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From: Cornelius Garbanzo (ustlnx15-n2.ust.hk)
In Reply to: Pat and Cornelius posted by John on February 11, 2004 at 12:48 pm:
Hi John, To begin, I would emphasize again that I have never said anything against acupuncture or naturopathy. I have said that I don't believe all of the claims made in favor of TCM, but that many individual herbal preparations used in TCM are probably effective, and judgment can only be made on an individual basis after scientific study, not as a broad sweeping claim based on religious-like belief or disbelief. Regarding homeopathy, I do not hide the fact that I think the whole concept is absurd. Any homeopathic remedy that is prepared according to the stated principles of homeopathy is by definition a placebo, and cannot be distinguished from a placebo by any physical or chemical test. Defenders of homeopathy make ridiculous claims about the "memory" of water based on hypothetical new physical principles that physicists are either too stupid to see, or willfully ignore and actively suppress. But if water has "memory," why are our computers made from silicon chips and magnetic disk drives when cheap water is all around us? If water truly has memory, a glass of ordinary tap water would be a homeopathic remedy for everything under the sun. The few scattered references showing weak statistical evidence in support of homeopathy (or more commonly, not against homeopathy) do not overcome this fatal flaw. As James Randi says, "Unusual claims require unusually good proof." The few studies that do get published will almost inevitably be heavily biased in favor of homeopathy. How many researchers do you think would feel it worth their while to spend a significant fraction of their careers publishing negative studies on homeopathy, when they could be trying to make a name for themselves with new discoveries? How many journal editors do you think would feel it worthwhile to devote journal pages to studies that only verify what virtually all scientists already believe? Given these biases, I do not see how any meta-analysis of homeopathy studies could have any meaning. Going back to your post on the McDougall board, if there are many M.D.s who practice homeopathy, that is a reflection of their own ignorance, not mine. These days there are also many M.D.s who promote the Atkins diet because they honestly believe it is a healthy diet. I know very well from my own field that the letters "Ph.D." don't necessarily mean anything at all, and Dr. Atkins shows us that "M.D." doesn't mean much either. But an M.D. is supposed to be trained to use a scientific approach to treat medical problems. To embrace homeopathy is to actively reject the fundamental principles of physics and chemistry, so I don't think calling "homeopathic M.D." an oxymoron is too far off the mark. Finally, as Pat says -- if there is any unequivocal scientific support in favor of homeopathy, why haven't the researchers who found it claimed their million-dollar prize? (See the link below for a failed attempt.)
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