are also sure they are saved. Its a good feeling to know you know better than others, and the others are just stupid…
Anyway, for those interested in double blind placebo controlled studies of homeopathy published in peer reviewed medical journals, here is the link: http://bookonhealing.com/appendix.html
Clicking on the titles of individual articles will give you a PDF of each article. Aquaria should send some of his eloquence to the publishers of Lancet, Brittish Journal of Clinical Pharmacology, etc. Sorry, my site is slow for some reason. Maybe all this attention from you good people is slowing it down? Quit bogging it down! I use it for patient education.
By the way, to answer some of your inquiries: my MD is from the University of Minnesota Medical School, graduated 1987. Internal medicine residency in Chicago, Board certified in internal medicine in 1900. Board certified by several homeopathic boards.
Keep up the good work! Drink those remedies on Friday. The more the better! Give our pharmacies the needed income.
Rejoice in your superiority!
http://www.BookOnHealing.com
Jacob Mirman, MD, DHt
Still funny.
But Oh look! A Lancet study on the quality of Homeopathic trials.
Not looking so good there Doc
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(05)67177-2/abstract
Bias is a motherfucker.
And I’m board certified by several Leprechaun Pot of Gold hunting boards.
It looks like our homeopath doesn’t understand that books are the lowest rung of evidence. After all, there is this thing called vanity press, which makes them unreliable. Now real science is found in the peer reviewed journals, with standards and trained reviewers to make sure proper double blind studies are carried out. And guess what homeopath. When NIH-CAM actually ran good, solids studies, your drugs are as good as the wonder drug Placebo. Not looking good for your word…
I had no idea what that was supposed to mean, so I typed “homeopathic proving” into the interweb, and look what came up (fourth hit, the preceding three are also worth reading…)
The unscientific method of homeopathic proving.
Richard H:
Oh, for the love of Wonder Woman’s golden lasso! That is just so cute. It’s like that five-year-old who just said “fuck,” now attempting their first science experiment.
“Open up, kitty, I wanna test my hypofesisis that dog food will turn you into a dog! But I really told momma I want a goldfish.”
Only the 5-year-old has an hypofesisis.
Jacob Mirman, Mostly Delightful:
If by “remedies” you mean, “beer,” you bet.
Oh! Is that where the idea of homeopathy came from? “The hair of the dog that bit you?” Y’know, that was poor advice to start with, and really just an excuse to have a beer first thing in the morning.
Wow! Jealous of the medical and financial success of reality-based medicine, much?
It isn’t so much that I rejoice in my superiority, as I delight in your cute dangerous little delusions. I mean, I would if you weren’t busy killing people by medical negligence.
I find this proving idea interesting.
When I drink I become extremely handsome. So therefor alcohol is a cure for attractiveness?
Hey! they may be on to something.
“When I drink I become extremely handsome. So therefor alcohol is a cure for attractiveness?”
You mean, you turn from a big dumb chimp into a human? Wow! This must mean human evolution is due to alcohol! Lets do an experiment. We get you really drunk and see if you turn into a human, then I give you some homeopathic alcohol and see if you turn back into a monkey. We can even administer it in enema! Fun!
Just keep choking your chicken there, doctor. Unlike homeopathy, your judicious use of lubricant and manual stimulation will surely produce measurable results.
Too bad you can’t make us all watch as you experiment with various aids. I bet that would really be fun!.
Precious wanker.
Wow!
The monkey knows about masturbation! We are truly evolved!
Well, we are, Cupcake, however, you aren’t. It might happen if you ever develop a relationship with reality.
Oh look, someone is a little angry. Did I make you angry buddy?
How about addressing the Lancet study I provided “doc”?
Oh and your comment about doing it like scientists…
still
funny
Let me guess, this grinning fake-doctor doesn’t “believe” in evolution, because if evolution is true, why are there still monkeys! Huh, huh, why are there still monkeys, tell me that, atheist fanatics!
“How about addressing the Lancet study I provided “doc”?”
I have no problem w/ that. I can explain why this study is biased. However, if I am to spend time in serious discussion, I would like you to also spend some time and read the studies I provided. I don’t believe these are biased, and they are definitely in good journals, including Lancet if I remember right.
It is very hard to hold a serious discussion when we behave like sixth-graders. I can imagine the response to this will be more profanity and accusation that it is me behaving like a sixth-grader. Just watch. Then why should I bother to even start such a discussion? I might as well have some fun and irritate you. You let me know if you want to be serious. Till then, your mama is so fat, …
Who was the fuckface who introduced himself with this inane lie?
You’re a stupid asshole. If you were respectable, we could discuss things, when you’re just an asshole liar, well, go fuck yourself.
An honest person would begin with honesty, and you do not.
Glen Davidson
Yours are biased, incomplete, not properly blinded, small, and rely on self reporting. Don’t even have to look at them to know the fallacies in your lack of evidence. Compare that to real studies that rely on true double blinding, large numbers of people for good statistical data, and where, possible, rely on measurements not involving self reporting. Those are the gold standard trials. Show us that type of trial, or shut the fuck up.
If you lie about homeopathy not being Placebo, what else will you lie about???
“Let me guess, this grinning fake-doctor doesn’t “believe” in evolution, because if evolution is true, why are there still monkeys! Huh, huh, why are there still monkeys, tell me that, atheist fanatics!”
Just to set matters straight, I actually do believe in evolution.
I was raised an atheist under a communist dictatorship. On arrival here I opened up my mind and reviewed all sorts of schools of thought unavailable to me where I grew up. This is when I decided that Marx’ statement that religion is opium of the masses is actually correct, but so called “scientific atheism” taught to me in Russia was also a form of religion designed to control masses, just like all the rest of them. So I became an agnostic.
Hearing you guys discuss things brings back memories of childhood, when my teachers tried (and almost succeeded) to brainwash me. I know one such former communist/atheist teacher in Mpls. She became a religious fanatic here, basically turned from one opium to another. She just chose the more acceptable one here. Weak people need an ideology to support them.
So, you confuse us with communist ideologues.
The mind boggles at such stupidity.
There’s something called science that requires open-mindedness, not your ignorant prejudices, Mirman. You might want to learn a bit about it.
Glen Davidson
“Don’t even have to look at them to know the fallacies in your lack of evidence.”
This is wonderful! So we don’t need to look at studies to know they are no good. That’s exactly why I don’t want to waste my time on this discussion. Let’s just have fun. So to come back to your mother, she is so fat, that her muscle to fat ratio can only be explained in irrational complex numbers.
This is more on your level of reasoning
“The mind boggles at such stupidity. ”
And your mother is so fat, that she sells shade in the summer
Wow, you’re clever. Stupid fuck.
The fact is, the mind does boggle at how stupid your thought processes are, fuckhead. Most of us here probably are “agnostics” in your way of meaning, it’s just that we don’t see why we should hold some special category of “openness” for God when we freely admit not to believing that Santa exists.
But you’re such an ass that you didn’t bother to ask, you just lied about us. Like a middle school would-be bully.
Glen Davidson
“So, you confuse us with communist ideologues”.
I confuse nothing. I see very clearly your severe addiction to your brand of opium. It actually induces anger and unhappiness, that’s why you people are so bitter. I pity you. Such a great country, and what a waste!
Over and out. Bedtime. You can have your last words, my childish friends. I have to be fresh to be able to stamp out disease tomorrow. Thank you for great entertainment.
You see clearly your hallucinations, bigoted fool.
No, dumbass liars like you do that. Gee, I wonder why anyone would take offense at a puerile hate-spitting gerbil like yourself?
And your evidence for that? Oh, right, you know nothing of honest substantiation of your claims.
We have the last word, don’t doubt it. We don’t let liars like you get away with your flim-flam.
Nothing requires a lot of rest to do, no doubt.
As good an admission to dishonest trolling as we need.
Glen Davidson
I am grateful that Jacob Mirman is not my doctor. I wish his patients the best of luck.
You can explain why the study comparing the biases of homeopathic studies to those of conventional medicine is biased?
Or really?
Please continue.
It’s homeopathic bias. The very fact that there’s no detectible bias is proof of the incredible potency of the bias.
Jacob, dearest (for I know you’re still trolling here):
You are a scum-sucking liar.
You berate others for the anger they show at your deceit and original insult, provide NOTHING by the way of proof for your inept claims for one of the most disgraceful medical cons of the last two centuries and then fuck off like a spoilt child with his football.
Here’s a thought.
If you are sooo convinced that your form of snake-oil quackery is effective, write a paper on it, providing all the scientific evidence YOU can muster and submit it for peer-review to the Lancet, y’know, the publication you are so fond of misunderstanding, you cherry-picking fuckstain.
Writing a book PROVES NOTHING, dickweed. Anyone can self-publish (i.e put on-line) anything they like. It doesn’t make them an expert in anything. All it does in your case is give weight for the delusional idiots who buy into your gob-smackingly stupid assertions about one of the most abundant substances on the planet.
When someone claims knowledge through scientific means and then cannot get it anywhere close to correct about good old H2O then they become a fraud.
Please state what it is YOU have discovered about water, personally, through substantiated scientific research that gives it the properties you claim it takes on as it subsumes other substances.
Please show exactly how massive dilution at the numbers used by homeopaths is efficacious and how ‘succussing’ a substance imparts medicinal value to said substances.
Putting MD after your name smears the professional medical practitioners who work hard under difficult enough circumstances without having to clear up after your fuck-ups.
Don’t sneer at people who won’t read your self-serving ‘literature’ when you wilfully ignore all academic conclusions on your shit.
Still think homeopathy works? James Randi’s offering a million bucks if you can prove it.
Go on – I dare you.
scifi:
Oh, for fuck’s sake. What are we, twelve?
I double-dog dare him.
And if I might note, I’m a resilient compound which causes all missiles launched against me to rebound, and you are an adhesive substance which sticks to those rebounded missiles.
(And for the record, yes, I’m twelve. I mean, not chronologically, but maturationalically. Or whatever that word is that denotes a standard equivalency for emotional development. Also, I’m a bit liquored up. Which I guess is breaking the law, since I’m only twelve. Emotionally. So I’m only emotionally breaking the law.)
I have determined that Jacob Mirman MD is as deluded as homeopathy is diluted. My name says that I’m right.
Heh. There’s some potential for comedy in this. I am Mirman the destroyer, and I confuse nothing!
Karl Marx’s opium does not work this way, Jacob Mirman, MD.
Yeah, that’s annoying. Why can’t we all be happy clappy and help you sell your snake oil, instead of having such a negative attitude…
But actually, I don’t have that much reason to be bitter. After all, you’re not my physician.
We pity your patients.
Wow, so on top of being all male and 17, we’re also all American? Interesting.
@nigeltheBold
Hmmm – OK, my initial reaction was to get all defensive about your comment.
But I agree -“I dare you” is a bit childish.
I suppose it was also redundant as it’s implied in my rant.
Now, watch the liquor, s-s-s-sonny. It’s a s-s-s-slippery slope.
FWIW – my grandmother bought into this bullshit. Due to the level of ignorance in her country and the sway of medical fuckwittery she was treated homeopathically for a dental infection.
She died of gangrene shortly after – which appeared after the ‘treatment’. I am not saying the ‘treatment’ caused it, more the lack of proper treatment that was offered but ignored.
That it has any adherents in the ‘modern’ world is a source of sorrow and, yes, anger, to me.
And so all launched missiles are spent and fall harmlessly into the ocean.
@scifi:
I was worried about that. I didn’t mean to get you defensive about it. That’s why I put in the “double-dog dare” bit.
I was just attempting some additional humor on top of your “dare you” comment. I actually thought it was fun. That’s why I went on about the “being twelve” bit. Because I am. I mean, emotionally. Farts are still funny.
I didn’t intend to offend in any way. I apologize for my too-strong first sentence. It probably reflects poorly on me that I thought for several minutes whether to use that as my intro, vacillating between the possibility of offense, and maximum humor. I was counting on you being familiar with my jocular manner, though I know you and I have not interacted much in the past. I made the wrong choice.
I do apologize. Truly.
Ah, fuck. That really is terrible.
I’ve called this douchecake out, up above. Homeopathy kills, through medical negligence. And by “negligence,” I mean to equate it with locking your kid in the basement and giving them insulation to eat and telling them it’s cotton candy.
I wish there was a way to demonstrate to these menacing morons exactly how much damage they cause, but I realize they’re just like theists: they don’t care about actual factual reality. They care about the little things their mind focuses on, like how much cash the pharmaceutical companies make. And while I do believe there is much that is wrong with our medical system, I’d far rather live in a corrupt world that respects reality-based medicine, than a pure one which pursues fantasy.
As was the intent. I was shooting for humor — I hit “being a complete asshole” instead.
I guess it was just an accident that you failed to quote the preceding sentence,then:
“Yours are biased, incomplete, not properly blinded, small, and rely on self reporting.”
Yes, if the mere abstract reports bias, incompleteness, improper blinding, small scale and self-reporting, there is indeed no need to look at the detailed studies.
@nigeltheBold
A perfect example of why the written word can be so easily misconstrued (although not in Jacob’s case – he’s a fuck-knuckle)
I should have known you were being humourously facetious. My emotions are a terrific substitute for blinkers.
You are officially excused from feeling ‘bad’! Didn’t for one minute see you as an asshole.
“I mean to equate it with locking your kid in the basement and giving them insulation to eat and telling them it’s cotton candy.” – now that is fuckin’ hilarious!
Ya know what – my grandmother could be considered as dumb as some in her acceptance of this snake-oil. Two of her sons are highly respected research scientists in their field (well, both retired, now) but she chose to believe the other, junkie/alcoholic son and his idiot friends instead of the two people who knew what was needed, tried to tell her AND offered to pay for it!
Now we are going to have to be careful as the trolls might start accusing us of some sort of online ‘bro’mance. Uncomfortable!
Think I’m gonna emulate and have a drink or three meself. And lie in wait for the trolls!
Actually, I’m going to put one drop of expensive red wine in a litre of water, shake it hard and keep diluting it so that I can get thoroughly shit-faced on one sip. It’s a cheap way to enjoy top notch Cabernet-Merlot.
Homeopathy doesn’t work this way! *)
Oh don’t be uncomfortable. Ghey love is pretty common here :)
*) If it worked as claimed, it wouldn’t work this way.
You’re confusing criticism and mockery with anger and unhappiness.
Though I do get angry with people like you who fool their patients into the scam that is homeopathy and detract from reliable tested medical advise.
But being angry with people like you, does not make me an angry person. Just makes me one who cares about people not being tricked when they are at, in many cases, a very vulnerable position in their lives.
Now, back to the topic, how about telling me how the study I linked to showing how the bias in Homeopathic studies was so egregious that when compared to studies of conventional medicine and both corrected for bias showed that homeopathic remedies were no better than placebos…. is biased?
I think a quote from Goldacre (does the mention of that name cause you to shrink from the computer screen like a Vampire from sunlight?) is appropriate for this thread.
From the Wiki article on the Benveniste claim of finding homeopathic dilutions causing biological changes:
The problem was that while the study was allegedly double-blind, it turned out not to be due to the small group working together, and when the investigative team properly doubled blinded the work, the results became what would be expected by science, not homeopathy.
The same Wiki article tells of the problems with homeopathic publications:
As I said above, small sample size, self reporting, lack of controls and proper double-blinding, and thinking that the plural of anecdote is data. Homeopathy is nothing but the Placebo Effect.
Quadruple – Blind (Editorial), The Lancet, April 22, 1989, p. 914.4 Complete Text
Can blind discussion remove bias from the reader? Take a trial in which 149 general practitioners entered 487 patients with an influenza-like syndrome into a randomized double-blind comparison of active treatment and matching placebo, both given sublingually. The first dose was supervised, the other four doses were taken on the following mornings and evenings. 478 of the entered patients (98.2%) met the admission criteria (5 out of 242 patients in the active treatment group and 4 out of 245 placebo patients were ineligible). At admission the groups were similar in age and proportion with severe illness. The patients recorded their rectal temperature morning and evening and whether they still had any or all of five cardinal symptoms within forty-eight hours of the start of treatment. The recovery rates were 39/228 (17.1%) in the active treatment group and 24/234 (10.3%) in the placebo group (P=0.03,X2). The relative risk of recovery was 1.67 (95% confidence interval [CI] 1.1-2.7). The difference in the proportion of patients who recovered was 6.8% (95% CI 0.6-13.0%). Logistic regression showed that several potential confounders did not substantially alter the effect of active treatment (odds ratio 1.9, 95% CI 1.1-3.4; P=0.02). Age and severity at admission were significantly associated with recovery: younger patients and those with mild or moderate illness recovered better, as might be expected. All the patients were asked about the effectiveness of their therapy, and more expressed favourable judgments about the active treatment (61% vs 49%, P=0.02). Use of other symptom-relieving drugs for pain, fever, cough, or coryza and use of antibiotics were not confounders; in fact, more patients in the placebo group used compounds to relieve pain or fever. Can the trial be criticized more than the authors do already? There might have been imbalances between the general practitioners in their recruitment of patients: every participating doctor should have entered 4-6 patients, to give a total of at least 596 cases. Also, data on 16 eligible patients were not analyzed for efficacy. There were only four unsupervised doses, but compliance was not reported. Finally side-effects in both groups were not recorded or reported. The authors are restrained in their discussion “The effect was modest … but nevertheless is of interest”. A 7% difference in efficacy as defined would be a respectable proportion in most drug trials. Now let the code be broken–the active treatment was a homeopathic preparation.
Ferley, J.P., A Controlled Evaluation of Homeopathic Preparation in the Treatment of Influenza-like Syndromes, British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology, 1989, 27, pp. 329-335.
A controlled clinical trial was conducted to assess the effectiveness of a homeopathic preparation in the treatment of influenza-like syndromes.
237 cases received the test drug and 241 were assigned to placebo. Patients recorded their rectal temperature twice a day, and the presence or absence of five cardinal symptoms (headache, stiffness, lumbar in articular pain, shivers) along with cough, coryza and fatigue.
Recovery was defined as a rectal temperature less than 37.5° C and complete resolution of the five cardinal symptoms.
The proportion of cases who recovered within 48 h of treatment was greater among the active drug group than among the placebo group (17.1% against 10.3%, P=0.03).
The result cannot be explained given our present state of knowledge, but it calls for further rigorously designed clinical studies.
Reilly, D.T., Is Homeopathy a Placebo Response? Controlled Trail of Homeopathic Potency, with Pollen in Hayfever as a Model, The Lancet, October 18, 1986, pp. 881-886.
The hypothesis that homeopathic potencies are placebos was tested in a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial. The study model chosen compared the effects of a homeopathic preparation of mixed grass pollens with placebo in 144 patients with active hayfever. The homeopathically treated patients showed a significant reduction in patient and doctor assessed symptom scores. The significance of this response was increased when results were corrected for pollen count and the response was associated with a halving of the need for antihistamines. An initial aggravation of symptoms was noted more often in patients receiving the potency and was followed by an improvement in that group. No evidence emerged to support the idea that placebo action fully explains the clinical responses to homeopathic drugs.
You still have not addressed the study I posted which addresses the nature of homeopathic studies like the ones you are quoting.
Still no smoking gun on “efficacy” of homeopathic remedies. Still small studies. A thousand or more would be a good study, and all studies of those size show no efficacy above placebo. In fact, all alt-med therapies except acupuncture (and there only for pain, and it doesn’t matter if the skin is punctured or not, which shows placebo a hyper-placebo effect) show only placebo effects in well run studies by NIH-CAM. Funny how reality and you are not congruent. And you demonstrate your own problems.
“You still have not addressed the study I posted which addresses the nature of homeopathic studies like the ones you are quoting.”
Each study needs to be discussed on its merits, not en-masse. Are you finding specific flaws w/ the individual studies I presented, published in peer reviewed medical journals of highest quality? If you need to look at the actual studies, downloads pdfs here: http://bookonhealing.com/appendix.html
Saying something like “I know it is all bullshit” is 6th grade talk. If this is what you want to do, we’ll get back to “your mama is so fat…” mode of discussion. I have lots of these. Or we can talk like adults…
Compare your minor 7% decrease in time to 30% with a real flu drug…
Jacob Mirman:
Interestingly, though, ten years later (a long time in clinical terms) there was still such a lack of real evidence, that the Homeopathic Medicine Research Group found there was still no significant clinical support of homeopathy.
From Quackwatch:
As noted later on that page, even if that one study indicated a non-placebo effect, it would validate that one treatment for hayfever, and would not validate homoepathy in general. However, it appears only seventeen studies done by 1996 were clinically sound, but those seventeen studies were of such small groups that the statistically questionable.
So, you do not provide or prescribe any homeopathic remedies that have not been through rigorous clinical trials? That, at least, is good.
Nerd of Redhead:
Yes, but those clinical trials were funded by the biased and greedy and lying and evil big pharma, and so aren’t valid.
Everyone knows that the law of similars, which Samuel Hahnemann pulled from his ass when bloodletting was cutting-edge (pun intended) medicine, describes something that actually exists though there has been no research into this law. But it’s a law, damnit!. So, while there is no theoretical or rational basis for the law of similars, it is far more reliable than the “evidence-based” medicine the evil pharmaceutical companies foist off on you every day.
Every day!
‘Cause it’s a law.
Plus, it’s expensive and difficult to develop a new drug, while creating new homeopathic medicines is extremely cheap, but very very lucrative. So even in that regard, it’s far superior to your reality-adhering mainstream medicine.
So the study I link to says “something like “I know its all bullshit””?
You’re deflecting. And poorly.
That’s a hint
And not a subtle one.
Rev BDC:
Yeah. A hint that I am a grammatical monster.
“…studies were of such small groups that they were statistically questionable.”
There. Fixed it for me.
Are you even reading the things you are quoting us?
These are not ringing endorsements of homeopathic treatments. At best they are admissions that there might be something else going on there.
That is in no way confirmation or even admission that there is something going on here.
No wonder you’re having a hard time grasping the significance of the Lancet study I posted and the one that Nigel posted.
In fact it would do you good to read that Goldacre quote I posted so that you can get a handle on why practitioners such at your self are mocked, dismissed and despised.
He’s talking about you Mirman. Yes exactly you and what you are doing here.
You do real damage to actual proven medicine by undermining the public understanding of how evidence based medicine works.
You make it seem like a trivial exercise by continuing to distort and place weight where it is not justified on the conclusions of studies such as the ones you’ve chosen to quote above.
You should be ashamed of yourself.
So nobody read the studies I posted so far. Don’t you have the intelligence to read and critique raw data? You need Barret of Quackwatch to chew it up for you then repeat what he said? I thought you were affiliated w/ UofM? A university? Sad! Not very adult!
I can just see the answers about my own intelligence using profuse profanity. 6th grade?
Your mama…
Easy money from fleecing his patients goes a long way towards covering up any shame he might have felt, as a decent human once.
Of course, now he’s hooked, and now it’s not just the money. He can’t admit that his whole adult life has been built on a lie.
I’d almost feel sorry for him. Almost. If “Dr” Jacob Mirman weren’t a death-dealing asshole …
Presumably that 1986 study Jacob the True Believer finds so compelling was included in the group covered in the 1996 Homoeopathic Medicine Research Group study. In which case not only CAN it be dismissed, it MUST be dismissed.
Jacob, Jacob, Jacob. You didn’t read what I wrote, did you? I was quoting from Quackwatch, yes, but that was merely summarizing the findings of a comprehensive study of homeopathic research. The best you have is an ad hominem?
I though you wanted an adult discussion. The least you could do is address the actual points raised.
Also, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we’ve conceded your research. We’ve also indicated that the results, while interesting, do not establish even these specific remedies as very efficacious. A bit above placebo, yes, as was even stated in the HMRG report. The trouble is the sample size. You’d need larger studies to establish efficacy. As was even admitted in the study you cite, these are interesting results, requiring further research.
Was that research ever done?
Also, as you seem to be a stickler for specific studies rather than an overview, I will ask again: do you only supply or prescribe homeopathic remedies that have been through specific rigorous clinical trials?
Jacob Mirman:
Also, I’m not associate with UofM in any way. I’ve never even visited a single UofM campus at any time in my life, though I have been near Morris. This is a public blog, open to anyone, even lowly computer geeks like me.
Or quacks like you, even.
At least you’ve never harmed anyone by steering them away from getting real medical treatment, Nigel.
myeck waters:
Yeah. Reading about scifi’s grandmother’s death kinda kicked me in the gut. I’ve known intellectually that people have died because conmen like Jacob here prescribe water when they really need real, proven medicine.
Hell, I’ve seen what happens when doctors who prescribe real medicine advise their patients to ignore their sickness. I have a friend with ulcerative colitis who damned near died because his regular doctor gave him bad instructions for taking his medicine. “Take when needed, but double your dose, and come back to see me in a couple of weeks” the doctor said, when the medicine was supposed to be, “Take every day.” Two weeks and fifteen lost pounds later (from a man who wasn’t more than 120lbs to begin with), he was in the hospital for a week. “Young man, do you realize you were only hours away from death?” his new, competent doctor told him. “Don’t ever ignore what your body tells you again.”
He’s out now. We’re trying to get his strength built back up so he can visit a nice surgeon who is going to remove a significant portion of his intestines.
I can only imagine what Dr. Jacob here would do with him. “Here, have some water that was, at some time, in contact with ice cream, which gives me an upset tummy. It’s also been in contact with fish farts, mammoth dandruff, decaying whales, and for one glorios hour in 1932, a young woman named Marcie.”
Ugh.
I dunno, Nigel. I heard Marcie was a stone fox. That water is probably very, very special.
“Also, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we’ve conceded your research. We’ve also indicated that the results, while interesting, do not establish even these specific remedies as very efficacious. A bit above placebo, yes, as was even stated in the HMRG report. The trouble is the sample size. You’d need larger studies to establish efficacy. As was even admitted in the study you cite, these are interesting results, requiring further research.”
Nigel, Nigel, Nigel, Nigel, Nigel, how many times should I repeat it to be intimidating enough? That’s why there is science called statistics. The significance of any result is described in terms of p-value. When P-value is below 0.05, the result is deamed statistically significant. This corrects for size of the study. Are you aware of it?
Still nobody has been able to offer any intelligent critique of the two studies posted. All you can do is quote something others have digested. You can’t trust “others”. Could they be biassed? Raw data is king.
I think your mama is coming back.
Jacob Mirman:
Why, yes, I am.
Are you aware of what the researchers themselves said about the significance of the data? The bit that has been repeated to you several times, about it being simply “interesting,” and deserving of more research?
Or do you conveniently ignore the conclusions of the researchers themselves in every study?
If I can’t trust others, then how can I trust what they claim is “data?” That’s quite a quandary you’ve presented me.
You are aware that these meta-studies have more statistical significance than the individual studies themselves, right? As they actually take into account data from all relevant studies.
But I do note that, while I have even accepted the conclusions of the researchers in at least one of your studies, you have ignored the major critique of the field. Interesting.
And you still haven’t answered my question. Do you only prescribe or dispense homeopathic medicines that have successfully completed rigorous clinical trials? Data is king, you know.
Jacob Mirman:
Could you be biased?
Here’s a simple test. If you prescribe or dispense homeopathic remedies that have not successfully completed rigorous clinical trials, and claim they are effective, you are most certainly biased.
If, on the other hand, you only dispense homeopathic remedies that have successfully completed rigorous clinical trials, than you are not so biased, at least in this matter.
Are you biased, Dr. Mirman?
Oh, and I haven’t even mentioned the obvious “correlation does not equal causation,” nor the importance of multiple clinical trials to establish the efficacy of a remedy (what we science buffs like to call “repeatability”), or the lack of consistency in results (many homeopathic studies turn up negative — but you don’t mention those, do you?) or any other number of flaws with your conclusion that “homeopathy works” based on the weak herbal tea evidence you’ve presented.
If double-blind studies consistently show a correlation between a specific homeopathic remedy with a specific malady, I’d advocate for further research into the mechanism of the efficacy, rather than simply rely on the fantasy of a “law of similars” that was pulled out of the ass of some MD who practiced in the days before the discovery of the wonders of modern medicine.
I see you’re conveniently ignoring my posts, not of which contain any “your mama” jokes.
Whatever credibility you think you have is non existent. You will not even address the points I and other’s have made.
Address the study I posted and my #125 and then we can talk.
“You are aware that these meta-studies have more statistical significance than the individual studies themselves, right? As they actually take into account data from all relevant studies.”
The meta-analises only have statistical significance if the included studies were chosen bias-free. There are several meta-analyses of homeopathic studies coming up w/ different results, obviously due to inclusion choices. Who makes the choices? People, mostly w/ agendas, like you my friends. Therefore, can’t be trusted.
“And you still haven’t answered my question. Do you only prescribe or dispense homeopathic medicines that have successfully completed rigorous clinical trials? Data is king, you know.”
Yes, all homeopathic remedies have been thru the formal proving process to define their sphere of action, according to clearly defined homeopathic principles. Obviously, they are not tested according to principles of biochemical medicine, a different paradigm altogether, therefore not applicable.
I am not biased. I use both conventional drugs and homeopathic remedies, whatever is clearly indicated in the case at hand. I feel equally comfortable with both paradigms. I know you can’t wait to make fun of this statement. It will be childish.
I also recommend other modalities, including physical therapy, cold laser, acupuncture, limited nutritional methods. I treat mostly patients who did not get better under conventional care. Most of them get better under my care. You can claim I am lying, and without data to support this statement it will also be childish.
OK, addressing #125 at Big Chimp’s request.
“Are you even reading the things you are quoting us?
The result cannot be explained given our present state of knowledge, but it calls for further rigorously designed clinical studies.
No evidence emerged to support the idea that placebo action fully explains the clinical responses to homeopathic drugs.
These are not ringing endorsements of homeopathic treatments. At best they are admissions that there might be something else going on there.”
I never claimed I can explain the results. The results exist, but can’t be explained. This is all it means. The results are statistically significant. Lack of explainable mechanism of action does not negate the result.
“No evidence emerged to support the idea that placebo action fully explains the clinical responses to homeopathic drugs.”: this means the results are not due to placebo effect. This supports the opposite possibility, that the effect is due to homeopathic action. What is the issue you have with this statement?
I can further take apart this article for you and show the actual effects are better than 7%, if you are interested, but only if asked politely, in adult manner
And now it is dinner time. Fridays have 2 for one coupon. Its steak night! Hopefully not Pyrogenium (rotten steak)!
http://dealspl.us/tgifridays-coupons/332526p
Yum!
Jacob Mirman:
So, you’re saying that traditional clinical trials, which are designed to test only the efficacy of a specific treatment regardless of the “paradigm” under which the treatment was designed, aren’t suitable for testing the efficacy of homeopathic treatment? So you prescribe homeopathic medicines that have not gone through any kind of efficacy testing?
Do you have any peer-reviewed studies demonstrating the efficacy of “proving”? Do you have any peer reviewed research indicating these “homeopathic principles” are in any way founded on real effects?
I’m not claiming you are lying. I’m claiming you practice something that is not based in any kind of real evidence. So far, most homeopathic studies turn out negative (but I notice you don’t mention those). There have been very few, unrepeated studies that have very small correlations — but that happens even with regular drug trials, in which the initial tests show a positive correlation, but further studies show none.
I’m claiming you support a field that causes people like scifi’s grandmother to forgo necessary real care, who then die from gangrene or cancer or other treatable diseases which real drugs can cure, but homeopathy simply can’t.
I look forward to your response. I’m sure it will be childish.
@143
Correct. Conventional trials of single drugs can’t be applied to homeopathic remedies due to a radical difference of paradigms. To understand it read my little book on my site http://www.BookOnHealing.com. The book explains the principles of homeopathy. It is not designed as proof of its effectiveness. The proof is in clinical experience and research (see appendix). Yes, clinical experience is valid as proof, when the difference in paradigms is so great. I understand this is a controversial statement, but it is my opinion. The research, however, is quite conventional in nature, so should not be controversial, if it wasn’t for extreme bias existing on the detractor side (and, you feel, on the supporter side, but I disagree with this). Explanation is impossible without thorough understanding of the homeopathic paradigm, which is why I wrote it. Ridiculing this statement would be very childish indeed.
I am not sure what you mean by effectiveness of provings. A proving is an experiment not designed to “prove” anything. It is designed to elicit a “clinical picture” of a particular substance. You take enough coffee, you can’t sleep. This is a proving of coffee. You take enough mercury, you have profuse salivation, as well as other bad effects. This is a proving of mercury. What do you mean by effectiveness of provings?
The peer reviewed research indicating these “homeopathic principles” are in any way founded on real effects is in the appendix to my book, on the above site.
It is irresponsible to forgo necessary conventional medical treatments in favor of some other treatments and thereby cause harm to patients. That’s why I always evaluate each case and make sure they don’t need something else before proceeding w/ homeopathic or any other therapy. If you do otherwise, you lose your license. I have kept my license for many years and have had no charges brought against me, ever.
Local non-licensed homeopaths are trained with the same understanding and are expected to refer to MDs when indicated. If some don’t and cause harm to clients by their arrogance are guilty of malpractice.
And now I am really hungry, so over and out.
Steak!!!
Now this is childish!
Dr. Jacob:
Could you tell a homeopathically treated pill from a sugar pill?
That is to say, is there any clinical testing method (spectroscopy, for example) that could distinguish the “treated” sugar from a “blank” pill?
If you were to mix together a container of homeopathic “arsenic” pills with a container of homeopathic “mercury” pills, would you have to chuck them into the bin, or could they be distinguished from each other?
Jacob Mirman:
I’m truly baffled by this claim. Clinical trials are designed specifically to demonstrate the effects of a drug or remedy. If the drug or remedy has any kind of effect, clinical trials will demonstrate this. If the drug or remedy has no effect, it’s worthless. So, either homeopathic remedies are effective, and therefore amenable to clinical trials, or they are not effective, and so worthless. The claim clinical trials won’t show the efficacy of homeopathic remedies is essentially an admission they have no observable, quantifiable effects.
And that’s the whole point of looking at all of the clinical trials that have been attempted. Homeopathy fails to elicit a correlation far more often than a positive correlation. There have been studies with a negative correlation. Further, there is a strong negative correlation between the quality of the study, and positive results — as the quality of the study goes up, positive results go down.
The very inconsistency of the results indicates there’s probably nothing there.
Oh, I know that. I read up on it from the link supplied earlier in the thread. What I mean is, what is the evidence a “proving” supplies any valid information whatsoever? it relies entirely on subjectivity on the part of the folks doing the proving, and those collating the information into the “sphere of influence.”
The entire ad-hoc nature of the invention and implementation of its methods indicates a lack of any kind of dedication to effectiveness.
Yet this happens. People have died because of the pursuit of “alternative medicine,” whether it be Reiki or homeopathy or acupuncture or chiropracty. This happened to scifi’s grandmother.
First, Mirman please learn how to use blockquotes. Your blocks of text with essentially no discerning difference between quotes and your own words are annoying.
But in order for you to make the claims you are making you need to explain the results or you are just handwaving. And the results you’ve offered have been explained in my study as not statistically significant when corrected for bias. Something you still refuse to address.
Oh that’s utter nonsense. Either the efficacy can be demonstrated, measured and repeated or it can’t. It should and can be subjected to the same requirements of actual medicine and will pass or fail on its merits. So far it’s lacking.
Other way’s of knowing are great to philosophize about but when asked to measure up they are exposed for their lack of explanatory power. This is no exception.
And by my study I mean the one I linked to of course.
Question for the homeopath:
In another discussion with a supporter of homeopathy, I was challenged to take a dose of 30C sulphur once a day for a month (he claimed that this would “mess me up” and that the effects would be obvious and convincing). I’m not going to do this, because I don’t trust the companies that make homeopathic pills to not sneak some active ingredient into the lactose tablets (and I don’t want to fork out silly amounts of money for sugar pills, either).
I can, however, make my own homeopathic solutions. As a chemist, I am quite capable of careful serial dilution of common household liquids such as vinegar, wine, beer, milk, etc. I’m not going to try making a serial dilution of something that’s not water-soluble (such as sulphur). Since you know so much about the effectiveness of homeopathy, can you tell me a) what common substance should I make a 30C mixture of to test this, and b) what effects should I expect?
“First, Mirman please learn how to use blockquotes. Your blocks of text with essentially no discerning difference between quotes and your own words are annoying”.
Teach me, reverend. I am old, computers are not very intuitive for me.
To Nitric Acid, #150:
The answer is obvious. Take Nitric Acid. The provings are well documented. I suggest you don’t look before you try. I suggest taking it every hour, not daily. It is true, you should develop some symptoms. You will not get all symptoms in the book. I suggest you stop the proving once you get some symptoms. You don’t need sugar pellets, just take a drop of the solution, either in water or alcohol. I use vodka: it is a good mix of both, with alcohol being preservative. I can give you a free new dropper vial. I can also give you a gift of blank pellets to experiment w/, or the remedy itself, in whatever form you want. But then, you need to trust me not to add arsenic or something worse to it, so maybe you should do it yourself. Homeopaths are bad people, you can expect something nasty like this from us, right?
In making the dilutions, you need to succuss the solution between the dilutions, o/w you will not get the desired effect. Succussion is hitting the vial on hard surface about 40 times or so between the dilutions. New transfer pipette and new vial must be used for each dilution.
And there you have it, Ladies and Gents. The sentence that proves your incompetence in understanding the science “Dr” Mirman.
You claim continuously that (20+ yr old) trials bear out your claims of efficacy (they don’t, for reasons others have already explained) using proper scientific methods and then you disown those methods with a semantic ‘distraction’ trying to tell us that homeopathy is somehow ‘outside’ the science. Which is it? – you are having an each way bet
To Big Chimp, #148.
Homeopathic remedies are not prescribed for a particular disease. 100 people w/ any particular disease will need 100 different remedies. This is the paradigm difference. How can you study a single remedy in the conventional double-blind trial if this is the fact?
The study you linked is a meta-analysis compiled by prejudiced people, so can’t be trusted. That is the bias. Only raw data can be evaluated properly. To properly evaluate the study you are linking, we would need to look at all individual studies and argue their quality. This is impossible to do in this forum.
I will concede to you that most studies of homeopathic effect are garbage. They have huge flaws. If we looked at them individually, I could explain the flaws. Again, this is not practical. Due to the paradigm difference explained above, a good large enough study of homeopathic remedies would be incredibly difficult to organize. The Ferley study comes as close to it as any ever will. One cause of the difficulty is huge expense of a study like this, and homeopathics are so cheap,our pharmacies can’t afford such studies. It is a problem. But we have a few reasonable studies that can be discussed.
As to your hogwash comment, Yo mamma so fat I took a picture of her last christmas and its still printing
Still waiting for someone to teach me to use block quotes
To #153.
I think I just explained it in #152.
As to “Dr”, Yo mama so fat she’s got more Chins than a Hong Kong phone book.
Oh – and I discussed this with my old man, a highly regarded pharmacologist – University and govt. grant based – and someone who throughout his career turned away bucketloads of money to work for the big pharma companies.
He laughed like a drain when I mentioned all of this. His words?
“Anyone quoting 20 year old papers is having a lend if there is more current research. You only bring that sort of thing into scope if it backs up, or is the basis of a new study. Let me tell you, as someone who has helped develop and reject through VERY rigorous studies over the last 50 (yes, FIFTY) years numerous drugs, that ANYONE claiming that homeopathy has ANY efficacy above placebo across the thousands of actual and allied studies does not understand basic chemistry, let alone biology.
“I have looked into this again recently due to health service concerns over funding and effectiveness and can say that nothing has been presented in the last 10 years that remotely concurs that homeopathy is a reasonable alternative treatment working above placebo norms and expectancy”
This is a man who lost his mother due to her ‘belief’ in this quackery and he is still approaching it scientifically.
The THUNDEROUS weight of evidence DOES NOT support your hypotheses, Mirman. But if you approached this ‘scientifically’, y’know, without personal and financial bias, you would know that.
Now, I’m off to enjoy some very thunderous, live rock.
@155
No you didn’t explain it – you compounded it.
And while we’re at it, since you claim to have cured so many using your snake-oil, (I notcice you sneaked in that you also provide conventional treatment – interesting) why have YOU not put together a study for review?
BTW – lame insult – seriously. Fuckwit.
Like I said, you dishonour and disgrace those who spend their lives learning and healing with their MDs.
Nothing against the idea of a homeopathic preparation of nitric acid (no capitals, unless you’re using it as a personal name, and I hope you don’t think I’m going to dilute and succuss myself), but I have to wonder if you always use vodka for your preparations. Wouldn’t your choice of solvent depend on what it was you were trying to dissolve? Dissolving some herbal extract in vodka or ethanol would make sense, but dissolving nitric acid in ethanol is going to get you a face full of nitrogen dioxide fumes. Why not just do the dilutions in distilled water?
@#152- so why do companies like Bioron sell the same remedy for anyone with the flu?
From Mirman’s website:
“Disclaimer: Opinions offered by phone will be based solely on the records you provide and the history I obtain from you, lacking a physical exam. Therefore, my opinion in these cases must remain informal, and not carry the certainty of a proper medical diagnosis. Neither should my opinions regarding treatment options be considered treatment recommendations.
The charge for this service depends strictly on the time I spend on your case: $20 per 5 min. or $240 per hour.”
He’s charging $240 an hour to talk to people on the phone, but his advice cannot be relied upon as a medical diagnosis, nor are his opinions about treatment to be taken seriously. Yeah, nothing about that seems fishy. People would be better off calling a phone sex operator, at least then there’s no question about who’s wanking.
I’m tired and I’ll revisit tomorrow, but this is another paragraph of nonsense. This is hand in hand with religious thinking.
So why are you quoting double blind trials if
Nonsense.
No study could ever be trusted if this was the case.
You’re grasping now.
Look at the study and show it is wrong by refuting its data not by claiming “I know it’s wrong”.
The study is sound. It is backed by data and it shows your studies to be unreliable.
Deal with it Doctor.
So I see more intelligent eloquence.
It reminds me of 6th grade. You are a fool. No you are a fool. No you are a fool. Etc, etc, etc.
Yo mama is so ugly, when she wobbles down the street in September, folk say, “Damn it, can’t believe it’s Halloween already…
You are stupid. No you are stupid. No you are stupid…
So have we evolved yet, or are we still monkeys?
And nobody has taught me to use the block quotes yet…
Dr. Mirman, you throw “paradigm” around the way Deepak Chopra does “quantum”. Please stop. You’re not going to impress anyone here. All it makes me think of is a former Lumberghesque manager of mine and his interminable staff meetings.*
Treatments and medicines (homeopathic or otherwise) can either be repeatably shown to reliably and effectively work or they cannot. Paradigms be damned. As Tim Minchin says: “You know what they call alternative medicine that works? Medicine.” Aspirin works. Warfarin works. Simvastatin works. Insulin lispro works. Reliably. With high success rates. The bulk of evidence suggests that the success rate of homeopathic preparations is similar to that of placebo. And, since you don’t seem able to even provide an explanation of how they work, let alone how they work differently, or better, I think I’m safe wiping the lipstick off of that
pigsugar pill. Dressing it up in sciencey gobbledegook doesn’t change anything. Now, this is not to say that placebos are useless. But they have to be recognized for what they are and not attributed fucking magical powers. Law of Similars? Water Memory? Vital Force? I understand that its helpful for the patient to believe they’re taking something medicinier than a Tic-Tac or Smartie, but drop all the Hogwarts bullshit.Oh, I love this: “DHt: Diplomate of Homeopathic Therapeutics (given by American Institute of Homeopathy, the oldest organization of physicians in USA, predating the AMA)”
The American Alchemy Institute might (if it existed) predate the ACS, but it still doesn’t mean you can turn lead into gold or make a potion of immortality.
Off-topic, but out of curiosity, from what formerly communist nation did you come?
To blockquote, surround the text you want to quote with these tags [blockquote][/blockquote], only use the greater than and less than thingies in place of the brackets.
* Oh, and this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STMsuz24-ds
@159.
This is an intelligent question worth answering.
Occilococcinum is made from gizzards of migrating ducks. It is not, strictly speaking, a homeopathic remedy. It has not had a proving. The rationale for its use is strictly theoretical. Migrating ducks are natural reservoirs of influenza viruses. It therefore makes some sense to prepare a remedy from their tissues and expect it to have some immunization-like effect against current strains of influenza. As is seen in the study, it appears to work. Looking a bit deeper into the study one can notice that the effect on younger people is much more statistically significant than that on older folks. This difference is likely due to the fact that the older people have already been exposed to most of these viruses, so more “vaccination” is not going to change their immune status. Younger people, with less exposure, can gain some extra immunity from the remedy, because it provides “new information” to their immune system.
I never use this remedy in my practice, because in almost all cases I can get much better response from a well chosen truly homeopathic remedy. Information on homeopathic treatment of influenza is here: http://www.FluSolution.net. The site contains the materia medica of common flu remedies, explanation for their use and historical information, including the 1921 article of the field reports of use of homeopathic remedies in the 1918 pandemic. While regular doctors were losing about 30% of their cases, homeopaths lost almost none.
So, to come back to the Ferley article, it is not a study of homeopathic principles, but a study of the effects of a submolecular preparation.
To Ragutis, #164
Yo mama is so ugly, when she applied for the ugly contest they told her ‘NO Professionals
Jacob Mirman:
It’s done like this:
<blockquote>Still waiting for someone to teach me to use block quotes.</blockquote>
The first <blockquote> is called an “opening tag.” It begins the quote. The </blockquote> with the slash is a “closing tag,” not surprisingly. It ends the quote. You can do other things, too, like <em>emphasis</em> or <b>bold</b>.
It’s that HTML thing all the crazy kids are raving about these days.
To Ahoges, #160
I charge according to my education and ability, $300 per hour.
I don’t lack business, most of it word of mouth, a lot of it cash, not covered by insurance. Most people get better and bring their relatives and friends. It appears I am worth the expense.
How much are you worth per hour?
No amount of ridicule from losers will change these facts
To Nitric Acid, #158
No reason not to use distilled water for dilutions. Actually, this is what we use for the intermediate levels. Sorry, I gave incorrect information. The final potency should contain some alcohol as preservative. If you plan on medicating sugar pellets, the final solution has to be in higher grade alcohol, 87% or above, o/w it will dissolve the sugar
Jacob Mirman:
So, success is measured by the amount of money you make?
Funny you should mention the flu and occilococcinum. I was just reading this article on SBM recently that tackles this very topic.
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/ososillyococcinum-and-other-flu-bits/
“In the 1919 flu epidemic a physician who did not understand that artifacts on the slide, probably bubbles, move randomly due to Brownian motion. Looking at the tissues of flu patients with a microscope, he found what he thought was not only the cause of influenza, but the cause of all diseases: small cocci (round balls) that oscillated under the microscope. He found these wiggling bubbles in all the tissues of all the ill people he examined and thought he discovered the true cause of all disease. Sigh. Yet another cause of all illness. He is the only person, before or since, to see these oscillating cocci. Hence the name.
Subsequently, for obscure reasons, he became of the opinion that the heart and liver of the Muscovy Duck were the most concentrated source of these oscillating cocci. I have found the suggestion that it was because duck liver and heart is a source of influenza, but the product predates the discovery of the influenza, so that would be an oh so silly explanation.”
Does the bullshit ever stop with homeopathy? It honestly concerns me that someone who supposedly went through medical school could believe and perpetuate this nonsense. I always thought you needed to be intelligent and able to comprehend science to get through med school. I guess not.
To scifi, #156
I will disregard the disrespectful tone of this comment and respond, because the comment is extremely important:
“ANYONE claiming that homeopathy has ANY efficacy above placebo across the thousands of actual and allied studies does not understand basic chemistry, let alone biology.”
I hold an undergraduate degree in chemistry from the U of M, so I think I understand its fundamentals.
Why do you believe homeopathy has anything to do with chemistry? There are no molecules in the remedies to have any chemical effect.
It appears to have something to do with biology, because only biological systems have response to homeopathic remedies.
So now we come to the crux of the matter. Is life pure chemistry? My communist/atheist teachers suggested it is. It sounds like most of you agree. Any suggestion to the contrary would cause more profanity on this forum.
I happen to disagree.
So who is correct?
If we want to be serious, I believe the homeopathic effect is due to some so far unknown field, which will eventually be discovered by physicists. Call it the “life field”. Until then we will not have any plausible explanation for the effect. Multiple theories have been proposed for the mechanism of action of homeopathic remedies; none, in my opinion, viable.
Surely, none of the members of this forum would suggest physicists have discovered everything there is to discover?
It is my opinion that one does not need to be able to explain a phenomenon to be able to use it, as long as one knows how.
And to all forthcoming disrespectful attempts at ridicule in response to this comment,
Yo mama is so ugly, they knew what time she was born cuz her face stopped the clock…
Nothing suggests that “Dr” Jacob Mirman lacks intelligence – has nothing to do with his slimy choice to become a lying conman who grins all the way to the bank.
“Dr” Jacob Mirman would only be stupid if he believed n the fairy dust he peddles. No evidence that he does … he’s certainly lying to us just like he lies to everyone else.
To Nigel, #170:
No.
Success is measured by how well you do for people. The amount people are willing to reimburse you out of pocket for this personal service is partially dependent on their amount of gratitude for the job well done. Would people pay you this much out of pocket for any personal service you provide for them?
To Hotshoe, $173
Yo mama is so stupid, she noticed a sign reading ‘Wet Floor’…so she just did!
What are you, black ?
Does your WHITE mama know you talk like this in public ?
Whats the matter, your mom dead so she can’t keep you in line anymore ? Is that how you respect her memory ? By disrespecting mamas ?
Wow, we got a racist in our midst! Next I know I’ll have a burning cross in my yard! I am scared!
Bedtime, boys and girls. Be sure to wash your mouths w/ soap real well! After the amount of profanity uttered here, you probably stink real bad!
Liar.
The amount of money you’re able to con from people is not a measure of the truth of your claims, nor the efficacy of your snake oil. There is, however an inverse relationship with your value to society. I look forward to the day when predatory frauds like you are prosecuted out of business and into prison.
Oh, and Yo Momma jokes are so old, they stopped being funny before Dennis Miller did.
Better yet, I look forward to the day when every high-school student gets a sufficient education in basic science to see through bullshit like yours.
Jacob’s use of Yo Momma jokes has convinced me of the truth of his claims.
Doctor
So why are you quoting double blind trials or trails at all if
Please answer.
or “trials” at all that is.
Good morning boys and girls! It is a nice day in Lake Wobegon.
I see some of you are bored by my mama jokes. Poor babies! In all honesty, I thought they were much less devolved and even more to the point of the argument than some of the comments here. So we’ll keep going. I’ll try to bring it down a notch.
To Ragutis: Yo mamma so fat she sat on a quarter and a booger shot out of George …
Ouch!
The only child here is you boy. And we all know that. Oh, and ditch the Mendacious Delusional in your posts. It impresses us not, as we have our own degrees and titles, in real sciences, not hokey malokey.
I can see you’re bitter that your mother was a drunk who froze to death in the gutter. But that’s no excuse for your behavior here.
Jacob Mirman:
Regularly. Indeed, I have charged as much as $500/hr in one instance, and the client paid. Gladly. That was special circumstances, though — an emergency call in the middle of the night to recover a corrupt database the night before an investor was to arrive. Intermittently-failing SANs can be a real bear.
But I generally don’t do that. In fact, I haven’t in a couple of years. Instead, I do things like assist in maintaining cell communications during the Japanese tsunami, or like I did last night — stay up all night to assist in preparations for continued network communications in flooded Thailand. For that, I get my regular pay. Hell, I don’t even get that, because times like that require lots of overtime, and I’m salary.
So don’t even try to pull your patently avaricial, “I get paid a lot more than you, so I’m worth more than you” bullshit. I helped more people last night than you will help in your lifetime. And I did it not because I expected them to pay me in gratitude. Hell, they’ll never even know I did a damned thing. So fuck you with your “money equals being a winner” attitude. That’s the attitude of conmen and shuksters everywhere.
Fuck, dude, getting a reading at a scientology clinic often costs more than you charge, and their shills seem grateful. How much good do you think they’re really doing?
There are high-priced prostitutes everywhere that make more than you. The main difference between them and you is, they provide an honorable service, and are honest about their work.
So you make people feel good, and you give them water pills. To me, the only difference between that and a scientology reading is that you should know better.
Fuck John Galt right in his gulch
Nice comebacks. Give me more.
So what are your degrees, children? Are you so uncomfortable with yourselves as to be afraid to reveal your true identities?
Here we go.
Yo mama so fat you have to grease the door frame and hold a twinkie on the other side just to get her through.
Being a doctor, I would have thought it more important to measure success in how much you improve the health of your patients.
Interesting you choose not to use that metric. Could it because you know you will perform poorly ?
@Jacob
Your hostility along with the importance you put upon titles and authority followed by your juvenile taunting really points towards you being a profoundly emotionally insecure individual.
You have my sympathy.
Sorry, who is John Gult?
@Jacob Mirman
Not well read are you?
Yeah, we get how much you hate your mother for the crimes she committed against you, but that’s still no excuse for you to go jizzing all over other moms.
To 191:
I am also having difficulty understanding the gulch comment. Must have something to do with English not being my native language. Help me out please. The Urban Dictionary defines “gulch” so: the gagging sound exerted when a dick is shoved to far down the mouth. So the sentence with John Gult and gulch is difficult to interpret. Please assist.
This is good! I am learning a lot of good English here! Teach me more!
Using the Urban Dictionary for standard English? Good God, epic fail.
Also I’m under no obligation to educate you. Read more.
I’m so fucking tired of hearing homeopaths and vaxxers go on about how other scientists and researchers are in the pockets of Big Pharma™, and then we have quacks like Mirman here saying how they are not biased, please pay me $300/hr for my extra-special sooper-seekrit knowledge of the arcana of water pills.
If it has an effect, that effect can be studied, measured, quantified, and modelled. If it has no effect, it can be fantasized about, rationalized, defended by using ad hominem arguments against anyone who dares to study it and find it lacking, and exploited by the unscrupulous or downright gullible.
This conversation with Mirman has convinced me more than ever that homeopathy as practiced in the US and around the world is dangerous. Not the sugar pills themselves, but the utter zealousness and credulity of its practitioners and adherents.
John Galt, protagonist in Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. Archtypical fuckwitted liber
tarianturd. Or, a flaming egotistical asshat.Nerd of Redhead:
But you repeat yourself.
Sorry ;)
TO ing:
“Your hostility along with the importance you put upon titles and authority followed by your juvenile taunting really points towards you being a profoundly emotionally insecure individual.
You have my sympathy.”
I feel all warmed inside seeing somebody sympathizes with me! Thank you dear!
Indeed I am not well read in English… Just no time to read, considering I have to spend all my energy stamping out disease all day. I did try other dictionaries besides Urban, but they made even less sense. Gee, they didn’t teach me this in my ESL classes. You are so harsh dear, not nice to poor immigrant!
Now Nerd is nice. He taught me something new today. I will read that piece of literature now, so next time somebody cultured quotes it I will be in the know.
Do you come all over your screen just thinking about that noise they made when you shoved your dick too far in ?
You’re one sick little puppy. Get help before you rape somebody’s mom.
Ain’t no effect that needs plausible explaining.
And your mysterious so-far unmeasurable “life field” is not plausible.
You are (apparently) gullible and deluded, and no scientist. And so you make a living scamming the even more gullible, deluded, and unscientific.
Fuck you.
Nigel is being particularly energetic today. It is nice to see.
Very intelligent remarks, full of deep thought and wisdom.
I feel privileged to have stumbled upon intelligence of such dimensions.
To Matt, #193.
You are absolutely correct. Measuring success in how much I improve the health of my patients is exactly what I meant by doing well for people.
Hotshoe, you are outdoing yourself! You are eloquence itself!
To Chas Peterson, 208:
Yo mama so ugly she looks out the window and got arrested for mooning.
You give “Dr” Jacob Mirman too much credit, Chas. Mirman isn’t gullible and deluded himself, he’s a sociopathic conman who was thrilled to discover a field where he could legally steal from the actually-deluded and gullible. If not homeopathy, it would have been something else equally lucrative for little or no risk on his part. Mirman’s not dumb.
Have you spoken to a doctor about your childhood trauma when you walked in on your mother having sex with some john ? We know how traumatic such images can be. There are surely modern treatments which can help you get over your obsession with your mother’s naked ass.
Hotshoe, you are beautiful!
I am so sorry. Is that what happened to you? Your mama with some dirty john? I am sorry! You should get together w/ Nigel and play it out, it might help! Bring Chas along as well, it will be a threesome.
I suspect this guy is MM or one of the like. They’re also boring.
What’s MM, dear?
I love this educational session.
heehee. Too bad for the “real Dr” Jacob Mirman, then, if some MRA asshole happened to pick his identity to troll us with.
Makes sense in a way, more sense than a cunning successful conman like Jacob Mirman deliberately associating his name with these pervy things he’s saying here, where they can be googled by any prospective patients (or patient’s lawyers).
Cosmic justice that would be, if an MRA like MM says stuff here which gets that fucking fraud Mirmann in trouble in real life.
Do your patients know you’re a rape-y pervert, “Dr” Jacob Mirman? Do your patients know you troll internet websites looking for action ?
Protip, “Dr” Jacob Mirman: finish playing with yourself in your bedroom, that way you don’t splooge all over your computer and ruin your keyboard.
But I guess I don’t have to tell you that now, considering how many replacement keyboards you’ve already had to buy. Sorry you were such a slow learner !
P.S. MM, if that’s you, fun’s over – go attack the pervy old fraud on his home territory and leave us out of it.
I see Mirman has continued to largely ignore my posts and instead wishes to engage in the same name calling he’s so worried about.
Reverend,
You are correct. I am ignoring your posts because I have already answered your concerns but you have not replied to my offers of data evaluation. The study you are linking to, as I have said already, is compiled by prejudiced people. To properly critique this study one needs to look at every study included in the meta-analysis. This would be impossible in this exalted forum.
I offered some raw data studies, but you are ignoring them because you know what they show.
Mendacious Delusionalist, you appear to have given up on scientifically proving you aren’t a scam artist preying on gullible and foolish people. Now you are just trolling, showing what toddler having a tantrum you are.
Liar.
Do you accept the lancet as a respected scientific journal?
I’m not ignoring them, I even quoted from them in one of my comments above and they do not show what you claim they show. In fact in order for you to make the claims you make, you need them to show conclusively the efficacy of homeopathy. They do not even come close to this benchmark.
And back to a previously un-addressed question.
You still haven’t answered why if homeopathic remedies can’t be measured using double blind trials that you keep putting up these types of trials posted in the lancet as evidence for the efficacy (even when the ones you’ve posted don’t even support that).
Liar… No, you are a liar… No you are a liar…
Some of you claimed to be scientists, right? This is how science is done, right?
Isn’t it wonderful?
Lancet is respectful, partly.
That’s not the point.
You can’t rely on anybody’s perceived respectability.
You can only rely on raw data and make up your own decisions.
Bring out a study with raw data and we’ll discuss it. Then we’ll discuss one of the ones I am quoting.
I fully realize this is not a proper forum for scientific exchange, but some people may still read it, and see what we have to put up with.
The sad fact is that while you are all behaving like charming little kids hiding behind your aliases, similar arrogant completely anti-science attitudes are expressed more politely in real scientific circles sometimes. I will be referring those pseudo-scientists to this discussion for illustration purposes. It is very useful.
lol
You’re seriously lecturing people about the Proper Scientific Attitude…in defense of homeopathy?
You don’t do science. We know that. You pretend, lie and bullshit about doing science. If homeopathy was real science and had real results, you should let the FDA do a reality check on you by you and your ilk doing real double-blind clinical studies of sufficent size to prove efficacy beyond PLACEBO. Bawk-bawk-bawk as you aren’t doing that voluntarilty, and when that is done, your remedies are PLACEBO.
Wrong liar and bullshitter, you bring out your data and we’ll discuss it as you are the one making the claim you are better than PLACEBO. The burden of proof is upon you. So, show the real and large scale evidence showing good evidence that your infinite dilutions have real potency, and also show the mechanism for action. Just like any scientific drug would have to do. Why can’t you?
Sorry boy, your inability to conclusive prove your allegations show who is and isn’t the boy. Your pretense otherwise is typical liar and bullshitter behavior, in that if you can’t prove your case, impeach the witnesses. Very “adult” behavior my boy.
Oh, and if your “life force” is anything like that proposed for Reiki, and Therapeutic Touch, it was refuted by a 13-year-old who published her results in JAMA. Null Hypothesis is now non-existence for said “life force”, and you must prove it exists to have a mechanism of action.
Oh, and why aren’t you putting the nuclears of your remedies in a magnet and resonating (NMR) them to see the structure? Oh, that’s right, there is no remembered structure to the water when it is compared to normal water. Tsk, tsk.
The good Doctor has diluted his maturity down 300C
And what about the conclusions from the data in the study I posted is wrong?
The two studies you copy/pasted from and posted here, I looked at the conclusions of the actual people running the study. Their conclusions do not support you like you claim they do.
Now look at the study I posted and tell me why they are wrong.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. You can’t rely on YOUR OWN decisions. No scientist can, because that’s how personal bias creeps in. Even if you aren’t misusing the data for fraud (like YOU are), we all have inadvertent bias and that’s why we’ve invented the scientific method of checks on the data, including peer review, repeatability of experiments, and statistical analysis. Not fucking raw data, you braying idiot.
Who’s WE, white man ? YOU and your circle of conmen ? Sure, bring on the lurkers. Any rational reader will see that you and your ilk are the ones who flimflam for profit, while we are just using some of the tools at our disposal to defend actual science.
Yep, reality’s a bitch, ain’t it “Dr” Jacob Mirman. Real scientific circles don’t like your profitable con anymore than “charming little kids” do. Too bad you can’t fool anyone who matters, like any real scientists. Actually, it’s too bad that frauds like you aren’t scourged in public. Then you’d have something real to cry about instead of whining about how arrogant we are for telling the truth about you.
An yet you chose to use studies from it to support yourself.
Which again brings me back to the question you keep dodging. I’m starting to think you don’t want to answer it, Doctor.
If homeopathic remedies can’t be reliably measured or judged using double blind trials, then why are you putting up these types of trials, posted in the lancet no less, as evidence for homeopahtic efficacy (even when the ones you’ve posted don’t even support that).
Still waiting for you to answer this.
Well, it’s been real. It’s been fun. It hasn’t been real fun, though. Keep holding conman “Dr” Jacob Mirman’s feet to the fire, Rev. BigDumbChimp.
Let the lurkers see that homeopathic frauds have no answer.
Dear boys and girls,
The time has come for us to say good buy. The experience has been very useful for me. I appreciate everybody’s effort to help me achieve my goal. Be well.
Oh look, a flounce!
@nigeltheBold
Re: prostitutes line.
Sums him up perfectly.
He is a troll – either he is some post-teen zit face wanking with one hand and typing with the other
or he is the real deal getting quotes from ‘us’ to cherry pick what a nasty bunch of non-believers we are.
Either way, significantly in need of professional help.
Spoken like a true pedophile clown
Mirman @172
That s one of the most profoundly dishonest/ignorant comments on this thread.
Regardless of your qualifications you demonstrate in a few sentences why you are
unfit as a practitioner or to boast about your science quals.
Again, the onus is on you to prove your claims.
You make all your commentary redundant with one telling phrase –
“Why do you believe homeopathy has anything to do with chemistry? There are no molecules in the remedies to have any chemical effect.”
Your mama should have spent less time sucking your dick.
So you’re not going to address my question?
Is that because you’re a coward or because you know you’ve painted yourself into a corner.
Or possibly both.
You’ve dodged addressing the issues I’ve brought up to you all thread. I’ll take this as an admission of your guilt.
?
The only boy posting on this thread was you. That has been the case from your first inane post boy. You will grow up and mature when you realize you have been prescribing and selling PLACEBO, and should stop that unethical practice. Until then boy, it is good-bye.
What a strange thread this has been.
coward
All profanity aside, how long will it take for these effects to be seen? If I take 30C nitric acid every hour for…what? A day? A week?
Look who agrees with you, PZ! http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2011/11/03/pastor-mark-driscoll-yoga-is-the-work-of-the-devil/
PZ thinks Yoga is the Devil?
That’s odd being that I’m pretty sure he doesn’t really believe in devils.
Just wanting to say nice post.
The time has come for us to say good buy.
Is there a fire sale at the local homeopathy outlet?
Lancet is respectful, partly.
What the fuck does that mean?
I have read a few good stuff here. Certainly worth bookmarking for revisiting. I surprise how a lot effort you put to make such a great informative site.
Great Post! Thanks you for taking the time to share this!
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