Homeopathy

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Re: Homeopathy

Postby Iamwhomiam » Wed Feb 24, 2021 12:47 pm

That's quite true, Pele's Daughter. I've come to believe people are exactly who they must be, beliefs and all, because they can be no other way. Argument becomes fruitless when met with intransigence. And that's sad to see happening here, a place where multi-dimensional realities are pondered and consciousness is discussed.
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Re: Homeopathy

Postby stickdog99 » Wed Feb 24, 2021 1:01 pm

mentalgongfu2 » 24 Feb 2021 08:12 wrote:Were one to bite on this "look at the evidence" attitude for a practice so thoroughly debunked in the past, it would perhaps help if we focused on one study in mammals and looked at the whole thing, from start to finish, instead of this effort to overwhelm with numbers.Such an effort of "look how many studies I have" could be easily countered, but if one's goal was to actually consider and evaluate, one might be better to take the most convincing study involving something close to humans if not on them directly and expose it to detailed examination. Examination, mind you, not argument. Comparison with studies that are accepted by standard medical science would be valuable as well. Unless the OP is willing to consider something along those lines, this thread is just begging for a shouting match with a specific poster who has wisely already declined to participate.


Why? Why should we look at complicated human clinical studies that inherently have multiple confounding factors when trying to answer the basic scientific question of whether homeopathic preparations can have any biological effects whatsoever?

And how in the hell am I begging for a shouting match by merely posting a series of interesting scientific studies with results that surprised me?
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Re: Homeopathy

Postby DrEvil » Wed Feb 24, 2021 3:45 pm

stickdog99 » Tue Feb 23, 2021 10:12 am wrote:lol. So that's how "science" works today.

Right? No reason to evaluate the actual experimental observations when you already have your mind made up. In fact. you don't even have to see if your favorite "skeptics" have actiually noticed any of these studies yet because you know for a fact that when and if they do that their only possible response will be to villify the non-corporate scientists who had the gall to actually make these observations when we all ALREADY know that homeopathy simply MUST be pure quackery no matter what any observational data may say. Right?


Linking the first five hits off a Google search isn't science, and neither is me responding to it.

Let's say I spend some tedious hours going through the studies you posted and manage to debunk them, then what? You'll just go "Aha! but what about these?", and post the next five hits. Rinse and repeat.

The simple truth of the matter is that I don't particularly want to discuss this with you right now. This doesn't help convince me otherwise:

Can you EVER simply exanine the data objectively and allow yourself to be suprised at the results or is that just too heretical for a religious Church of Corporate Medicine zealot like you?
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Re: Homeopathy

Postby stickdog99 » Thu Feb 25, 2021 3:23 am

DrEvil » 24 Feb 2021 19:45 wrote:
stickdog99 » Tue Feb 23, 2021 10:12 am wrote:lol. So that's how "science" works today.

Right? No reason to evaluate the actual experimental observations when you already have your mind made up. In fact. you don't even have to see if your favorite "skeptics" have actiually noticed any of these studies yet because you know for a fact that when and if they do that their only possible response will be to villify the non-corporate scientists who had the gall to actually make these observations when we all ALREADY know that homeopathy simply MUST be pure quackery no matter what any observational data may say. Right?


Linking the first five hits off a Google search isn't science, and neither is me responding to it.

Let's say I spend some tedious hours going through the studies you posted and manage to debunk them, then what? You'll just go "Aha! but what about these?", and post the next five hits. Rinse and repeat.

The simple truth of the matter is that I don't particularly want to discuss this with you right now. This doesn't help convince me otherwise:

Can you EVER simply exanine the data objectively and allow yourself to be suprised at the results or is that just too heretical for a religious Church of Corporate Medicine zealot like you?


I apologize for being so mean that I forced you to abandon the scientific method.
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Re: Homeopathy

Postby DrEvil » Thu Feb 25, 2021 4:36 am

I realize this can be hard to understand, but arguing on the internet isn't "the scientific method". I'm just not interested in taking part in your game of whack-a-homeopath. It's tedious and futile.

We're on page two already and well into the sniping stage of proceedings, and we still can't agree on whether we should argue or not. Do you really see this having a happy ending?
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Re: Homeopathy

Postby stickdog99 » Thu Feb 25, 2021 1:56 pm

There is a ton of scientific research that demonstrates that arsenicum album solutions have measurable effects on a wide variety of organisms that have been poisoned with arsenic. You refuse to even examine any of this surprising evidence because of confirmation bias. And you represent exactly how the Church of Science now worships.
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Re: Homeopathy

Postby dada » Thu Feb 25, 2021 4:21 pm

I don't mean to interrupt, but I have a genuine question. Say before I sleep, I drink a glass of water that has spent some time in moonlight, and I find that it improves my capabilities to dream lucidly.

Where does my lucid moon water fit in? It isn't technically magic, certainly isn't science, maybe a bit of psychology to it, maybe a lot. So I don't know, I'm thinking that a homeopathy proven scientifically would maybe miss the greater point.
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Re: Homeopathy

Postby mentalgongfu2 » Fri Feb 26, 2021 3:04 am

stickdog99 » Wed Feb 24, 2021 11:01 am wrote:
mentalgongfu2 » 24 Feb 2021 08:12 wrote:Were one to bite on this "look at the evidence" attitude for a practice so thoroughly debunked in the past, it would perhaps help if we focused on one study in mammals and looked at the whole thing, from start to finish, instead of this effort to overwhelm with numbers.Such an effort of "look how many studies I have" could be easily countered, but if one's goal was to actually consider and evaluate, one might be better to take the most convincing study involving something close to humans if not on them directly and expose it to detailed examination. Examination, mind you, not argument. Comparison with studies that are accepted by standard medical science would be valuable as well. Unless the OP is willing to consider something along those lines, this thread is just begging for a shouting match with a specific poster who has wisely already declined to participate.


(1) Why? Why should we look at complicated human clinical studies that inherently have multiple confounding factors when trying to answer the basic scientific question of whether homeopathic preparations can have any biological effects whatsoever?

(2)And how in the hell am I begging for a shouting match by merely posting a series of interesting scientific studies with results that surprised me?


In reverse order:

(2) You keep trying to draw in Dr. Evil by insulting him and/or his opinions directly, which is baiting, i.e. begging for a shouting match. Especially when you clearly have a dug-in opinion/persona that will be oblivious to any argument made against the claims you say these studies support.

(1) Are we now limiting the debate on homeopathy to "any biological effects whatsoever on any organism?" instead of effects beneficial to a human person? Because there are literally thousands of people selling "homepathic" bs fake cures every day on the basis that it can cure cancer or some other claim along these lines, and this harms real people. I don't give a shit if someone claims "biological effects whatsoever." I care about that being translated to promising cures to desperate people for financial gain, which seems to be where most homeopathy lives that I am familiar with.
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Re: Homeopathy

Postby mentalgongfu2 » Fri Feb 26, 2021 3:13 am

dada » Thu Feb 25, 2021 2:21 pm wrote:I don't mean to interrupt, but I have a genuine question. Say before I sleep, I drink a glass of water that has spent some time in moonlight, and I find that it improves my capabilities to dream lucidly.

Where does my lucid moon water fit in? It isn't technically magic, certainly isn't science, maybe a bit of psychology to it, maybe a lot. So I don't know, I'm thinking that a homeopathy proven scientifically would maybe miss the greater point.


If you can replicate it in a controlled-study with a sufficient number of participants, it could be science.
Which would not preclude it from also being magic or psychology.
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Re: Homeopathy

Postby dada » Fri Feb 26, 2021 12:22 pm

Yes, but let's say I conduct a study of the effect of lucid moon water on frequency of lucid dreaming, with all the experimental controls that the scientific study of lucid dreaming has devised to date. The study may conclude that moon water increases frequency of lucidity in the participants' dreams, or not. Either way, moon water doesn't need scientific validity to already work for me.

So I guess I'm questioning the need for scientific validity in certain subjects. Take the baseball player, many have superstitious and or obsessive compulsive rituals they use. We could study the effects of these behaviors on batting averages, earned run averages and other statistics. Well, we could if the players agreed to it, though I doubt we'd find many who would forgo their rituals to join that control group. But let's say we did. What is it we're proving, though? If the rituals clearly help, we've proved that unscientific superstitions aid baseball players.

It becomes a question of the nature of health and disease, as defined scientifically. Without the ritual, the baseball player feels uneasy. Performing the ritual dispels the uneasy feeling. So I hypothesize that there is a correlation between disease and unease. Like, studies show that LSD can help terminal cancer patients come to terms with death. It doesn't cure the disease, but it can cure the unease.

No conclusions here, just seeing where the topic takes me.
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Re: Homeopathy

Postby dada » Fri Feb 26, 2021 4:24 pm

I'm starting from the premise that there is no scientific basis for a connection between the light and the water, and the lucidity of the dreaming. Therefore I'm positing an unscientific connection between them to begin with. If science demonstrates that there is a connection, it in no way detracts from the unscientific connection that is already posited. As well if science cannot demonstrate that there is a connection.

Isn't the placebo effect kind of an admission by science of irrational effects. These types of irrational effects are so prevalent, the have their own category, placebo effect, and a key place within the scientific method. Not a magical effect, there's no conscious intention behind the irrational effect. But magical to the extent that it is irrational. So magical, in a sense.
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Re: Homeopathy

Postby dada » Fri Feb 26, 2021 5:25 pm

The double-blind study is an attempt to build scientific safeguards into the experimental framework to prevent irrational influences or magical effects bleeding into the dataset.

So any magic proved by science, becomes science. My argument would be that any magic that can be proved by science is of a certain type, but there is also magic that cannot be scientifically proven. A real magical experiment, in fact, would have safeguards to prevent rationalization from bleeding into the dataset. Like a double-sight study.
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Re: Homeopathy

Postby stickdog99 » Fri Feb 26, 2021 9:03 pm

dada » 25 Feb 2021 20:21 wrote:I don't mean to interrupt, but I have a genuine question. Say before I sleep, I drink a glass of water that has spent some time in moonlight, and I find that it improves my capabilities to dream lucidly.

Where does my lucid moon water fit in? It isn't technically magic, certainly isn't science, maybe a bit of psychology to it, maybe a lot. So I don't know, I'm thinking that a homeopathy proven scientifically would maybe miss the greater point.


Maybe. But isn't it at least interesting that plants, yeast, and leukocytes all have the same "psychological" response? I must admit that this surprises the hell out me.
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Re: Homeopathy

Postby Iamwhomiam » Sat Feb 27, 2021 1:07 pm

dada » Fri Feb 26, 2021 4:24 pm wrote:I'm starting from the premise that there is no scientific basis for a connection between the light and the water, and the lucidity of the dreaming. Therefore I'm positing an unscientific connection between them to begin with. If science demonstrates that there is a connection, it in no way detracts from the unscientific connection that is already posited. As well if science cannot demonstrate that there is a connection.

Isn't the placebo effect kind of an admission by science of irrational effects. These types of irrational effects are so prevalent, the have their own category, placebo effect, and a key place within the scientific method. Not a magical effect, there's no conscious intention behind the irrational effect. But magical to the extent that it is irrational. So magical, in a sense.


It is my belief that a placebo can only become effective with the consumer's intention and without their intention for it to work the intended placebo remains ineffective. How do we measure intention? Is intention possible to measure?

Is the water ordinary, and the glass that holds it magical?
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Re: Homeopathy

Postby Iamwhomiam » Sun Feb 28, 2021 3:57 pm

You might find Dr Masaru Emoto's findings of interest in this bit, dada, as it sort of touches upon your question about moonlight interacting with water.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDW9Lqj8hmc


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wH0VczXhLg

edited to add:
(Sorry for the poor quality of the last video. It loses sound at 1:14: 20 before regaining it a minute and twenty seconds later. It again loses sound from 1:21:50 to 1:23. Might as well call it quits at 1:21:50. There may be a better copy available at a free documentary site.)
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