Thanks to serial twitterer @Blue Wode I came across this hilarious article defending Homeopathy, called Why skeptic love to hate homeopathy over at Online Health News. As far as I can tell it’s a reprint from the aptly, yet ironically titled Impossible Cure written by Amy L. Lansky, PhD (PhD computer Science, not biology or medicine).
Anyway, the article is equally bloodcurdling and unintentionally hilarious. Because of my associations with autism and ASD charities I come across a lot of people who are blinded by their own innate beliefs, and the unshakable convictions that those beliefs inspire. These are the hardest and most frustrating people to reach out to because logical argument is impossible. Anything that backs up their claims is accepted unconditionally, and anything that attacks or undermines is automatically “out to get them” or corrupted by special interest groups (usually “Big Pharma” in these cases; which ignores the salient point that CAM is Big Pharma, worth $60 Billion year in the US alone).
I won’t suggest you go and read this woo, because it will only add to their hit count, and as bloggers know, we only do it for the hit-stats. However, I will share with you my favourite giggle:
[anti-homeopathic types]…insist on citing a single negative meta-analysis study that has already been shown to be methodologically flawed, while ignoring many positive studies in respected publications, including two other meta-analyses that showed positive results.
they continue and explain the woo behind the woo:
The reason why homeopaths run into trouble with the skeptics, though, revolves around how homeopathic remedies are prepared….a method…called potentization, in which a substance is serially diluted and succussed over and over.
Successed means you shake it after diluting it. Dunno why it needs a special word, but there you go.
…these ultradilutions — so dilute that they cannot possibly contain a single molecule of the original substance — were still potent therapeutically. In fact, they were even more potent than low levels of dilution. Of course, this was and still is too much for the skeptics to bear. It turns much of accepted science on its head!
Emphasis added. This passive aggressive nonsense is indeed what skeptics take issue with. If there is not even one single molecule of a substance left in pure water, then all you have, by definition, and by every law of chemistry and physics, is…pure water.
But Dr. Lansky helps her credulous readers understand this unbelievable, nay, miraculous fact by selectively quoting from literature that in her terms is rigorous and professionally conducted. Unfortunately, the rest of us know this is a load of crap, performed by magicians, employing sleight of hand that cannot withstand any kind of scrutiny.
What the skeptics keep ignoring, however, are an increasing number of scientific studies that indicate that some kind of signature of the original substance is embedded in a potentized ultradilution.
Dr. Lansky: it’s not science. Science was employed to debunk these un-peer reviewed, self-published, self-aggrandising claims. Some kind of signature? Phlogiston is embedded in a liquid composed solely of molecules of water…just hydrogen and oxygen in a 2:1 ratio? Really?
In a 2007 paper by Professor Rustom Roy…demonstrated that lab instruments could pick up energetic signatures in ultradilutions that were not only specific to individual homeopathic remedies, but to specific potencies of these remedies…In 1988 Jacques Benveniste…found that a certain antibody could be serially diluted and succussed beyond the point where a single molecule could remain, but still cause the same effects.
Any half trained skeptic is aware of these frauds, along with the notorious recent scandal of Nobel laureate Luc Montagnier claiming he had picked up an “energy” signature in potentized water. Any physics grad student could point out that his equipment was picking up background noise and that he should have put a Faraday cage around the experimental set-up.
My absolute favourite, and the part where these guys go completely off the rails into science fiction is:
…he (Benveniste) continued his work and further demonstrated that the electromagnetic signature of an ultradilution could be recorded electronically, transmitted via Email, replayed into water, and still achieve the same substance-specific effects in the laboratory
As the kids say nowadays, LMFAO. Are you taking the piss having a laugh? You seriously expect any credulous adult to believe that serially diluting something out of solution, sorry, I mean potentizing an ultradilution, and then recording the background noise in the room, and transmitting that noise via email (down noisy cables) to another lab will allow another glass of pure water to cure my headache/insomnia/maleria or whatever?
Seriously?
Honestly?
Well, yes. You do expect that. You are unable to face the elephant in the room, and face up to the simple reality behind this nonsense. You are being lied to. You are being lied to by a CAM brigade (your word) that stands to make billions of dollars profit selling you bullshit and fairy tales. Is life so hard that you must resort to naturalist fairy stories to find succour?
I think we, The Skeptics, need to not only continue our “war” on this egregious nonsense, but branch out and fight the battle on multiple fronts. Many of these folks are also part of the anti-vaccination movement, and are thus deliberately, and with malice aforethought allowing innocent children to die through their callous and misguided inaction. While we’re fighting them we could also use some help from the psychotherapists amongst us to find out what the hell is going on in these peoples’ heads.