How Much Anecdotal Evidence?

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.

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 ambitious) hypothesis (for example someone claims that all women lack ambition and so don’t succeed, we interview a few and find that they are very ambitious.

What we can’t do with that approach is to provide strong supporting evidence for novel or even revolutionary hypotheses.

So to return to homeopathy, I think your case of a lady with arthritis sounds very interesting. It could tell us an awful lot about, for example, the homeopath-patient relationship.

But should you use other parts of academia as a model, if you were to write it up you would need to include an awful lot of qualifications.

To conclude, in my experience, people do conduct interpretative and case studies, but they are generally modest about the significance of their findings. (And those that aren’t are dishonest).

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?

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.

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.

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’.

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 human or animal health.
So, perhaps there are complexities to the human experience, that are observable and usable in treatment with a modality such as homeopathy. Maybe that makes it difficult to study and to prove in a lab, but perhaps that is also its value in relieving suffering. The gift of being able to take the subtlety of the human condition into account is not a small one.

[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 easier. Short courses of treatment only are needed. Drug resistence cannot occur. If HIV mutates in Africa due to poor compliance, it could return to the west with added virility.  Homeopathy will not do that.
My point is this is not a black and white situation.

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.

“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?

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.

“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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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...”

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 fantasise that they can cure serious, fatal diseases and they carry out incredibly unethical trials in disadvantaged terminally ill patients.  This behaviour is monstrous.
Have a look at the HIV vaccine trials network to get an idea of the huge resources being spent on research, the difficult ethical issues and the likelihood of an imminent cure.  Do you honestly think Peter Chappell is right and his behaviour justified?

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.)

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 to admit the anecdotal nature of the data. I always add qualifications, whether I’m speaking or listening. Again, I’m not talking here about the “placebo or not” stuff, but the details. 

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.

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 and inferring patterns of causation, and it has helped us to survive for many thousands of years. Sadly these systems are so overactive in humans that we observe patterns of causation when there are actually none (e.g., sacrificing someone doesn’t really make the sun come back after a solar eclipse). It is precisely because we know about the brain’s over-eagerness to recognise patterns that we demand that tests minimise the possibility of extraneous factors influencing the outcome, including personal bias and wishful thinking. 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.

For example:

I’m willing to make a strong “it is more than placebo” statement just based on my own experience

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? If you haven’t then you have no baseline against which to compare the effects of giving homoeopathic remedies, and so no basis for making such a claim. You would have to give a lot of placebo’s (preferably without knowing) before you could legitimately make such a claim.

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.

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.

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.

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 deficiency disorders.  This led some doctors to increase the dose in the patient, believing the medication ‘isn’t working’ and more is required.  This ACCELERATES the disease process and the patient relapses further, until death. 

Most cancer chemotherapy agents are only administered for a strictly limited time period in view of their toxicity, however AZT was prescribed regularly until the end.  Amazing how that didn’t hit the headlines in papers such as ‘The Guardian’!

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 had no other means of treatment available to them, and with their or their family’s consent.  His results are amazing!  Which is probably why there’s such a stink now with homeopathy.

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 not always so.

I’m not talking about ineffective remedies (it’s a bit disengenuous to restrospectively define them as placebo) I’m talking about remedies that both homoeopaths and conventional physicians would consider inert (e.g., non-succussed, solvent-only remedies). If you haven’t given such a remedy to a patient on every one of their visits to you, then I believe that you have no basis on which to make a better-than-placebo claim about homoeopathic remedies.

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 in symptoms doesn’t mean that the latter was caused by the former.

homeopaths are not ‘extracting causal patterns that colour their perception’,

I hope that I’ve clarified above that it is not the causal patterns that colour perception it is the ”innate drive to extract causal patterns” that colours perception. I probably could have made that more clear in my original post.

How could two groups of people doing a proving on the same remedy extract the same causal patterns that colour their perception?

In light of the previous clarification, this question doesn’t make sense. If you’d like to re-frame it I’ll have a go at answering it.

“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?

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.

Plenty enough evidence from the word of his patients. 

You still don’t understand any of this do you. Charities aren’t too powerful.

“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 disease X - one that people already know about, which inarguably works and which is affordable by almost anyone - is discredited and kept from the people who need it most. You seem to be saying that all major medical charities are run by people whose only aim in life is to prolong suffering. What, all of them?

You’re just ignoring the question. I’m not expecting you to know but at least hypothesise why these things aren’t happening. There must be some reason because as it stands this makes no sense at all.