Told ya so, Alex Stroup

[tracilicious]

Homeopathy (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dana-ullman/homeopathy-for-allergies_b_320998.html) is complete bullsh!t, eh? Your precious science doesn't seem to think so. My hayfever curing experience is now validated. Booyah!

[alphabassettgrrl]

Interesting.

While I'm often a fan of natural remedies, homeopathy seems odd to me but I guess in the case of allergies, it makes sense. They do use small doses of the irritant in desensitization therapy.

[Alex]

Well, if it's on HuffPo it must be true!

Still BS. But if it makes you think you feel better enjoy your water.

[Alex]

Damn. Actually read it, the author didn't even bother to mention anything particularly new (and, as usual, he cherry picks. Much weight placed on one Lancet article (from 1997) and one small meta-analysis but he doesn't mention the huge meta-analysis published in Lancet in 2005 that finds no evidence of a non-placebo effects and also that most of the pro-homeopathy trials were from small and/or poorly managed trials). It's most the same crap studies that have been generally discredited or unrepoduced for more than a decade.

But the comments are fun. The BS slung about is so damned spectacular. I like this one:

Allergies are one of the most common reasons people seek out homeopathic treatment. The well prescribed homeopathic remedy reduces the intensity and frequency of the symptoms--and if it is seasonal allergies over time they no longer experience the problem.

Thank you Dana for providing studies showing the effectiveness of homeopathy for allergies. In my own clinic people are amazed by the results.

You are a practitioner? Good!

I have one direct, simple question for you, and I know you can not answer it:

A person is told they have “Mercury poisoning” on account of fillings. A Homeopathic Practitioner “Prescribes” a sugar pill which allegedly contains a “single atom” of mercury.

Please explain precisely how the body “recognizes” the atom of mercury in the pill, as unique from the millions of other mercury atoms presumably floating around in the body. Explain how this particular mercury atom, is any different that it could act as a mechanism of any kind.

You can’t explain that because an atom of mercury, is an atom of mercury, period. They are all absolutely identical. But I'll be waiting for a response....

That is NOT the way homeopathy works! I'm sure Ms. Burch can give a more detailed explanation, but this is the way it goes: The POTENTIZED remedy presents to the body a picture of the symptoms the substance would cause if taken in its original form. That symptom picture stimulates the immune system to do what it would do to heal the body naturally.

Potentized remedy present pictures to the body in order to stimulate the immune system!

It's so clear now! If only they'd said that the first time, science wouldn't have embarrassed itself with a reliance on reality for all these years.

And isn't this a classical bit of mundane stupidity from the article?

To those of us who do not believe in coincidences,

What kind of brain damage allows a person to believe in water memory but not in coincidence?

[tracilicious]

Diane Ullman is a Quake? :P

Ok, so don't believe the double blind, placebo controlled studies. But, if you have hayfever, I can recommend the homeopathic remedy that cured mine. (Blah, blah, personal evidence, blah, blah.)

A real question: In what way were the studies poorly performed? What are your qualifications for which studies to accept and which to reject?

[Alex]

[I may have typoed quack, as you so helpfully pointed out, but if we're going to pick at minor errors, at least I know the name of the person you believe has completely revolutionized medical science.]

So why do you reject the many more double blind, placebo controlled that show absolutely no benefit at all to homeopathy?

Nothing about science says that if homeopathy is utter bull**** that evidence of its effectiveness will never be found. In fact, it says just the opposite: even if a remedy is complete bunk, if you look for evidence enough times and chunk the results, every once in a while you'll be misled by the outcome. That is, if you do 400 small random, double-blind, properly controlled experiments it is completely expected that a few of them (20 or so, actually), simply through random chance would show -- even if incorrect -- a significant benefit to homeopathy.

As the 2005 Lancet large-scale metanalysis of more than 110 homeopathic trials found, positive results were much more likely to be found in small scale studies with only a dozen or two participants. Large studies with many hundreds of participants were much less likely to find a benefit beyond placebo.

Many studies that claim a benefit are also found to have been improperly blinded or to have other procedural problems. However, my larger point there remains. This article offers no new evidence for homeopathy as all of the articles referenced are many years old and most are 10-20 years old. It is just one of the main American proponents of homeopathy reiteration what he's been saying for years, using the same sites he has for years. So I'm not sure why were so excited by his new article. I was quite aware of Dana Ullman and his writings the last time I said homeopathy is BS.

I have no doubt at all that you believe your hayfever was cured homeopathically. I also have very little doubt that you're wrong. But I understand why believing in the magical properties of water would have appeal. And if I choose to try homeopathy I have my own free source of the magic elixirs. It's built into my house, with access points in the kitchen and bathroom. And it is uber powerful since those water molecules have at some point been in the vicinity of pretty much every molecule that might be helpful to me and so it cures everything and has no side effects except when I inhale it or mix it with scotch. In fact, as you'd expect, everybody drinking this stuff has lead to the end of illness and death in our world. Or have I forgotten the precept of homeopoathy that says it is only effective if it is put in proximiaty to the magic "$" symbol?

[Cadaverous Pallor]

There is not enough mojo in the world to give to someone who will actually do the research necessary....and make me laugh my ass off.

Thank you, Alex. You do us quite a service.

[Stan4dSteph]

I received immunotherapy for my allergies and that has helped a lot with lessening their severity. I think that's different than homeopathy though.

[flippyshark]

Yep, completely different.

[Alex]

Two corrections to my last post. 10, not 20. The other 10 would be expected to show a significant harmful impact. However, completely negative results have a way of not making it to publication (and this would be completely negative since pro-homeopathy researchers wouldn't believe the result and anti-homeopathy researchers also wouldn't believe the result) though there have been published homeopathy studies that do show it doing slightly worse than placebo.

And second, correction of two typoes in one sentence:

It is just one of the main American proponents of homeopathy reiterating what he's been saying for years, using the same cites he has for years.

[3894]

My hayfever curing experience is now validated.

Every system - even astrology - works some of the time.

[tracilicious]

Two corrections to my last post. 10, not 20. The other 10 would be expected to show a significant harmful impact. However, completely negative results have a way of not making it to publication (and this would be completely negative since pro-homeopathy researchers wouldn't believe the result and anti-homeopathy researchers also wouldn't believe the result) though there have been published homeopathy studies that do show it doing slightly worse than placebo.

And second, correction of two typoes in one sentence:

How an waer be armful (and wy is my keyboard malfunioning?????)

[BarTopDancer]

How an waer be armful (and wy is my keyboard malfunioning?????)

Presuming you mean to say "How can water be harmful" (and I suggest canned air for your keyboard) you should watch Erin Brockovich (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0195685/).

[Ghoulish Delight]

How an waer be armful (and wy is my keyboard malfunioning?????)
It (alone) can't beyond placebo, no more than water (alone) can be beneficial in the way homeopathy claims. Which is exactly the point Alex was making. It is one of standard distribution. Out of 400 small case studies, it is expected that through pure random chance, about 10 of those case studies will show that the people receiving the homeopathic remedy will fair worse than people taking a placebo. And in about 10 of those case studies, it's expected that people receiving the homeopathic remedy will fair better.

To put it another way, if you take some large # of people (let's say 40,000 just to put a # on it) and start randomly grouping them together to form 800 small groups 50 people (I say 800 instead of 400 since each group is roughly split in half between placebo and actual test substance), then purely by random chance, a small percentage of those groups of 50 people are going to end up being composed disproportionately of people who happen to respond better or worse to a placebo than average. So those groups of people will produce results at the far end of the spectrum. But that doesn't prove anything, it is only a single datapoint.

So you can't look at a single study and say, "aha! Here's a group of 100 people in which the homeopathic remedy performed better than placebo" and callt he homeopatic remedy confirmed. Because if you do that study 399 more times, you'll find that yes, about 9 more times you'll see a similar result, about 10 times you'll see the exact opposite result (the placebo significantly out performs the homeopathy) and the other 380 times the difference between the two would show no statistically significant benefit to either (with roughly half showing negligible tendencies toward better results within error tolerances from placebo, half toward homeopathy).

[Kevy Baby]

Presuming you mean to say "How can water be harmful" (and I suggest canned air for your keyboard) you should watch Erin Brockovich (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0195685/).http://www.dhmo.org/