6 ms·

I basically agree with this, but I can’t help thinking it would be stronger if it were softer in places. For example, I couldn’t say that “for homeopathy to be

by celoyd 16y ago

I basically agree with this, but I can’t help thinking it would be stronger if it were softer in places. For example, I couldn’t say that “for homeopathy to be effective, it would have to work in violation of the principles of biology, chemistry, and physics” actually means. Surely it would be just as damning and clearer to say that it can’t beat a placebo in well-designed tests. Likewise, “Its devotees don’t concern themselves with evidence” is awfully broad. I think some of them do, they just aren’t very good at it. There’s no need to call people stupid when you can show they believe something false. Quibbles, really. I look forward to seeing more things like this.

avar 16y ago
The first example wouldn't be the same. There's a big difference between it being a theoretical impossibility, and something that sounds like we just haven't tested it enough. Proponents of homeopathy like to confuse the issue by citing some of their own badly done studies. Explaining to the layman that proving the efficacy of homeopathy would earn you a Nobel Price in physics helps to bring some context to that.
- celoyd 16y ago
  Heh. What is that difference? Philosophers of science would love to know. If homeopathy failed to conform to accepted theory but consistently beat placebos in a wide variety of good clinical trials, it would be good medicine; if it worked in theory but not in tissue, it would not be. Theory is generally constrained by observation. Homeopathy is wrong because it doesn’t work. Conceivably it could have turned out to work in some way that violated previous medical understanding. Lots of things have done this – it’s one of the main ways understanding is refined. Besides which, as far as I know (which is not far) there is no fundamental principle of biology, chemistry, or physics that it breaks. It just so happens that water molecules and immune systems don’t work the way homeopathy would need them to. While you could see this in terms of a violation of principles (in the same way that you can rewrite any false math theorem to 1 = 0 if you work hard enough), that doesn’t seem like a very productive perspective to me. But I’m not a doctor, biologist, chemist, or physicist, so I guess it could be.
  - avar 16y ago
    You can't run faster than the speed of light, i.e. it isn't just for lack of trying. Explaining things in those terms to the layman helps them to understand the issues. There's a large chasm between things that might potentially work, and things that couldn't even work in theory. Homeopathy is squarely in the latter category. The whole concept of water memory is pseudoscientific nonesense. Note that they're not just claiming that water has some special effect on the human immune system. They're claiming that molecules are capable of transmitting and retaining information in a manner that violates our understanding of chemistry and physics.
    - celoyd 16y ago
      I think we mostly agree and are arguing mainly over interpretation. There's a large chasm between things that might potentially work, and things that couldn't even work in theory. Can you characterize this chasm? I think that there’s a fairly continuous range of possibility. When we say that “theory” precludes something, we might mean any of a variety of kinds and strengths of theories. It is a very strong theory that you cannot accelerate at the speed of light. Is there something as strong saying that water categorically cannot preserve information of that kind? I suspect the theories there are more statistical and harder to test. Mind you, I believe those theories. For one thing, the idea of water memory violates my intuitions about entropy. But it seems incautious to see it as a violation of principle. This kind of thinking tends too far in the direction of thinking that airplanes violate gravity, or that there could be no brown dwarf orbiting the sun because that would “violate our theory of how the solar system works”, etc. – scientism, not science. Of course, as I said, I have no special knowledge here. Maybe water memory is categorically rather than empirically impossible. If this is so, I’d be interested to learn why.
      - avar 16y ago
        The responses by demallien and thaumaturgy cover this better than anything I could have written, rather than duplicating them I'll just defer.
        16y ago
- Tichy 16y ago
  Which law of nature is against the theoretical possibility, though? Not saying that it is possible, but I certainly don't know enough about physics to prove it myself. Afaik water is actually still a bit of a mystery to science. Admittedly, last I read about the water puzzle was in a book that is 15 years old, by Douglas Hofstadter (of Gödel - Escher - Bach fame). Perhaps physics has progressed since then.
  - thaumaturgy 16y ago
    While certain aspects of water may still be unexplained -- like its phase transitions, for example -- that doesn't leave the door open for contradictions of the aspects that are understood. "Memory" requires some form of information storage, in this case in one of the simplest molecules known to man. Not only would any physicist be stumped to even propose some form of information storage (i.e., "we don't know how it might have memory"), but any such proposal would contradict the current body of knowledge of chemistry (i.e., "we know that it can't have memory -- there's nowhere for it to hide"). ...and that's just one little part. Even if there was some kind of "memory" possible in water, you would have to explain how that memory would act on cells.
    - DaveChild 16y ago
      And then you would have to explain how that magic water memory makes it into sugar's magic memory when the water is evaporated away.
    - Tichy 16y ago
      I am not arguing that it is possible (it also seems very unlikely to me), just arguing that one should stay scientific. Has it been proven that water can't have memory, or not? Physicists being stumped is no proof. "It is against the laws of physics" sounds a bit like "most authorities agree that...", which doesn't cut it. Nature seems to do a lot of weird information storage, btw (quantum entanglements? I am not a physicists myself...). I don't think we should be on the lookout for little flash drives embedded in the water molecules.
      - 16y ago
crpatino 16y ago
Regarding "for homeopathy to be effective...", this statement shows a very XIX century preconceived idea about the human body: We are just machines. We have learned a great deal more since then. Biologic systems are complex by nature and show emergent properties that cannot be explained by the sum of its components. By example, there is a strong bias in the comic against the effectiveness of placebos. It assumes that "letting the disease run its course" is roughly equivalent to taking a placebo. It has been shown far from truth in double blind test, at least in the case of mild conditions; placebos do work, that's why we have the "placebo effect" meme in the first place. In that sense, homeopathy might be working just as advertised: Triggering the body's own natural healing capacity. The theory behind it may be convoluted and borderline magical... but this should not invalidate it on itself. Of course alternative healing should not be used instead mainstream western medicine for severe problems like cancer or such. However, in a country with basically no public health system, people should have access to any option that would not put them one blink away from financial disaster.

by celoyd 16y ago

avar 16y ago

The first example wouldn't be the same. There's a big difference between it being a theoretical impossibility, and something that sounds like we just haven't tested it enough. Proponents of homeopathy like to confuse the issue by citing some of their own badly done studies. Explaining to the layman that proving the efficacy of homeopathy would earn you a Nobel Price in physics helps to bring some context to that.

celoyd 16y ago
Heh. What is that difference? Philosophers of science would love to know. If homeopathy failed to conform to accepted theory but consistently beat placebos in a wide variety of good clinical trials, it would be good medicine; if it worked in theory but not in tissue, it would not be. Theory is generally constrained by observation. Homeopathy is wrong because it doesn’t work. Conceivably it could have turned out to work in some way that violated previous medical understanding. Lots of things have done this – it’s one of the main ways understanding is refined. Besides which, as far as I know (which is not far) there is no fundamental principle of biology, chemistry, or physics that it breaks. It just so happens that water molecules and immune systems don’t work the way homeopathy would need them to. While you could see this in terms of a violation of principles (in the same way that you can rewrite any false math theorem to 1 = 0 if you work hard enough), that doesn’t seem like a very productive perspective to me. But I’m not a doctor, biologist, chemist, or physicist, so I guess it could be.
- avar 16y ago
  You can't run faster than the speed of light, i.e. it isn't just for lack of trying. Explaining things in those terms to the layman helps them to understand the issues. There's a large chasm between things that might potentially work, and things that couldn't even work in theory. Homeopathy is squarely in the latter category. The whole concept of water memory is pseudoscientific nonesense. Note that they're not just claiming that water has some special effect on the human immune system. They're claiming that molecules are capable of transmitting and retaining information in a manner that violates our understanding of chemistry and physics.
  - celoyd 16y ago
    I think we mostly agree and are arguing mainly over interpretation. There's a large chasm between things that might potentially work, and things that couldn't even work in theory. Can you characterize this chasm? I think that there’s a fairly continuous range of possibility. When we say that “theory” precludes something, we might mean any of a variety of kinds and strengths of theories. It is a very strong theory that you cannot accelerate at the speed of light. Is there something as strong saying that water categorically cannot preserve information of that kind? I suspect the theories there are more statistical and harder to test. Mind you, I believe those theories. For one thing, the idea of water memory violates my intuitions about entropy. But it seems incautious to see it as a violation of principle. This kind of thinking tends too far in the direction of thinking that airplanes violate gravity, or that there could be no brown dwarf orbiting the sun because that would “violate our theory of how the solar system works”, etc. – scientism, not science. Of course, as I said, I have no special knowledge here. Maybe water memory is categorically rather than empirically impossible. If this is so, I’d be interested to learn why.
    - avar 16y ago
      The responses by demallien and thaumaturgy cover this better than anything I could have written, rather than duplicating them I'll just defer.
      - 16y ago
Tichy 16y ago
Which law of nature is against the theoretical possibility, though? Not saying that it is possible, but I certainly don't know enough about physics to prove it myself. Afaik water is actually still a bit of a mystery to science. Admittedly, last I read about the water puzzle was in a book that is 15 years old, by Douglas Hofstadter (of Gödel - Escher - Bach fame). Perhaps physics has progressed since then.
- thaumaturgy 16y ago
  While certain aspects of water may still be unexplained -- like its phase transitions, for example -- that doesn't leave the door open for contradictions of the aspects that are understood. "Memory" requires some form of information storage, in this case in one of the simplest molecules known to man. Not only would any physicist be stumped to even propose some form of information storage (i.e., "we don't know how it might have memory"), but any such proposal would contradict the current body of knowledge of chemistry (i.e., "we know that it can't have memory -- there's nowhere for it to hide"). ...and that's just one little part. Even if there was some kind of "memory" possible in water, you would have to explain how that memory would act on cells.
  - DaveChild 16y ago
    And then you would have to explain how that magic water memory makes it into sugar's magic memory when the water is evaporated away.
  - Tichy 16y ago
    I am not arguing that it is possible (it also seems very unlikely to me), just arguing that one should stay scientific. Has it been proven that water can't have memory, or not? Physicists being stumped is no proof. "It is against the laws of physics" sounds a bit like "most authorities agree that...", which doesn't cut it. Nature seems to do a lot of weird information storage, btw (quantum entanglements? I am not a physicists myself...). I don't think we should be on the lookout for little flash drives embedded in the water molecules.
    - 16y ago

crpatino 16y ago

Regarding "for homeopathy to be effective...", this statement shows a very XIX century preconceived idea about the human body: We are just machines. We have learned a great deal more since then. Biologic systems are complex by nature and show emergent properties that cannot be explained by the sum of its components. By example, there is a strong bias in the comic against the effectiveness of placebos. It assumes that "letting the disease run its course" is roughly equivalent to taking a placebo. It has been shown far from truth in double blind test, at least in the case of mild conditions; placebos do work, that's why we have the "placebo effect" meme in the first place. In that sense, homeopathy might be working just as advertised: Triggering the body's own natural healing capacity. The theory behind it may be convoluted and borderline magical... but this should not invalidate it on itself. Of course alternative healing should not be used instead mainstream western medicine for severe problems like cancer or such. However, in a country with basically no public health system, people should have access to any option that would not put them one blink away from financial disaster.