http://woowooscience.com/index.php/blog/post/how_much_anecdotal_evidence/ in health, homeopathy, and life en john@vitalpatterns.net Copyright 2008 by the respective commenters 2008-04-04T06:58:00-08:00 http://woowooscience.com/index.php/blog/post/how_much_anecdotal_evidence/#35 “Many of my patients are doing other things for their health as well as homeopathy.” So how do you know that these “other things” aren’t responsible for your patients’ recovery? {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} 2007-12-02T11:34:01-08:00 http://woowooscience.com/index.php/blog/post/how_much_anecdotal_evidence/#36 So how do you know that these “other things” aren’t responsible for your patients’ recovery? That’s what I said. I have to rule those things out as best I can. And I can usually but certainly not always make the distinction. By the way, I do see actual placebo effect. Sometimes I also believe it was the “interview effect,” not the remedy. When I suspect those, sometimes I repeat the remedy to try to get confirmation and sometime I say, “That didn’t work. What next?” But back to my question… How much of this kind of evidence is required? I can’t do a clinical trial of one. And I might do general trials, but I can’t realistically do a RDBCT on “remedy X will cure exactly Y” with homeopathy, or any holistic modality. Even if a trial were done that let me know there is a good chance of success using homeopathy with some condition, it wouldn’t help me evaluate the sitution with a sinlge patient who took one particular remedy. So how can I ever know, if anecdotal evidence doesn’t count? {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} 2007-12-02T12:01:13-08:00 http://woowooscience.com/index.php/blog/post/how_much_anecdotal_evidence/#40 I think you have hit the nail on the head. There is no amount of eveidence like this that can answer a question like ‘does it work’. You can never rule out that there are significant confounding factors at play. {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} 2007-12-02T13:14:26-08:00 http://woowooscience.com/index.php/blog/post/how_much_anecdotal_evidence/#41 “I have to rule those things out as best I can. And I can usually but certainly not always make the distinction.” Yes but *how*? If somebody has conventional treatment and homeopathy, what method do you use to determine whether their recovery is due to the former or the latter? Especially given that some other patients with similar conditions are able to recover using only conventional treatment. {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} 2007-12-02T13:27:13-08:00 http://woowooscience.com/index.php/blog/post/how_much_anecdotal_evidence/#42 There is no amount of eveidence like this that can answer a question like ‘does it work’. Thus my claim that reductionistic science can become too disconnected from real life. Would you also claim that someone who observes animal behavior in the wild isn’t doing science, unless they bring the animals into a controlled environment? You can never rule out that there are significant confounding factors at play. I believe that there is a difference between not having confounding factors and being able to compensate for those factors. In other words, if I have known “noise” signals, I may be able to filter them out. Or if my signal is strong enough, the confounding factors will be small in comparison. {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} 2007-12-02T13:31:54-08:00 http://woowooscience.com/index.php/blog/post/how_much_anecdotal_evidence/#43 If somebody has conventional treatment and homeopathy, what method do you use to determine whether their recovery is due to the former or the latter? Some comments about my method are in the original post. When only a single symptom improved, I don’t know. But I have a list of other information to consider. But how much and what kind of other information do I need? Keep in mind that for a single case I’m only asking how much evidence you would need as a person involved in that case. I’m not talking about general “proof” of homeopathy there. Especially given that some other patients with similar conditions are able to recover using only conventional treatment. That’s not my experience. While it’s possible that the conventional treatment finally kicked in after years, that is usually unlikely. And besides, in many cases the patient isn’t taking the conventional treatment any more because it was ineffective. So are you saying that it would be sufficient evidence if the patient wasn’t taking any other medications or treatments? {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} 2007-12-02T13:47:06-08:00 http://woowooscience.com/index.php/blog/post/how_much_anecdotal_evidence/#44 Removing confounding factors usually straightforward. The biggest problems in medicine are observer bias. Blinding subjects and researchers does a pretty good job of getting rid of those problems. {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} 2007-12-02T20:30:53-08:00 http://woowooscience.com/index.php/blog/post/how_much_anecdotal_evidence/#60 One major problem with anecdotal evidence is that it selects only the stories which seemed to demonstrate the effectiveness of homeopathy. Random things do happen to people, they get better, they get worse, other factors in their life change. Consider another imaginary anecdote: A patient comes to you who complains of, among other things, rheumatoid arthritis. You do your interview thing and give her a remedy, she comes back with no real improvements so you adjust her treatment again. After a few such interviews the patient misses an appointment and you never hear of her again. Does this kind of thing happen in your practice? Is this anecdotal evidence of the inefficacy of homeopathy or were you just unable to find the right treatment? You will notice apparent successes all the time because they are what give you job satisfaction. The missed appointments and not quite right remedies will fade into the background of the work a day world. But if you could repeatedly show that patients presenting with arthritis go into remission soon after you start treatment, then get worse again when a placebo is substituted for the remedy, then get better again when the correct treatment is given, then yes that would be compelling evidence. {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} 2007-12-05T10:44:05-08:00 http://woowooscience.com/index.php/blog/post/how_much_anecdotal_evidence/#62 Yes, but once the healing process begins, giving placebo would not prove anything.  Remember, it is not the remedy- it is the person’s own body that has been stimulated by the remedy to heal itself. That is why all sort of things begin to change and even OTHER conditions will begin to heal after homeopathic treatment. Emotional and mental things shift as well. I agree that with an allopathic/mechanistic view of the body, this is hard to understand, and may be hard to prove using the received scientific method. My experience with my homeopath is that it is a journey. He has even told me that he will have treated someone over let’s say six months, and then they disappear.  Five years later, he gets a call for a new appointment- they show up saying they have been well since that one remedy, and now it was time for a tune up. And some don’t give it the time it requires and move on. My journey has been 26 years.... Headaches, allergies, workaholism,bad marriage,bladder infections,low energy,bursitis, excema,anxiety attacks, menopausal symptoms, two pregnancies ( one at age 43!)- all have been healed or assisted by this homeopathic journey. Hey, I have been a “light” user of the conventional health care system- I am healthy at age 55, take no medication ( the last antibiotics were 26 years ago, my medicine cabinet is quite empty). Let’s celebrate this amazing thing called homeopathy, and let’s try to help others understand it’s very gently yet profound influence on our health. -GG {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} 2007-12-06T02:48:36-08:00 http://woowooscience.com/index.php/blog/post/how_much_anecdotal_evidence/#63 The placebo effect may be one part of the process in treating some patients, and if this helps then it’s not such a bad thing!  But how can that be the case when treating babies and animals?  They aren’t aware of what they’ve been given or even why, yet many homeopaths have experienced excellent results despite this. I recently attended Peter Chappell’s seminar in London.  He says there are hospital records of epidemic diseases cured by homeopathy, showing homeopathy to be ten times more successful than conventional medicine at the time the results were documented.  These results can be found in ‘The Bradford Logic of Figures’.  There are of course many other records indicating homeopathy to be more successful than conventional medicine in treating epidemic diseases. Peter has had amazing results with his treatment of AIDS in Africa and India, and surely it is the results that count, not evidence of how it works when dealing with people. Homeopathy is an energy based system of medicine, and this is where it differs from conventional medicine which works on a chemical level. So how can we measure the efficacy of homeopathy as compared to conventional medicine, when they are in fact like chalk and cheese, and two very different methods of treatment!  Selling remedies in chemists to members of the public who do not understand the philosophy or principles of homeopathy is another way of turning people off.  They may have tried to self-prescribe to no effect as they aren’t aware of what needs to be taken into account when prescribing a remedy. Homeopathy being a taboo subject is a good sign; bringing awareness …(more) {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} 2007-12-06T04:46:16-08:00 http://woowooscience.com/index.php/blog/post/how_much_anecdotal_evidence/#64 Sarah Keays: If it does work in animals then that is an excellent system to run a test on. I understood, though, that homeopathy was a holistic therapy for which you need to interview a patient about many aspects of their life. How do you personalise a medicine to an animal you can’t interview? How would you manage to treat an entire flock or heard of seperate animals? My farmer friend says cows all have different personalities. Do homeopaths secretly just consider the symptoms of their patients? Would you, for example, really prescribe different remedies to two patients with gamy knees, one of whom has trouble sleeping but a great sex life and the other who sleeps like a log but has lost their libido? If so then how could this be extended to animals? I’d also like to know what you mean by “Energy Medicine”? The word “energy” means several very specific and sometimes subtle things to me and that gets in the way of understanding what you mean by the word. Most evidence of efficacy in animals is more anecdotal evidence from pet owners. There is anecdotal evidence from vets that pet owners believe homeopathic treatments are helping whilst their pet continues to deteriorate. How can we decide which of these two sets of anecdotes provide a more accurate picture of the situation? Ok where is Peter Chapels evidence? Setting aside the ethical issues of testing unproven therapies in third world countries, permanent remission of AIDs would be compelling evidence for the efficay of homeopathy. Where is the careful documentation of cases, the follow up one year, five years and ten …(more) {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} 2007-12-06T09:52:19-08:00 http://woowooscience.com/index.php/blog/post/how_much_anecdotal_evidence/#65 GaleG: I’m afraid if you say you can not PROVE* it then you yourself do not KNOW it. Also; Johns interesting hypothetical anecdote suggests removing the homeopathic treatment precipitates a return of arthritis. Is he wrong? How do you guys decide which of you is correct when you disagree?  *By prove I mean demonstrate a phenomena in a number of different experiments robustly (means the experiment can be modified slightly without changing the outcome) and repeatedly (means the experiment can be repeated by different people and get very similar results). You have had 200 years! Get on with it! {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} 2007-12-06T09:58:15-08:00 http://woowooscience.com/index.php/blog/post/how_much_anecdotal_evidence/#66 I’d like to try to bring this back to my original question and not argue specific claims here. By the way, I will be talking about “energy medicine” in the next couple of posts. And I’ll try to at least partially address the question about individualising treatment to animals when I write about what natural healing means after that. For the record, Derek, I do agree with you about questioning the reasoning of people you agree with. I certainly don’t agree with every claim made about either homeopathy or conventional medicine, even if the source seems good to me. Also; Johns interesting hypothetical anecdote suggests removing the homeopathic treatment precipitates a return of arthritis. Is he wrong? How do you guys decide which of you is correct when you disagree? That isn’t quite right. It’s more accurate to say that healing starts and goes for a while and sometimes needs another push (or several). But the ideal is to get the person’s body to heal itself and then they don’t need further treatment, as GaleG said. Yes, there are dosing methods that involve repetition, and switching to placebo might stop improvement, but if there is a full return of symptoms, that would likely mean that the remedy was only palliative, not curative. It might be useful in a experiment to prove homeopathy to skeptics, though, but I’d prefer a test with better intentions. Anyhow, regarding what I said in my original post, when I give a remedy and the patient is better for some time, then their symptoms come back a bit and I repeat the remedy and then they …(more) {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} 2007-12-06T11:21:27-08:00 http://woowooscience.com/index.php/blog/post/how_much_anecdotal_evidence/#67 when they are in fact like chalk and cheese, I love it! It’s a nicer image than “like apples and oranges.” {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} 2007-12-06T11:25:23-08:00 http://woowooscience.com/index.php/blog/post/how_much_anecdotal_evidence/#68 So here is where I was coming from with this post: 1. Science says that homeopaths are making an extraordinary claim and don’t have the extraordinary proof to back it up; therefore it’s a belief or a delusion. (Yes, I realize that’s not how some of you might put it.) 2. Homeopaths like me say that it is our frequent experience that homeopathy works. (Not like having a vision or making a prediction, but a cause and effect situation.) My question: What if you were on the other side? Despite your philosophy of science, how much of an experience would you have to have (#2) before it counts for you. I understand that greater scientific evidence is a bigger question. How does my hypothetical situation above fare? {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} 2007-12-06T11:33:22-08:00 http://woowooscience.com/index.php/blog/post/how_much_anecdotal_evidence/#69 After a few such interviews the patient misses an appointment and you never hear of her again. Does this kind of thing happen in your practice? Yes, it does. All I can say is that when I look at all my patients, even the “missing” ones, my successful cases far outnumber the ones where there was only a minor result or no result. I don’t offer this a proof, only to say that the “selective memory” argument might work with for domestic use of homeopathic remedies, but it is counter to what I experience in my practice. You will notice apparent successes all the time because they are what give you job satisfaction. The missed appointments and not quite right remedies will fade into the background of the work a day world. You have no idea. No idea. The difficult cases occupy much, much more of my thought and time. By the way, I do audit my practice on a regular basis (thank you, Miranda) and call some “missing” patients for feedback. Usually they didn’t get a satisfactory result, but occasionally I do find someone who actually was better and didn’t see any point in coming to see me and didn’t communicate that when they cancelled the appointment. {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} 2007-12-06T11:48:41-08:00 http://woowooscience.com/index.php/blog/post/how_much_anecdotal_evidence/#70 “My question: What if you were on the other side? Despite your philosophy of science, how much of an experience would you have to have (#2) before it counts for you.” I fear that you really don’t get it. To a rational mind, it absolutely doesn’t matter how much of a personal experience one has if objective testing demonstrates that ‘experience’ to be an illusion. There is absolutely no amount of ‘experience’ which could persuade me because I don’t base my understanding of the world solely on my experience. I base my understanding of the world on people with a great deal of existing knowledge and critical reasoning poking bits of the world with sticks and accurately measuring how much it squeaks. That’s what could persuade me. Anecdotal evidence does not become data just because it’s an anecdote about oneself. {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} 2007-12-06T12:31:14-08:00 http://woowooscience.com/index.php/blog/post/how_much_anecdotal_evidence/#71 John; thank you for your replies, I am enjoying this. Challenging ones ideas against someone with a very different world view is invigorating. I would like to deal with #2 2. Homeopaths like me say that it is our frequent experience that homeopathy works. (Not like having a vision or making a prediction, but a cause and effect situation.) I am afraid my answer is slightly paradoxical. In my experience, my experience is unreliable. I have watched magicians do impossible things. I have read into my data what I expected to see and done further work on that basis with messy results. I have been certain, given my experience, that tweaking one little factor in an experiment will improve the quality of my data and ended up, several tweaks later with worse quality data than I started with. So no amount of direct experience would convince me that it works any more than any amount of watching the same conjuring trick would convince me that it was real magic. What I require is a different kind of experience: A Demonstration that if you do one thing; give a remedy, you get a different out come than if you do a different thing; give a sugar pill. {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} 2007-12-06T13:10:37-08:00 http://woowooscience.com/index.php/blog/post/how_much_anecdotal_evidence/#72 In response to Derik, I would like to add that homeopathic vets work by asking the owner of the animal how the animal is, ie if their appetite is affected, what differences they have noticed from the norm etc.  Likewise when treating a baby, the mother will tell you the symptoms as far as she knows, including any aetiological factors and changes in behaviour and this is how a prescription is usually made. Peter Chappell is trying to raise funds for research into his methods of treating AIDS in Africa; Until he has sufficient funds to do this, he recommends homeopaths use a scoring system (Karnofsky score) to evaluate the progress of their patients. This is an effective way of evaluating cases.  As for the ethical issues surrounding the treatment of AIDS in Africa, you need only to read books such as ‘the Truth about HIV’ by Phillip Day (Credence Publications) to see that there are many questions to be raised about ethics where the pharmaceutical industry is concerned. The European Council for Classical Homeopathy also have a good resource of cases treated successfully with homeopathy.  AS for misleading information, I’d like to refer you to the following link:  http://freetochoosehealth.wordpress.com/.  Energy - other words or phrases used to describe this, Ki or vital force etc. Acupuncturists, cranial sacral therapists, reiki practitioners work along the same lines, releasing energy blockages in order for the Ki or vitality to flow harmoniously resulting in better health. Gale G, I myself have not had 200 years to get on with it, but seeing as we collectively are under immense pressure to do so, some …(more) {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} 2007-12-06T13:28:04-08:00 http://woowooscience.com/index.php/blog/post/how_much_anecdotal_evidence/#73 I have an idea! I am inspired by your statement: Only truly holistic influences cause the pattern shift, in my experience. You have made a “specific prediction”   that you get a particular pattern shift in the response you get from patients. Tell me about it. Is it ailment independent? Does it always happen? Would it be something that could only happen if you gave the right remedy and not if you gave the wrong remedy or a placebo? We can do things with patterns you know, it could form the basis of a hypothesis test you would buy into. You’d need to talk to a real statistion though because these things are really involved and I couldn’t swear to getting it right. I could probably give you some idea about how they work though. {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} 2007-12-06T13:30:01-08:00 http://woowooscience.com/index.php/blog/post/how_much_anecdotal_evidence/#74 Sarah: So far as I can tell Peter hasn’t ever published anything in either of the journals Homeopathy or eCAM. In addition he has never published in any of the journals searchable by web of science or pubmed on the topic of AIDS. Why no preliminary data? Or even a letter? If he had enough data to give a presentation he must have enough to publish. How will he get funding if he can’t point to peer reviewed papers? You must understand that this makes him look like a charlatan. In the absence of such publications I am forced to assume that his failure to put any data into the public domain is because it does not stand up to scrutiny. If you can point me at anything he has published I will look at it. Homeopathy will have to stand or fall on its own merits. I couldn’t pass over the issue of testing homeopathy in the third world in silence but I don’t want to get bogged down in it. I am also not concerned to defend every allopathic remedy. Cough mixture may or may not be toxic, it has no impact on the question of the efficacy of homeopathy. You haven’t answered my question about energy by giving me other names for it. Would “vim and vigour and get up and go” be another equally valid if less mystical sounding term? I will wait for Johns up coming and hopefully more enlightening post on the subject. {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} 2007-12-06T14:23:25-08:00 http://woowooscience.com/index.php/blog/post/how_much_anecdotal_evidence/#75 Derik Peter Chappell has published a book called ‘The Second Simillimum.. A Disease Specific Complement to Individual Treatment’. I’ll let John handle the energy issue, thanks John! {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} 2007-12-06T15:00:27-08:00 http://woowooscience.com/index.php/blog/post/how_much_anecdotal_evidence/#78 I fear that you really don’t get it. You are right. That’s one reason I started this blog: to try to figure out how to talk about all of this. To a rational mind, it absolutely doesn’t matter how much of a personal experience one has if objective testing demonstrates that ‘experience’ to be an illusion. Ah, the sticking point. I disagree that objective testing has ever shown any such thing. I don’t believe that is a rational interpretation of the existing science, weak as it is. To me that claim is your ‘illusion.’ I really liked what laughingmysocksoff had to say about hitting your thumb with a hammer: “You could happily admit to the possibility of being wrong about any of your beliefs about why you missed the nail and hit your thumb. But you wouldn’t be prepared to say you were wrong that you hit your thumb. That would be ludicrous.” {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} 2007-12-06T23:49:58-08:00 http://woowooscience.com/index.php/blog/post/how_much_anecdotal_evidence/#79 Here’s another example: Let’s say that I’m living in the French countryside in 1802 and I witness a meteorite fall from the sky and land in my field. I go out there and find a large stone in middle of a crater that was not there before. But the French Academy of Sciences had declared that year that stones do not fall from space, in response to some recently published evidence in England. Do I believe myself or the scientists? Could such a large stone have formed in the clouds somehow? That is less plausable than the alternative. What am I to think? In the real story, a meteor shower a year later proved French scientists wrong. I claim that sooner or later there will be enough overwhelming evidence for homeopathy. (Although “proving” that homeopathy is not just placebo only opens Pandora’s Box.) In any case, whether you believe that day will come or not, what am I to do in the meantime with this (metaphorical) meteorite that is right in front of me but that some other people tell me is a kind of delusion? (Thanks to Kenneth Salls for the example.) {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} 2007-12-06T23:52:36-08:00 http://woowooscience.com/index.php/blog/post/how_much_anecdotal_evidence/#80 You have made a “specific prediction” that you get a particular pattern shift in the response you get from patients. Tell me about it. Homeopaths try to match the symptom pattern in the patient to the symptom pattern that is known about a remedy. If the patterns don’t match, there is a minor or no effect. That description skips over a number of important points, such as chronic vs. acute, but that’s the core of it. Does a pattern shift always happen? No. But in the best cases there is general improvement, i.e. change in many of the patient’s issues. That’s what it means to be holistic. But what I’m referring to as a “pattern shift” is more patient than remedy dependent, although the two are related since we are talking about like cures like. Testing that clinically is impractical to say the least. That’s a topic for later as well. But an interesting test was discussed here. {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} 2007-12-07T00:19:56-08:00 http://woowooscience.com/index.php/blog/post/how_much_anecdotal_evidence/#81 I followed your link. I think I’m a bit confused. Is it central to homeopathy that 30C remedies will produce the symptoms in a “prover” that they experience in a “proving”? Or is it the opposite symptoms? {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} 2007-12-07T01:25:20-08:00 http://woowooscience.com/index.php/blog/post/how_much_anecdotal_evidence/#82 “You could happily admit to the possibility of being wrong about any of your beliefs about why you missed the nail and hit your thumb. But you wouldn’t be prepared to say you were wrong that you hit your thumb. That would be ludicrous.” You know when you thought you hit your thumb with a hammer? Well, we were secretly videoing you and if you watch closely you can see that you actually missed your thumb. But at that moment we jabbed a sharp spike up from under the table into your thumb and you associated the pain with the hammer even though you missed your thumb. Or… That small scar on the back of your head is where we inserted a small implant into your brain which enables us to activate the pain sensation relating to your thumb at will. Or… The audience here in the studio and at home saw me hypnotising you and implanting the suggestion that on the third tap of the nail you would feel a sharp pain in your thumb, even if the hammer missed you completely. There we are - off the top of my head, three ways to make somebody think they’ve hit their thumb with a hammer when they haven’t. {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} 2007-12-07T07:49:48-08:00 http://woowooscience.com/index.php/blog/post/how_much_anecdotal_evidence/#83 There we are - off the top of my head, three ways to make somebody think they’ve hit their thumb with a hammer when they haven’t. If we live in the “evil genus” universe where the creator is just messing with us, all bets are off anyhow. Maybe we’re just part of the lab experiment of some greater being. Or maybe there is a great conspiracy out there implanting devices in the brains of homeopaths, or sending trick patients to homeopaths just to fool us or test us. It seems far more likely that there is some force of nature at work here that science doesn’t understand yet. {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} 2007-12-07T10:11:02-08:00 http://woowooscience.com/index.php/blog/post/how_much_anecdotal_evidence/#84 Also, as a person taking homeopathic remedies, I’ve experienced immediate reactions that I would never have expected, i.e. not the placebo effect. And I experienced this before I studied homeopathy and knew what to expect. (I’ve been surprised afterwards as well!) There were no magicians as guests in my home at the time. If it was just me alone perhaps I could speculate that my wife had hypnotized me or was slipping something into my food and drink. Anyhow, we’re going around in a circle. For you, there is no level of personal experience that would convince you to doubt what some scientists who you trust have told you were the results of clinical trials. I’m moving on… {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} 2007-12-07T10:47:58-08:00 http://woowooscience.com/index.php/blog/post/how_much_anecdotal_evidence/#85 Well said John.  I think M Simpson has some paranoid delusions about homeopaths.  We do not set out to learn homeopathy for four years in order to foil our patients into believing it works when it doesn’t.  I myself have taken part in a proving and this is the biggest proof I felt I had for KNOWING that homeopathy works in ways that cannot yet be fully understood by rational science.  I wonder if some honest sceptics would be prepared to take part in a proving?  Randomly selected, healthy individuals (mentally, physically and emotionally)who genuinely want to know what homeopathy is.  Just a thought, but probably an impossible task. {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} 2007-12-07T10:59:34-08:00 http://woowooscience.com/index.php/blog/post/how_much_anecdotal_evidence/#86 I think I’m a bit confused. Is it central to homeopathy that 30C remedies will produce the symptoms in a “prover” that they experience in a “proving”? Or is it the opposite symptoms? The choice of a 30C was so that there would be absolutely no molecules of the original substance left, i.e. only the so-called memory effect would be involved in the experiment. I missed how opposite symptoms came in to the discussion, but provers experience both an initial effect and a secondary oppositive effect. A note about provings: Not everybody who takes a remedy experiences a change, and some have more of an effect, some less. Usually there is at least something in all provers, but it can be subtle. Homeopathic remedies have a quality that is like resonance. {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} 2007-12-07T11:01:15-08:00 http://woowooscience.com/index.php/blog/post/how_much_anecdotal_evidence/#87 Resonance is a very powerful and measurable phenomena, it can tear bridges down, it is the basis of the nuclear magnetic resonance technique. I’ve noticed a worrying pattern here. You repeatedly seem to say something definite about some immediate and compelling phenomena. Then I get all excited and start thinking or all kinds of things that I would predict if you where right and all kinds of experiment I could do to test them. I have designed three different sets of experiments in the last few days. But every time I ask for clarification about particular phenomena it suddenly slips from an immediate and obvious experience like a thumb hit by a hammer or a stone falling out of the sky and becomes a subtle effect, always different, not something that could be relied upon to happen all the time. How can you trust your experience of such ephemeral things? I am going to disappear for a bit. But I will be interested to read your energy medicine piece. Please try not to use any jargon from quantum theory, I studied quantum chemistry and statistical thermodynamics during my chemistry masters and I have never understood what any of you lot mean by the words you use. A useful guide for such things is writing for an intelligent 14 year old! Let us all understand what you mean. {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} 2007-12-07T12:45:21-08:00 http://woowooscience.com/index.php/blog/post/how_much_anecdotal_evidence/#88 I said that is has some qualities like resonance. I’m not saying it is resonant. Please try not to use any jargon from quantum theory, I studied quantum chemistry … I have also studied some quantum physics and I can assure you that I will be taking a much different path. I apologize if I’m giving the impression of something easily measurable. It’s not. (See my next post. Then I’ll quickly move on to my take on the “energy medicine” business.) The point that I’m trying to make is that while I don’t have such experiences every time, I do encounter on a regular basis what I consider to be incontrovertible evidence. I find the “unknown force of nature at work in homeopathic remedies” possibility much, much, much more likely than the “some hidden magician is messing with my mind” hypothesis. But it remains anecdotal. My opinion is that science will eventually get beyond what I consider to be a philosophical issue of materialism and accept that homeopathy works, but in the meantime all I have is my experience and the experience of many others like me. I’m less concerned with convincing skeptics with anecdotal evidence than figuring out how to talk about it. I understand the skepticism, I really do, and yet I’m not willing to deny what has been my direct cause and effect experience. {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} 2007-12-07T15:19:37-08:00 http://woowooscience.com/index.php/blog/post/how_much_anecdotal_evidence/#89 but in the meantime all I have is my experience and the experience of many others like me. I’m less concerned with convincing skeptics with anecdotal evidence than figuring out how to talk about it. I understand the skepticism, I really do, and yet I’m not willing to deny what has been my direct cause and effect experience. I think I see what you mean with figuring out how to talk about it. I also can understand the skepticism and yet indeed, it is impossible to deny my own experience. But finding a way to talk about it, in a way that connects with those who are skeptical, would be great. {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} 2007-12-07T22:51:22-08:00 http://woowooscience.com/index.php/blog/post/how_much_anecdotal_evidence/#90 John, this is a fascinating discussion. I’m sorry that I post here a bit late. I just want to take up your point above regarding observational studies. There are of course many people in mainstream social science who examine a small number of cases, sometimes individuals, in detail rather than ‘large n’ studies. The classic example here is anthropology. These are immensely valuable and have provided many insights into human behaviour. However, what distinguishes them, and it can be very frustrating at times, is a refusal to generalise. I know a few anthropologists who after studying societies for over a decade will refuse to make general conclusions. They merely report what they have seen in that particular context. I’m a social scientist and I use case studies. A typical article using that form might compare two cases and draw some conclusions. But again, any conclusions from them are always couched in numerous caveats, iffs buts and maybees. I’m acutely aware of the limitations of what a very small sample can tell us. (But I think its valid nonetheless as a little bit of knowledge is better than none at all). In the social sciences, I find that an interpretative/case study approach can be very useful in two areas. The first is to examine a causal relationship after a correlation has been established. Basically, we know that there is a link, lets see in detail how that link works. (For example, we know that few women become leaders of multinational corporations, so lets interview a few and ask them what they experienced). The second is to falsify a (very general and overly …(more) {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} 2007-12-09T10:10:06-08:00 http://woowooscience.com/index.php/blog/post/how_much_anecdotal_evidence/#94 Science knows that dark matter exists but cannot prove what it is.  although I’m not a mathematician by any means, I have looked up ‘dark matter’ on wikipedia, which led me down several links to quantum physics and real, imaginary and complex numbers.  I gather that imaginary numbers were so called because scientists/mathematicians at the time were unable to find a purpose for them?  Correct me if I’m wrong, I’m a complete novice to this.  To quote from Wikipedia: ‘Complex numbers were invented when it was discovered that solving some cubic equations required intermediate calculations containing the square roots of negative numbers (’imaginary numbers’), even when the final solutions were real numbers.  From the fundamental theorem of algebra the use of complex numbers as the number field for polynomial algebraic equations means that solutions always exist. Complex numbers are used in a vast number of different fields including engineering, electromagnetism and quantum physics and applied maths as well as fields like chaos theory. ‘Complex’ means the underlying number field is complex numbers eg complex analysis, complex matrix etc.’ It all sounds a bit complex to me (scuse the pun!), but from what I know these complex numbers were once labelled as ‘imaginary’, due to the ignorance of scientists/mathematicians before stumbling upon their value. The evidence that homeopathy works has not yet been stumbled upon.  Perhaps we could look at it as a complex therapy that works, and has solutions that always exist? {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} 2007-12-09T15:26:36-08:00 http://woowooscience.com/index.php/blog/post/how_much_anecdotal_evidence/#98 people do conduct interpretative and case studies, but they are generally modest about the significance of their findings. I agree. What you have to say is very valid for information inside homeopathy. For example, if I present information about a certain homeopathic remedy or a case analysis approach, I have to put a big “in my experience” in front of my conclusions. But it’s a different matter with the larger “does it work” question. {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} 2007-12-09T20:22:57-08:00 http://woowooscience.com/index.php/blog/post/how_much_anecdotal_evidence/#99 CKR’s example of complex numbers makes a good point. (Not literally for those who’ve done the math — let’s not bring complex analysis into this.) Do we have complex numbers because somebody just decided they liked the idea? No. It’s because they are useful in understanding and modelling the real world. I hear homeopathy sometimes blamed for being based on some odd theories, but in reality it’s the other way around: the “imaginary” stuff has come out of empirical discoveries and useful practices. {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} 2007-12-09T20:35:06-08:00 http://woowooscience.com/index.php/blog/post/how_much_anecdotal_evidence/#102 I’d like to quote Jerome Whitney who has written a book, ‘Vitalistic medicine from Ancient Egypt to the 21st century’.  ‘Today as we begin the journey into the two thousand year Aquarian era, alternative medicine and information technology are the most rapidly expanding growth industries in the western world. It has yet to be appreciated that these two quantum based technologies operate from the same fundamental principles and it is no coincidence that they have emerged simultaneously.. ..Today, the way we practice many contemporary alternative and complementary therapies in many instances is innovative.  However, the principles upon which they are based were already ancient more than 5000 years ago at the time of the writing of the medical papyri in Old Kingdom Egypt.  At that time medicine was an integrated whole.  What today we term as ‘conventional’ and ‘alternative’ were an integrated unity.  Today re-integration is a challenge that is being explored by many.. ..When we begin to look not only for the ‘active ingredient’ but at the whole process of energetic curative treatment, we will begin to understand why many folk remedies were effectively used for thousands of years and yet fail to pass the test for active ingredients.  The problem is not the technology of science, it is rather the limitation we place upon our research by defining ourselves as being only a bio-chemiical animal and not a holistic vital human being’. {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} 2007-12-10T00:34:31-08:00 http://woowooscience.com/index.php/blog/post/how_much_anecdotal_evidence/#109 I can see the appeal from a scientist point of view in denying experience and looking for objective methods to test something. I think that could lead to many interesting questions and challenges. 1. However, there is also a real issue of suffering, that has to be worked with and dealt with as a health practitioner. I accept that someone is suffering when I hear them speak of it and see that it is so. And that suffering might or might not be measurable. Very often it is not. I recently saw a 5yr old who has very severe separation anxiety. Some aspect of that is normal and healthy but not to the extent it is. This child and family are suffering and anyone else’s acknowledgment or measurement of that or for that matter their denial of it is somewhat meaningless. And 2. ‘Objective’ testing as your sole model for evaluating treatment modalities is too limited. How many times has the obective testing gone back and forth between the benefits and dangers of hormone use for women. I remember when it was ‘studied’ and then recommended as birth control, safe for everyone, then it was restudied and acknowledged to be causing cancer, then it was restudied and recommended for prevention of bone loss, then again restudied and acknowledged to be causing a different cancer. And meanwhile all throughout that time, some women used it and had devastating results, others used it seemingly without much problem although you’d have to look at more than one aspect of someone’s life to really be able to tell that. Using one criteria at a time, I think, is a very inaccurate method for evaluation of …(more) {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} 2007-12-14T07:01:50-08:00 http://woowooscience.com/index.php/blog/post/how_much_anecdotal_evidence/#110 [Editor’s note: ART = Antiretroviral Treatment] Well just a few comments Ethics- when i was treating AIDS in Africa there was no ART so saving lives seemed ethical. In my experience my homeopathic esonance for AIDS worked every time. I was not a researcher at the time, just a homeopathy legally practicing homeopathy in a recognised clinic(s). From experience we see it works for years, possibly longer than ART in Africa. After finding homeopathy was effective in AIDS clinically and by preliminary blood tests I published the results, not in a peer review journal as none would even consider a letter, it was too herectical and unbelievable. I did publish in an international homeopathic journal twice. I published it in a book as mentioned. Subsequently I have wised up on how to do research and its a long expensive process but until now we have not received funding from any source we tried. We do have a research team, a research protocol etc. As regards ART, now its used for 1/3 of Africans with AIDS, and recovery with ART is often short lasting and homeopathy could be used to boost immunity before ART, druring ART to boost recovery and afterwards to extend life further. This all needs research. ART and homeopathy is win-win. ART hits the virus, homeopathy boosts the immune system and these are highly complementary. Currently, after $10 billion has been spent ART reaches one third of those in need. This is partly because its very high tech. Homeopathy is low tech and …(more) {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} 2007-12-15T03:13:17-08:00 http://woowooscience.com/index.php/blog/post/how_much_anecdotal_evidence/#111 Peter Chappell you are either a dangerously ignorant or repellently evil man.  It is despicable that you would think to carry out trials of unproven techniques on terminally ill patients in the developing world let alone actually do so.  Have you really no understanding of medical ethics or are you just so arrogant in your assumptions that you don’t care?  If you have any humanity I beg you to stop carrying out your monstrous experiments. {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} 2007-12-16T05:33:03-08:00 http://woowooscience.com/index.php/blog/post/how_much_anecdotal_evidence/#112 “In my experience my homeopathic esonance for AIDS worked every time” Either you have a miracle cure which is cheap and plentiful and could be used to end the suffering of millions of people in both developed and undeveloped nations but you have not made it generally available, in which case you’re an evil, murdering bastard. (Don’t mean to be rude, but how else could such behaviour be described?) Or you’re duping desperate, poor, terminally ill people into thinking that you have a guaranteed cure for their terrible disease, in which case, well words fail me. You don’t have to justify yourself to me but I would be interested in your explanation for this: major international charities solely devoted to relieving the suffering of AIDS victims and finding a cure for the disease have not adopted your methods, even though they are apparently guaranteed effective - why do you think this is? {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} 2007-12-16T08:20:31-08:00 http://woowooscience.com/index.php/blog/post/how_much_anecdotal_evidence/#113 gimpy: I’d appreciate it if you would refrain from name calling and keep your zealous moral comments on your own blog and the debate civil here. 1) How is it wrong to do this? This is exactly what drug trials do! Peter went to Africa, was doing his thing, he observed that it helped, so he wants to test it. Isn’t that what so-called skeptics are criticising homeopathy for not doing? In fact, I could make the case that Peter would be morally deficient for not doing the study, if he has found something that he strongly believes can help many people. 2) Peter says that no one is having ART withdrawn for his work. Either they never had it or have both. He says that the combination is “win-win” above. So what’s the problem? FYI: I believe that Peter is testing using a single remedy as a treatment, which is quasi-homeopathic, meaning it’s not very individualized, but may be appropriate from the point of view of AIDS as an epidemic. In any case, a randomized, double blind clinical trial seems very appropriate here to me. {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} 2007-12-16T08:39:27-08:00 http://woowooscience.com/index.php/blog/post/how_much_anecdotal_evidence/#114 “In any case, a randomized, double blind clinical trial seems very appropriate here to me.” Oh come on, Peter says it works “every time” so you don’t even need a trial. He is asking us to believe that every single person who has received his ‘resonances’ has subsequently recovered from an incurable disease. All he has to do is demonstrate one person who definitely had AIDS before and definitely doesn’t have the disease now - and the world will flock to his door. Unless he’s lying. This stuff has no side effects and costs next to nothing, so why doesn’t he do a very public experiment of giving this ‘cure’ to someone in Britain who has AIDS and whose doctors can monitor their progress as they miraculously recover? {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} 2007-12-16T09:23:31-08:00 http://woowooscience.com/index.php/blog/post/how_much_anecdotal_evidence/#116 M. Simpson: Again, I’d appreciate it if we could dispense with the “evil murdering bastard” junk. I hear no debate in this, whether open minded or not. And in any case, I’m not debating the nature of evil here. Please take that elsewhere. 1) When Peter said “worked” I understood him to mean “helped.” I didn’t hear him say “completely cured in all cases.” In his comment above, he said “boost the immune system” and he even advocated using it together with ART. I didn’t hear miracle cure claims. I admit that I’m not sure exactly what claim Peter is making so I’m certainly not advocating for it. Nor am I giving my approval to the way Peter has voiced his claim. I would do it otherwise myself. However, I do not find it “evil” and it sounds straightforward enough to test. So let him test it. 2) You are talking out of both sides of your mouth. You criticise Peter for making claims without evidence but also make a moral judgement of him for not giving it to everybody before he’s done the test. I get the feeling that he would love to give it to everybody, but first he’s got to back up his claims with studies, right? 3) And what’s with the “if it’s good, why doesn’t everybody believe it” logic? I thought this was supposed to be science. We’d never have modern science if our ancestors had stuck with that logic. It’s back to my religion of scientism argument. {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} 2007-12-16T10:03:08-08:00 http://woowooscience.com/index.php/blog/post/how_much_anecdotal_evidence/#117 I’ve had to start removing comments. If you’ve got a point, make it. If you are going to be slanderous or threatening, please go elsewhere. {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} 2007-12-16T10:04:44-08:00 http://woowooscience.com/index.php/blog/post/how_much_anecdotal_evidence/#119 I want to clarify what I meant by “quasi-homoepathy” above. (The only useful thing from phayes’ mean comment that I removed.) By quasi-homeopathy, I mean that it’s not done following the traditional homeopathic method of individualizing the remedy to the patient. Although homeopaths would do this for an epidemic disease, it’s not clear to me how well this fits the situation with AIDS. Maybe a study will help clarify the situation? I encourage the testing of claims, as long as we’re actually testing the claims and not doing the wrong experiment designed just to prove somebody right. Anyhow, I’ve gone way off the topic of anecdotal evidence, so I’m going to move on. {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} 2007-12-16T10:12:35-08:00 http://woowooscience.com/index.php/blog/post/how_much_anecdotal_evidence/#120 What really needs to be investigated by an RCT is the role of Big Pharma in suppressing use of simple effective methods like homeopathy for helping poor sick people in Africa. {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} 2007-12-16T10:26:24-08:00 http://woowooscience.com/index.php/blog/post/how_much_anecdotal_evidence/#121 Back to woodchopper’s comments: if you were to write it up you would need to include an awful lot of qualifications. It’s important to distinguish which claims we’re talking about. I’m willing to make a strong “it is more than placebo” statement just based on my own experience, even though I can understand how others are skeptical. However, for many claims beyond that I personally add a lot of qualifications. I must say that I do find over-generalizing to be somewhat of an issue within homeopathy, regarding various methods of practice. The example of anthropology is appropriate here, I think. I follow the example of my teachers and preface most of my comments with, “In my experience...” or “I have personally seen...” {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} 2007-12-16T10:30:06-08:00 http://woowooscience.com/index.php/blog/post/how_much_anecdotal_evidence/#122 John, I will try and be civil but I cannot disguise my contempt for Peter Chappell.  Imagine, if you will, a pharmaceutical company carrying out trials of therapy in terminally ill, most likely illiterate, patients in a developing country.  Imagine there was no prior testing of this therapy in the laboratory, no ethical approval was sought and the trial was not overseen by any independent body.  Imagine the patients weren’t consulted in great detail about the implications of the trial and the alternatives.  Should these facts become public you would expect the share price to plummet, the organisers of the trial be sacked, most likely criminal charges against the individuals concerned and the public reputation of the company would be ruined for the foreseeable future.  Peter Chappell is no better than this hypothetical company.  He has risked destroying any credibility homeopathy might have had through his actions.  Your, and many others in your profession, refusal to condemn his actions illustrates exactly why so many of us have a problem with the practices of homeopathy.  You berate pharmaceutical companies, doctors and scientists for their perceived lack of ethics.  Peter Chappell and those who refuse to condemn him are guilty of a staggering disregard for ethical human behaviour.  It is truly monstrous the behaviour your delusion that homeopathy works inspires.  And this is the worst thing of all.  This hypothetical pharmaceutical company might have made a product that worked, there is no way Peter Chappell’s remedies have the slightest chance in hell, the hell where he would end up if there were such a place, of working. Homeopaths are not content to treat non-serious conditions, instead they …(more) {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} 2007-12-16T10:42:40-08:00 http://woowooscience.com/index.php/blog/post/how_much_anecdotal_evidence/#123 gimpy: I’m not asking you to disguise how you feel about Peter. I’m asking you to vent your feelings elsewhere. As I’ve said before, I don’t know Peter and his work, but I haven’t heard him doing the things you accuse him of above. And there is one crucial piece you’ve left out. If a pharamaceutical company tests a drug on people, there is a risk of side effects. With homeoapthy, there is no such risk. You are calling it placebo anyhow. There is only a potential risk if Peter is substituting his product—by the way, his product is not “homeopathy” but one specific remedy—for other conventional care. I have not heard him say that he is doing this. (And even then I would respect people’s right to make their own health care choices provided there is clear informed consent.) {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} 2007-12-16T11:30:22-08:00 http://woowooscience.com/index.php/blog/post/how_much_anecdotal_evidence/#124 Back to woodchopper’s comments (again): I find that an interpretative/case study approach can be very useful in two areas. The first is to examine a causal relationship after a correlation has been established. Basically, we know that there is a link, lets see in detail how that link works. (For example, we know that few women become leaders of multinational corporations, so lets interview a few and ask them what they experienced). Homeopathy actually works sort of like that. We do a proving and get some data, i.e. some apparent correlations with symptoms and sensations. Then we start to confirm those correlations with published cases. Keep in mind that I may not see each symptom/sensation/trait in every case, because we’re talking about patterns not absolutes, but if it’s a significant part of the pattern it should show up often. And once somebody has a good case, they can hopefully provide more detail about the thing that was useful in choosing that remedy in the first place, through their own observations and by interviewing the patient. The trick is that I can’t just go out and find such a person, I have to publish my data and wait for a case to turn up. And for it to get published. We are not so well organized in that way, although it’s improving. It’s also important to say that what we are studying is not causative. I’m not saying that certain symptoms or traits or whatever cause the disease, or even are the disease, but rather they are related to my ability to help the patient using a given remedy. And it’s also important …(more) {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} 2007-12-16T12:29:00-08:00 http://woowooscience.com/index.php/blog/post/how_much_anecdotal_evidence/#125 Apologies that this is entirely off the thread of the current conversation, but a question occured to me whilst reading the other comments that I just had to ask. If I were to break into a homeopathic practice (theoretically, of course) and mix up all of the labels on the various remedies, would the homeopath notice that this had occured? Of course in this theoretical criminal act, I would have left no trace of my actions and it would be impossible to tell that the remedies had been tampered with in any way. {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} 2007-12-17T03:33:58-08:00 http://woowooscience.com/index.php/blog/post/how_much_anecdotal_evidence/#126 Although I share some of gimpy’s feelings about Peter Chappell I’m not going to vent here. What gimpy has only alluded to is that the amount of red-tape that one has to go through to conduct a clinical trial is, quite simply, huge. This is exactly as it should be: it protects patients and ensures that the trial is not carried out in such a way that time (practitioners’ and patients’) and money is spent with no possibility of coming to a firm conclusion (e.g., by using too few patients, or having no control or blinding). What is so offensive about what Peter Chappell has done is that he appears to have circumvented these processes, which are there for very good reasons. The justification put forward, that homoeopathy has no side effects (and therefore does not endanger patients), simply doesn’t make sense to most people. Either homoepathy has effects (both good and bad) or it doesn’t. If you are conducting a trial to establish which is the case, then you need to abide by the ethical code for such trials. With reference to anecdotal evidence, I’d have to agree that the answer to the question is that no amount of anecdotal evidence could (nor should) convince you of something’s efficacy, although, as woodchopper points out, case studies do have their place. The problem, as Hume pointed out, is that we don’t directly observe causation, instead we observe event A and then observe event B and infer that A caused B. Sadly this inferrence is the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy and humans are notoriously bad at making it. We are amazingly good at recognising patterns in the world …(more) {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} 2007-12-17T06:56:16-08:00 http://woowooscience.com/index.php/blog/post/how_much_anecdotal_evidence/#128 If I were to break into a homeopathic practice (theoretically, of course) and mix up all of the labels on the various remedies, would the homeopath notice that this had occured? A test has been proposed along these lines. See this comment and the ones that follow. Since your comment is on that thread, I have posted another comment there. {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} 2007-12-17T06:59:29-08:00 http://woowooscience.com/index.php/blog/post/how_much_anecdotal_evidence/#130 we don’t directly observe causation, instead we observe event A and then observe event B and infer that A caused B. That’s fine to say, but in the real world it depends. To go back to LaughingMySocksOff’s metaphor, there is a difference between “I hit my thumb with a hammer” and “I hit my thumb with a hammer because I had too much beer last night.” Ergo my question: how strong does that evidence have to be before it crosses the line—for the person with the thumb. I keep hearing that there is no line, to which I respond that your argument has become absurdly abstract. Have you ever given a placebo to someone? Better yet, have you inadvertantly given a placebo to someone without realising it, recorded all your observations and later realised it was a placebo? Yes, to the first question. (I’ve been given it too.) And sort of yes to the second. I give people ineffective remedies all the time, which is essentially placebo. When they return, I always hope to have found a good remedy, but it’s not always so. Sometime they even say, “Yes, I’m better,” but on closer observation I can see that the remedy didn’t do much. But then a large percentage of the time, a second or third remedy does lead to significant change. {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} 2007-12-17T08:00:22-08:00 http://woowooscience.com/index.php/blog/post/how_much_anecdotal_evidence/#131 For some reason, supporters of homoeopathy either believe they can directly observe causation (cool! what colour is it?) or that they are immune to the biases and innate drive to extract causal patterns that colour our perception. Homeopaths do not necessarily need to know the causation or aetiology of an illness, but it definitely helps in selecting an appropriate remedy. It is the symptoms shown by patients and their direct experience of them that matters most when prescribing.  The causation or aetiology is not made up by homeopaths, it is as explained by the patient who informs her homeopath of her experience. The thousands of provings already done all over the world would show homeopaths are not ‘extracting causal patterns that colour their perception’, especially when one remedy has been proven in two countries, with the same overall results.  How could two groups of people doing a proving on the same remedy extract the same causal patterns that colour their perception?  Chances are highly unlikely. {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} 2007-12-17T10:03:08-08:00 http://woowooscience.com/index.php/blog/post/how_much_anecdotal_evidence/#133 Imagine, if you will, a pharmaceutical company carrying out trials of therapy in terminally ill, most likely illiterate, patients in a developing country.  Imagine there was no prior testing of this therapy in the laboratory, no ethical approval was sought and the trial was not overseen by any independent body.  Imagine the patients weren’t consulted in great detail about the implications of the trial and the alternatives.  Yes, imagine if a pharmaceutical company had enough power to poison and kill thousands if not millions of people diagnosed with HIV with a drug such as AZT. Since cancer is made of persistently growing cells, AZT was originally designed as a chemotherapy treatment to prevent formation of new cells.  In 1964, experiments with AZT on mice with cancer showed that these mice died of extreme toxicity.  As a result, AZT was shelved and no patent was ever filed.  Richard Beltz, the creator of AZT, called for the abandonment of this drug because of it’s extreme toxicity making it unsuitable for any chemotherapy - even short term, stating it was also carcinogenic at any dose.  Barrister Antony Brink remarked: ‘In truth, AZT makes you feel like you’re dying.  That’s because on AZT you are.  How can a deadly toxin conceivably make you feel better as it finishes you, by stopping your cells from dividing, by ending this vital process that distinguishes living things from dead things?  Not for nothing does AZT come with a skull and cross-bones label when packaged for laboratory use’.  The toxicity of AZT can bring on symptoms of AIDS: diarrhoea, malabsorption of food leading to rapid weight loss, and immune …(more) {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} 2007-12-17T23:49:44-08:00 http://woowooscience.com/index.php/blog/post/how_much_anecdotal_evidence/#134 Why is there such a fuss over Peter Chappell’s remedies, which have not caused such devastating effects as AZT, in fact, quite the reverse?  Is it because there is actually some use for them where pharmaceutical companies do not have a fat share in the profit?  Should these facts become public you would expect the share price to plummet, the organisers of the trial be sacked, most likely criminal charges against the individuals concerned and the public reputation of the company would be ruined for the foreseeable future.  This never happened with AZT.  Ask yourself WHY?? Pharmaceutical companies are more financially powerful than the government, who are more powerful than the media, who are more powerful than mere homeopaths. Peter Chappell and those who refuse to condemn him are guilty of a staggering disregard for ethical human behaviour. I’d say the opposite, some of us are totally aware of ethical human behaviour, and we certainly don’t learn these facts from the mainstream Media. there is no way Peter Chappell’s remedies have the slightest chance in hell, the hell where he would end up if there were such a place, of working. How do you know this?  Aren’t his results plain enough?  Perhaps if he were provided with more funding you’d have your answers. Leave Peter alone, he’s a good man with a good heart, he even remortgaged his house to start his work in Africa. The good thing about homeopathic remedies is that they are harmless when taken, any ‘side effects’ are purely eliminative.  They cannot be dangerous because of this.  And Peter was helping people who …(more) {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} 2007-12-17T23:52:55-08:00 http://woowooscience.com/index.php/blog/post/how_much_anecdotal_evidence/#135 there is a difference between “I hit my thumb with a hammer” and “I hit my thumb with a hammer because I had too much beer last night.” I’m afraid I don’t understand what you’re getting at with the hammer metaphor, could you clarify please. Ergo my question: how strong does that evidence have to be before it crosses the line—for the person with the thumb. I keep hearing that there is no line, to which I respond that your argument has become absurdly abstract. The problem that many (most?) people have with anecdotal evidence is that it doesn’t go from being weak evidence to being strong evidence just because there is a lot of it. So the question of “how strong does that [anecdotal] evidence have to be?” is meaningless, because anecdotal evidence is always weak. The fact that many people report the same anecdote could well be to do with the fact that certain susceptibilities of the human brain (the over-eagerness to infer causation where there is none there) are common to everyone. Scientists don’t claim to be immune to these biases, they just choose to use a method of observation that removes them from the situation. When evidence from this method contradicts anecdotal evidence you have to go with the evidence derived from the system that explicitly tries to remove or reduce the possibilities for misinterpretation. To choose to go with the anecdotal evidence is to wilfully embrace all the foibles and errors of the human brain. I give people ineffective remedies all the time, which is essentially placebo. When they return, I always hope to have found a good remedy, but it’s …(more) {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} 2007-12-18T01:07:31-08:00 http://woowooscience.com/index.php/blog/post/how_much_anecdotal_evidence/#136 Homeopaths do not necessarily need to know the causation or aetiology of an illness, but it definitely helps in selecting an appropriate remedy. I was under the impression that homoeopathy was a holistic therapy that didn’t just try to mask the symptoms of a disease. So it strikes me that it would be absolutely vital for a homoeopath to know what’s causing the symptoms, if they’re trying to do what they claim to do. It is the symptoms shown by patients and their direct experience of them that matters most when prescribing.  The causation or aetiology is not made up by homeopaths, it is as explained by the patient who informs her homeopath of her experience. I wasn’t actually talking about the cause of disease. I was referring to our tendency to erroneously attribute causality to event A simply because it preceded event B. This is a rather obscure philosophical point and probably not worth thrashing out here. The more practical problem is that we see patterns when there are actually none. If you show someone a mathematically random pattern of zeroes and ones they often say that it consists of “streaks” of each; a gambler would put it in terms of having lucky streaks and dead spells i.e., they ascribe some cause (in this case “luck") to the patterns that they perceive, even though there isn’t actually a meaningful pattern (because it’s random). This tendency also applies to causality so, for example, the fact that your patient believes that eating ice-cream gives her headaches doesn’t mean that ice-cream actually causes her headaches. Similarly your perception of a pattern of homoeopathis prescriptions followed by improvements …(more) {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} 2007-12-18T01:45:16-08:00 http://woowooscience.com/index.php/blog/post/how_much_anecdotal_evidence/#140 “His results are amazing!  Which is probably why there’s such a stink now with homeopathy.” What evidence do we have for these ‘amazing’ results, apart from the word of Peter Chappell? And that same old question I keep asking homeopaths: if these results are so amazing, why aren’t the charities whose primary aim is to achieve results in this area falling over each other to exploit this revolutionary technique which is the answer to all their prayers? {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} 2007-12-18T09:56:39-08:00 http://woowooscience.com/index.php/blog/post/how_much_anecdotal_evidence/#141 Homeopathy actually works sort of like that. We do a proving and get some data, i.e. some apparent correlations with symptoms and sensations. Then we start to confirm those correlations with published cases. When reading this it struck me that much of the debate on homeopathy has gone off on the wrong tangent. The healing process might be too subtle to be experimented upon. But as far as I’m aware, provings do produce identifiable consequences. If predictable effects of provings could be reliably demonstrated then I suspect a lot of the incredulity from people like me would go away. (we would at least have to conclude that *something* was happening). Such a demonstration could also be accomplished very cheaply. {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} 2007-12-18T10:41:51-08:00 http://woowooscience.com/index.php/blog/post/how_much_anecdotal_evidence/#142 Plenty enough evidence from the word of his patients.  You still don’t understand any of this do you. Charities aren’t too powerful. {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} 2007-12-18T10:42:03-08:00 http://woowooscience.com/index.php/blog/post/how_much_anecdotal_evidence/#143 “Plenty enough evidence from the word of his patients.” Could you point is to some of this? These amazing results must be discussed by the patients somewhere. Please tell us where we can read any testimony about these amazing results that has not come to us from Peter Chappell himself. “You still don’t understand any of this do you. Charities aren’t too powerful.” You’re right, I don’t understand. You’re saying that an organisation - big, multinational, million-dollar turnover, bound to abide by strict legal codes in each territory - with the SOLE AIM of finding a cure for disease X is deliberately ignoring a well-documented (and cheap and easy to manufacture) cure for disease X. You still haven’t explained why. Are the boards of these charities being blackmailed or threatened? Do the big pharma executives have compromising photos? What about the senior management - how can they live with themselves knowing that, despite their organisation begging people for money to help cure disease X, their bosses prefer to piss that money down the drain and let millions of people with disease X suffer? Why is there no protest - nothing, nada, zip - from anyone anywhere that the money they have donated to help cure disease X is being deliberately spent on (what must be) fake pharmaceutical research when a cheap cure is there just waiting to be used? Why is nobody pointing out to the world that people who pretend to devote their lives to relieving the suffering of people with disease X are actually hypocritical liars whose work is in truth based around making sure that a cure for …(more) {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} 2007-12-18T11:50:07-08:00 http://woowooscience.com/index.php/blog/post/how_much_anecdotal_evidence/#144 M Simpson There have been protests about this kind of thing.. have a look at the Campaign for Truth in Medicine (campaignfortruth.com); Credence Publications are also part of this and have published many books such as ‘Cancer, why we’re still dying to know the Truth’, and another one about HIV.  We also have publications such as ‘what doctors don’t tell you’ in the UK to inform us of what is really going on with conventional medicine. {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} 2007-12-18T22:47:10-08:00 http://woowooscience.com/index.php/blog/post/how_much_anecdotal_evidence/#150 peter chappell said: I did publish in an international homeopathic journal twice. I’m afraid I can’t get your book through my institutional library and I can’t afford to buy it. I did do what I might call a due diligence search for anything written by you in the only international homeopathy journals I know. If you read this please would you post the references for your articals, I’d really like to have a proper look at what you did. {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} 2007-12-19T09:03:31-08:00 http://woowooscience.com/index.php/blog/post/how_much_anecdotal_evidence/#163 I’m afraid I don’t understand what you’re getting at with the hammer metaphor, could you clarify please. I got the example from a comment on LaughingMySocksOff’s blog. Another example would be if I saw some strange lights over my house and decided it was an alien spacecraft. Now maybe it wasn’t aliens, but I’m not doubting that I saw lights, especially if it wasn’t just me who saw them. Of course, you who weren’t there might doubt all of it. {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} 2007-12-20T20:18:43-08:00 http://woowooscience.com/index.php/blog/post/how_much_anecdotal_evidence/#164 I was referring to our tendency to erroneously attribute causality to event A simply because it preceded event B. Causality can a problem in homeopathy, whether correctly attributed or not. When we get too focused on a “cause"—which can be easy to do; like you said, it’s innate)—we can miss other important things. And also once a cause has been decided upon, the human brain seems to easily stop asking questions about that. One of the beauties of homeopathy is that we don’t need to understand causality. Synchronicity is more important. Homeopathy relies on the “what” more than the “why.” It’s the pattern of things, not which came first, or whether there is some other unknown cause behind all of it. If a patient says he has a ghost in his house, I don’t need to know whether there is really a ghost or not. I can use that as a “symptom.” {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} 2007-12-20T20:41:54-08:00