h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Anybody else see Horizon on BBC 2 tonight? They challenged James Randi, tried to get his million dollars by proving that water had memory. Actually, they didn't, they tested it.

They used a variety of reputable labs, including University College, and the Royal Society oversaw it. It seemed (as far as you can tell from watching the tv) to be a tightly controlled, rigorous, presumably repeatable, double blind test.

They diluted histamine in water to various homeopathic dilutions, and also prepared identical dilutions of water in water as a control. An independent witness coded the tubes and sealed the codes. A second independent witness later randomized them further.

They then added human blood cells to the dilutions and tested them (rigorously was the word that kept coming up) to see if the homeopathic histamine had any effect (and also if the plain water did). Once the results were known, the code was revealed.

Result? What you'd expect by chance - no statistical significance at all. The homeopathic solution didn't work. Can't say I'm surprised.

I caught it when it was aired on Norwegian TV a couple weeks back (I think Horizon originally had it a month ago.), well I only caught the end, but it was very good.
Of course it only proved that homeopatic solutions of histamines don't work. _Other_ homeopatic remedies _could_ be effective. (Or not, which is what I'm thinking. )
Also it showed how easy it is for researchers to fool themselves, since this replicated a study that indicated positive results, but which wasn't run double blind.

You can't prove a negative, can you?

All I can say is that having been on the receiving end of homeopathic treatments - without knowing the details of the remedies prescribed to me - they had strong, subtle and beneficial effects on my emotional well-being and attitudes. It all depends on the quality of the homeopath, of course, but I was astonished by the power of these remedies.

Hell - homeopathic vetinary treatments of animals work - no placebo effect there.

B

A study being run in Norway distributed homeopathic medicine to half the patients by mail, while half had regular visits to the homeopath to receive theirs. I only caught the end of the program about the study, but they seemed to conclude that talking to the homeopath played a bigger role than the actual medication.

The problem with treatment of animals is that judging the benefits is even more subjective than with humans. If anyone has done a study with scientific results they could pick up the million that weren't given out after the Horizon experiment. If they haven't ... well you can't blame the placebo effect, but there is still the issue of researcher bias.

I haven't heard of anybody doing a proper double blind study with animals (which doesn't mean it hasn't happened of course). You can't prove a negative, that's true, but nobody has yet managed to prove the positive either. Absence of proof isn't proof of absence, but if there was something measurable there I'd have thought somebody would have measured it in a scientifically rigorous way by now.

I have no doubt at all that people feel better after taking the remedies. I feel better after visiting my chiropractor for my dodgy back. He is into applied kinesiology, which quite honestly sounds like a load of old hooey to me. Yet I feel better - I don't question that, and I'm happy to pay him for it - but I don't have to buy his explanation - I have no idea why I feel better, but I doubt it's because my energy is balanced.

I'm happy to accept that the techniques of stimulating certain points on the body along with manipulation have some psychological or physiological effect on me, so subjectively that's enough, but it's proof of nothing.