Short answer no... Its basically just extremely diluted water, would one want to replace hospitals with homeopathy clinics? I will gurentee that there will be alot more deaths at hand.
Peter Fisher is very inspirational (and a bit like Boris in this!) Great video... Homeopathy cured me of recurrent tonsillitis and severe acne when conventional medicine failed.
@TKRoGan1 Awesome! Don't mind these angry, closed-minded skeptics who have no interest in the evidence. They must be having a bad case of indigestion. :)
@TKRoGan1 Would you trust homepathy with treatment of cancer, Aids, Heart disease, third degree burns, physical trauma then, yeah lets sod medicine :S I suffer from acne and I assure you that I improved my condition with water and good hygiene habits...
@ecos889 dont be absurd. Only an idiot would believe homeopathy could treat cancer/aids.no sensible medical homeopath would ever claim/attempt such a thing. Burns and trauma, yes.it can help, e.g. arnica for bruising. there are many papers you can read but might I suggest the following:
Bonnet, van Haselen(2001). The efficacy and safety of a homeopathic gel in the treatment of acute low back pain: a multi-centre, randomized, double-blind comparative clinical trial. BHJ, 90:21–28.
@TKRoGan1 I checked that out and it's part of a bunch of pro-homeopathy studies that weren't properly randomized or blinded, or were surveys not studies at all. You are suffering with confirmation bias so you're latching on to anything that even looks a bit sciencish.
@TKRoGan1 And it's funny how the only things serious homeopaths treat are things that can get better on their own. No, We shouldn't be absurd, no 'serious medical' homeopath would ever claim/attempt to cure something that would kill you without a real treatment.
Personally, I think all pushers of nostrums and quackery (such as, for example, homeopathy) should be flogged through the streets, put in the stocks for a couple of days, then forced to work in a hospital as the lowest rung service monkey for the rest of their natural lives, without recourse to modern medicine. Let them treat themselves with their water and whatever. I wish them all luck with that.
The funniest thing is that there was no need for Ben to be there. Not even two homeopaths, it seems, can agree upon what homeopathy really is. One says it's all about the pills. Another says it's a spiritual thing. A third says it's the whole situation and the rituals that together form a holistic method. Give me a break! This is the tradmark of faith based medicine. By time people will develop their own peculaiar methods, and it does not matter since it's bullshit to begin with.
@Bot23 wow... you must be a nuclear physicist. thats an incredible observation. Water is that simple... I mean yeh, what is hydrogen though? and oxygen? and how do these incredibly complex structures interrelate to each other? and what fills the intermolecular space? what is a hydrogen bond and how do they influence other surrounding energies?
This is depressing! ... I don't mind them drinking water with urine molecules in it, but if we can't even convince people how silly this obvious thing is, then there is no hope of teaching them about more obvious, complex issues...
I actually feel sorry for Peter Fisher. What a dreadfully depressing existence he has attempting to justify something which has no robust evidence whatsoever.
I don't even understand why this issue was given an hour an a half of peoples' time. It has been proven time and again that homoeopathy has no greater affect than a similarly administered placebo and continuing to listen to people who dither on about it is a waste of time and resources and the people who get dragged into it - like Ben Goldacre - at the kind of people who's time could be better spent not dealing with these morons
@FunkyMonkeyJunkie302 This is what BIG PHARMA says, if you want to know what are the scientific measures and hypothesis related to the Conventional Medicine. Just see the W.Lippon Cott Pharmacology. You will see no certainty in the evidence it says it is believed to do this and that. So do not judge until you do not obtain enough information on any subject.
I'm amazed at how weak the argument being put forward for homeopathy in the opening 10 minutes actually is. Not a single reference to evidence. He just says it's very popular and even guys from Harvard acknowledge that it's popular, so 'clearly' it works. - How dumb are we meant to be?
Well, it's not surprising that at an event concerning homeopathy the majority of people participating believe in it. Someone who doesn't would likely not bother going.
I facepalmed so hard at the outrage over support of the placebo effect in infants and pets. It's not about the infant or pet understanding that they are receiving medicine. It's about the parent or pet owner applying a ritual that is understood on some basic level to comfort them. If you put a placebo in a hamsters food before presenting the food to them I highly doubt and I think the science would back me up that the placebo would do nothing.
This is a positive situation. This ensures low IQ people will die trying to use homeopathy for easily curable diseases, bringing a slight bit of evolutionary process back to the genetic pool.
BTW, there are more idiots in Britain than the US it seems, as none of the magic based treatments (including other mysticism branches like acupuncture and magic crystals) are funded by the US government presently.
Perhaps the population being treated homeopathically for cholera had higher survivor rates, not due to the treatment, but due to bad regular treatment of blood-letting - - they just may have avoided a type of treatment that would have, in fact, made them weaker.
Here in Germany, we have many regular doctors that also use homeopathy, while themselves not believing in it. And when you ask them they tell you that they think its the placebo effect.
the trick is, health insurance pays for homeopathy, and for each use of homeopathy they get paid for 30-45 minutes of talking with the patient. Normally they only have 5 minutes per patient. Some doctors want to talk longer to some patients, and sometimes that really is useful. so they game the system this way.
every glass of water, if it comes from sea water, rain, flowing in any river, or is shallow groundwater, has water molecules in it that once were urine of Julius Caesar or Mahatma Ghandi, and this even is true if you only look at what these people peed at a specific day. and if you get really old water, its still somewhat contaimnated with dinosaur poop.
really, HOW does the water know that it should remember the homeopathic stuff, and not dinosaur crap?
It does seem really interesting that Ben Goldacre is talking about bad science and not trying to defend ALL medicine and ALL research, without exception. There is a ton of bad science in both medicine and clinical research. Ben frequently goes after this too. So to suggest that there is a double-standard,at least as far as Goldacre is concerned, is ridiculous. This is just rhetoric and pseudoscience. Everything Fisher says is unsubstantiated.
I love how people assume that popular implies effective. These people then seem to infer from this fallacy, that it is only a matter of time until it is proven to work.
Homeopathy, which has never been shown to work with any statistical significance let alone stat-sig with effect size measures, is effectively nothing but placebo, if even that. All Fisher does is employ rhetoric.
i know about Homeopath and how effecive it is - I have a relative with multiplle medical problems who started taking homeopathy treatment over thirty years ago She received the treatment on the NHS by quilified doctors who were also homepaths - Resutl she still has the multiple problems. All these years it has been obvious she has been conned by charlatans
08:10 "Well of course it works!! Of course it works!! It's 210 years old and it's all over the place!!"
This is the proof? That's like saying that so many people believe Jesus' mother was a virgin that she must have been. And of course Thor exists! He's over 1900 years old!!
Having said that, I was more impressed with Fisher's later arguments. It's true that 'debunkers' in the scientific community are hypocritical about quality. I'm a scientist and have seen it. Withholding data is always appalling - as is makng written claims about the literature before exploring it (Dawkins). Good that the quality of logic improved.
"of course it works" and his reasoning for this is because it's popular? Ever heard of Argumentum Ad Populum; the logical fallacy known as the argument from popularity. I highschool freshman on the debate team would have clowned this fool within minutes of his idiotic rhetoric!
"Well of course it works... Of course it works! It's two hundred and ten years old and it's all over the place!" I had to pause the video while I swooned at the sheer complacency of this. An argument from the duration and proliferation of something? Really? Really though? Actually really? Really actually? For sure?
Water doesn't contain structures! It is a liquid. Are they saying that if you mix a remedy then the thing becomes useless? I cannot understand these people.
Yeah, what the hell was all that about? "Structures?" Yeah, like a very well understood H2O molecule. And if it's distilled water, that's about it. There are no "structures," hiding in water, much less mysterious, not-yet-understood, super chemical memory having structures that somehow spiritually treat the body because they are "beyond matter" as that other idiot said. It's simply not true and some quack in a suit saying it with a straight face doesn't make it true.
Small trials tend to prove homeopathy works, so they are more reliable than large trials? If that's true they should do trials on individuals only. What kind of logic is that!?
@grundgemonster Not quite USA is a bigger country, although seriously you will encounter such morans anywhere, with exception to the antartic and antartica and other planets and empty space where no humans exist...
@Lankyboy2003 Everyone is just speaking again Homeopathic Medical System, why do not you try to see the actual reasons behind it. And your Pharmacies are not doing research in the issue? Afraid...they will lose the money that are gaining from their medicine. I think you should consider this.
@drabnasir Pharmaceutical companies would love homeopathy to be true. They would make an order of magnitude more money that way. What's more profitable? Spending decades researching a compound hoping it will work to cure or treat something and that it isn't to dangerous to use, or some water and whatever the fuck at extremely low concentrations and therefore cheap to make.
The scariest thing to me is that Peter Fisher is obviously an intelligent person. Seems like a waste of a good mind to me. He knows homeopathy inside and out, spending hundreds of hours researching the 'subject' when he could have been doing something truly meaningful with his life. Shame.
hang on a sec ... "you can do a proving on a substance that has been boiled and one that hasn't been boiled and you can see the difference". Sound slike a slam-dunk fo rthe JREF prize then. Wonder why he hasn't claimed the cool $1M - that would go a long way in Iran
That charlatan was talking about some "coherent water structures" -- this is a huge load of bulls**t. There are no such "structures" or "water memory". Why no one replied to his pseudoscientific blah-blah-blah?
peter fisher sounded good (almost convincing) up until his ridiculous analogies between homeopathy and computer disks - what a load of bullshit. These blokes would be more credible if they just flat admitted there is NO plausible biochemical mechanism and it is more to do with patient care, attention etc i.e. mental healing
Does homeopathy work? Yes, it does. It works as well as a placebo, because that's exactly what it is.
Is modern medicine better? Heck yes. Also, Mr. Fisher is a matriarch copulating offspring of a nobleman and a commoner and a fraudulent pill peddler, and his simian countenance betrays an unusually rich species diversity in his heritage.
Iranian Homoeopath - ..."The Homoeopathic remedy is only Homoeopathic when it is used and shown to be effective, otherwise you're only talking about a potentized substance." (1:05:52)
Those statistics showing the widespread use of homeopathy is not an argument for its efficacy, but is an argument for why there should be a harsher clampdown on it. Nothing this fraudulent should be so widespread.
So is this view expressed by the Iranian homeopath held by all homeopaths? That if a remedy doesn't work, it wasn't homeopathic to begin with? That's a pretty easy and rather devious way of getting out of evidence-based testing. "Didn't work? Doesn't count, it wasn't homeopathic." "Oh, it worked this time? ONLY THIS TRIAL COUNTS!"
Followed by attempting to undermine Richard Dawkins - how exactly is his assertion that clinical trials need to be undertaken "bad science"? Oh, right - it isn't.
And then lots of waffling about nothing... just as well Ben Goldenacre didn't go in to destroy this cretin or this could have been nastier than if he'd dropped the soap in the shower of a rape jail.
He even said at the beginning that there were studies, but he would give them out later "if anyone wanted to see them"! Surely, he should have spent his talk time going through the studies! Ridiculous.
What the Hell was Dr Fisher blithering on about? He spoke for about 15 minutes and said nothing - surely, this would have been the perfect opportunity to talk about studies and present results, finally proving for all the world that homeopathy works. Instead, he just said "it works, it's all over the world, here are some stories about what some people have said."
@pianoplayeruk Right. All these healing processes have been around for centuries yes? well the ones that were tried and tested and proven right are what we now call ''medicine''. Anything else that was tested and discredited is homeopathy, but people in general are fairly scientifically illiterate and as a nation we have a pretty poor screening process for things like this so it is still legal even though it technically breaks the trade descriptions act because it does fuck all.
Your continued argumentative manner merely serves to araldite my view of you as being someone who knows absolutely nothing whatsoever about water and its properties, and now too I see we can add to that list the clear fact that you know nothing about pharmacology either.
Homoeopathy is about healing people.
Pharmacology is about selling ineffective drugs.
Please don't bother to reply as your tedious persistence has already become tiresome.
@pianoplayeruk talking like an intellectual doesn't make you one. anyway, how are they in any way ineffective. tell you what lets compare the 'fundamentalist medicine' and homeopathic treatment of malaria. A sane doctor would prescribe malarone or doxycycline which acts as a preventative measure against infection, you know vaccines right? One particular homeopath prescribed a pill that uses your energy to make a malaria shaped hole so the malarial mosquito cant infect you. fact. Evidence please?
@pianoplayeruk The industry has a vested interest in discrediting homeopathy because it offers dangerous unproven treatments that for some reason don't need a patent to be sold for things like AIDS and cholera. As a UK resident pianoplayer 'UK' my NHS prescripted drugs are free cure me and are therefore effectIVE. homeopathy which you have to buy on the other hand is given alongside and diluted so much that the active ingredient is barely there, so you're healed by the drug not homeopathy
I'm merely quoting fishers opening statement, in essence you are telling the 'homeopathy expert' to learn about his topic before talking crap about it.
"Fact:
The principles of healing like with like are as old as water itself."
that's an interesting definition of the word fact seeing as the first molecules of water formed about 13-14 billion years ago.
How funny is Dr with the baby and his unashamed vanity at trying to get himself and his baby on camera by standing behind the speakers in the audience. Ha
I like Ben when he's not being smarmy, I just think he's a little naive and idealistic on the mainstream side, partly because he hasn't worked as a bench scientist and also because he hasn't worked with drug companies. I think this alternative health stuff ought to be let alone as long as it is kept under control, regulated. If the NHS ditches it it will flourish unregulated. That's the strongest argument against Ben's position, in my mind.
What do you mean THE CONTROVERSIAL part is the dilution? I'm sorry but I'm pretty sure that treating a disease by giving a person a toxin that causes the very symptoms you want to alleviate is very fucking controversial. You don't give someone arsenic to alleviate arsenic poisoning! The whole thing is a bunch of crap.
From the very words of a prominent figure in the international homeopathic medical community, Peter Fisher:
"The controversial part, of course, is the use of very high dilutions. Homeopathy uses dilutions. Very high dilutions, including so-called ultra-molecular, these are dilutions diluted beyond the point at which we know and that we are not disputing that no molecule or molecular trace of the original starting substance is present."
Dear NHS: Stop giving money to pseudoscientists, stop building hospitals where pseudoscience is practiced, step up and fulfill your obligation to the public: tell them why homeopathy is supernatural bunk.
@littleduncan What he's saying is that simply looking at what things at made up off (in this case water) is not sufficient. Just as in a USB/CD drive, they can be made up of several elements. The reorganisation (however small) of these elements can completely modify it's function. In CDs, without adding/removing any elements, but simply reorganising its elements, you're effectively making a huge change by either adding or removing data on it. Interestingly, water can be treated similarly :)
@abhishgva1 USB sticks/solid state devices have been developed over decades using a well understood theory. The atoms in these devices have been specifically arranged in such a way to make them work in the desired fashion. Water cannot be treated similarly as it is a fluid and has no periodic/lattice electronic structure which is crucial to the way in which these devices work. The atoms in fluids constantly 'reorganise' themselves, that is why you can't compare them to a USB stick!
@littleduncan Indeed water does not have a rigid lattice structure as in SSDrives materials. But water is fundamentally H2O, there's no denying that. Within a glass of water, structures made up of several H2O molecules can appear. Homeopathy assumes that even without any physical foreign atom present, its influcence/imprint can be left behind in the form of such structures :)
Search YouTube: How Homeopathy Works Dr Rustum Roy-092207 AUDIO ONLY .mp4 and also check out the ppt file on the link
@abhishgva1 The rigid lattice structure in solid state devices is in no way comparable to the oligomers that could be potentially formed in water. Yes, water has some complex properties that are not understood. Does that prove homeopathy works? No.
@littleduncan I agree his comparison is simplified. Word limit stoped me from saying it earlier. Keep in mind that his comparison is for the layman. I have a feeling you are yourself scientifically/engineer minded. Hence we both recognise it. The links explain the water structure theory, and not homeopathy. I will get back to you at a later time (after exams!) and let you know of other sources, until then do check(on YT) Mass Homeopathy Overdose by hpathy and do check the sources he speaks of :)
I just got to the bit about the water and the USB drive - I can't believe that he even attempted this - Yeah go on Peter, it's all just Silicon with 'trace impurities' of Boron and Phosphorous (incidentally more likely to be Galium Arsenide rather than Silicon) but don't forget to mention the very VERY critical effect of electron and hole concentration that make the bloody thing work! Water is not a semi-conductor - Analogy Fail...
Ah grand - the old natural things are healthy argument. So that would mean that atropine, morphine, strychnine, tetrodotoxin, botulism, the Black Death, anthrax, black mambas, hurricanes and cometary impacts are all on the list of things that are ok.
To listen to Fisher here, he's actually quite a lot like some of the creationists out there. He's holding to on to easily debunked bullshit, distorting the evidence for an audience who he knows probably aren't familiar with it themselves, accusing the scientific establishment of conspiring against him, equating man-made objects with nature... need I go on?
Then he asks 'does homeopathy deserve proper scientific investigation?' Well, of course it does. And it has been. It still doesn't work.
Wow, having seen what the homeopaths in the audience had to say - it really just reinforces what I hoped wasn't true - all homeopaths really are just pathological liars, aren't they?
Ugh. I told myself I would watch the whole thing. but 15 minutes staright of Fisher talking makes me want to gut my eyes and ears out. The stupidity. It burns!
"Moving on to a slightly more serious question...." The fact that this is a serious question with regards to allocation of taxpayers money is testament to the failure of science education in the UK.
I'm surprised Dr. Goldacre did not just explain the theory and methodology of homeopathy in it's own terms. That would be enough to convince any thinking person that homeopathy is complete nonsense and non-science.
I'm amazed by the floppy disk to water analogy. Sure, floppy disks are made of simple chemicals, but they chemicals are arranged in solid patterns, wherein the information is stored. Water, on the other hand, is fluid and doesn't hold information in a pattern. The important difference is clear and undoes the analogy.
@wowsdrawkcab As far as I know glass is inert - that is why it is used in experiments - I think ceramic must be the same. However plastic definitely is not, some release oestrogen especially when heated. You ask a good question - the more I have read about homeopathy the less trust I have in it! I think a success rate equivalent to a placebo means you have very low expectations!
Dr. Fisher: You seem to be under the impression that persistence and efficacy are synonymous. I counter that there are a lot of rituals that people engage in that have nothing to do with the desired effect, and that don't actually do anything but give the participant a feeling of accomplishment.
Homeopathy has been demonstrated not to work. It therefore does not work, and any anecdotal benefits must be ascribed to psychological reactions to the process of homeopathic treatment.
I do like Ben Goldacre, but he didn't do well in this debate. Homeopathy is so easy to crush, and why didn't he attack the "water-memory" concept? The water molecule is not a complex one, it's a very simple and well understood one. I have studied the physics of water myself, there is nothing complex about it. It's the most understood liquid, H-O-H! Finally, boiling does not change the molecule of water. 2. Why not do a trial between normal medicine and homeopathy? They claim it can do the same.
My mother had asthma, needed medication. She got also herbal medicine and tried it. It was just tiny straws, pieces of thin dried plants chopped on little pieces. Just dried grass basically.
She ate about a spoonfull every day for couple of weeks. Very ridiculous so far.
And here is the weird part: She was able to give up asthma medicine, proper medicine that is, for like 15 years after that. No reactions anymore, no problem breathing, no shorthness of breath from nature like before.
@bary1234 The phrase "alternative medicine" doesn't really mean anything. The issue is that homeopathy dilutes the "medicine" until none of the original substance remains, so there is simply nothing in it.
@Impossible3144 : "Alternative medicine:" It just means that what ever it is, it is not accepted as medicine. Either since it has not been tested enough, or because it has been rejected as inneffective or dangerous by science.
I LOVE when he says "You have to remember that if it doesn't work, it's not homeopathy - it''s only" whatever he called the substance. Brilliant. That's just like when christians say "God always answers prayers - you can get "yes", "no", or "wait". An absolutely brilliant way of making testing difficult.
Not to mention when he says, about the efficiacy of larger trials: "that tend not to be the case with homeopathic trials" - because larger trials tend to be negative to homeopathy. Brilliant.
Interesting that just after Melanie from the society of homeopaths said that they don't rubbish conventional medicine, Fisher referred to 'nasty toxic drugs'
To listen to Dr. Fisher you'd almost think he was, I don't know, bent out of shape about the fact that homeopathy doesn't work... Actually, he sounds like a creationist.
"If the evidence contradicts my position it must be invalid evidence."
He followed his logical fallacies with a flat-out lie... The meta-analyses on the randomised-controlled trial studies of homeopathy have shown no statistically significant benefit above placebo. The plural of 'anecdote' is not 'evidence'.
I really, really cannot believe that Dr Fisher used that opening argument. Un-bel-ieve-able!
AussieEvonne 2 days ago
Short answer no... Its basically just extremely diluted water, would one want to replace hospitals with homeopathy clinics? I will gurentee that there will be alot more deaths at hand.
ecos889 1 week ago
Peter Fisher is very inspirational (and a bit like Boris in this!) Great video... Homeopathy cured me of recurrent tonsillitis and severe acne when conventional medicine failed.
TKRoGan1 2 weeks ago in playlist Liked videos
@TKRoGan1 You are mistaken...
FraxureSounds 2 weeks ago
@FraxureSounds oh am I? ok thanks
TKRoGan1 6 days ago
@TKRoGan1 Post hoc, ergo propter hoc.
daemonowner 1 week ago
@TKRoGan1 Awesome! Don't mind these angry, closed-minded skeptics who have no interest in the evidence. They must be having a bad case of indigestion. :)
ar4216 1 week ago
@ar4216 probably a good remedy that can help that!
TKRoGan1 6 days ago
@TKRoGan1 HaHa! Probably. :)
ar4216 6 days ago
@TKRoGan1 Would you trust homepathy with treatment of cancer, Aids, Heart disease, third degree burns, physical trauma then, yeah lets sod medicine :S I suffer from acne and I assure you that I improved my condition with water and good hygiene habits...
ecos889 1 week ago
@ecos889 dont be absurd. Only an idiot would believe homeopathy could treat cancer/aids.no sensible medical homeopath would ever claim/attempt such a thing. Burns and trauma, yes.it can help, e.g. arnica for bruising. there are many papers you can read but might I suggest the following:
Bonnet, van Haselen(2001). The efficacy and safety of a homeopathic gel in the treatment of acute low back pain: a multi-centre, randomized, double-blind comparative clinical trial. BHJ, 90:21–28.
Its +ve
TKRoGan1 6 days ago
@TKRoGan1 I checked that out and it's part of a bunch of pro-homeopathy studies that weren't properly randomized or blinded, or were surveys not studies at all. You are suffering with confirmation bias so you're latching on to anything that even looks a bit sciencish.
callumnik117 4 days ago
@TKRoGan1 And it's funny how the only things serious homeopaths treat are things that can get better on their own. No, We shouldn't be absurd, no 'serious medical' homeopath would ever claim/attempt to cure something that would kill you without a real treatment.
callumnik117 4 days ago
Personally, I think all pushers of nostrums and quackery (such as, for example, homeopathy) should be flogged through the streets, put in the stocks for a couple of days, then forced to work in a hospital as the lowest rung service monkey for the rest of their natural lives, without recourse to modern medicine. Let them treat themselves with their water and whatever. I wish them all luck with that.
UniversalRee 3 weeks ago
USB drives, CDs, and floppy disks are designed for the express purpose of data storage - a glass of water however, is not.
0mniaV1nc1t 1 month ago 2
For the shorter version, just search Youtube for "Homeopathic A&E"
baldieman64 1 month ago
According to the voting, 8% were homeopaths 31% were not homeopaths. Me thinks there were many homeopaths not voting..
imaginenoreligion 1 month ago
Are you fucking stupid dude? The chemicals in the USB drive are storing fuck all.
TrueMetis 1 month ago
Comment removed
TrueMetis 1 month ago
In what way does 'homeopathy is taking off in Iran' help to bolster the argument that it is scientifically proven?
danfromabove 1 month ago 3
@danfromabove Bizarrely, Iran actually has a fairly good publication record for scientific papers, but it's still a terrible argument.
0mniaV1nc1t 1 month ago
@danfromabove if you are interested in reading some of the research then type faculty of homeopathy into google then click research...
TKRoGan1 6 days ago
Just imagine the hu-u-u-ge profit that homeopathic industry makes from distributing:
a) -minor quantities of distilled water with actualy no substance in it;
b) -tiny pills of sugar that don't even contain any water - so where does the "memory of water" go then?
rmanolova 1 month ago
The funniest thing is that there was no need for Ben to be there. Not even two homeopaths, it seems, can agree upon what homeopathy really is. One says it's all about the pills. Another says it's a spiritual thing. A third says it's the whole situation and the rituals that together form a holistic method. Give me a break! This is the tradmark of faith based medicine. By time people will develop their own peculaiar methods, and it does not matter since it's bullshit to begin with.
buugiman78 1 month ago 2
water is not complex it contains two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom
Bot23 1 month ago
@Bot23 wow... you must be a nuclear physicist. thats an incredible observation. Water is that simple... I mean yeh, what is hydrogen though? and oxygen? and how do these incredibly complex structures interrelate to each other? and what fills the intermolecular space? what is a hydrogen bond and how do they influence other surrounding energies?
Yeh, Water is that simple..... top marks
TKRoGan1 6 days ago
@TKRoGan1 Explain it to me then.
Bot23 6 days ago
an audience of hippies?
Bot23 1 month ago
Peter Fisher should be the new word for charlatan.
Bot23 1 month ago
This is an incredibly biased audience
kingsamueld 1 month ago
@kingsamueld ... and? What has the bias of an audience got to do with anything?
UnOxonien 3 weeks ago
On a second note, this could be Darwin's way of mixing it up a bit, now that we are using so many unnatural means of keeping people alive. ;p
fjoo 1 month ago in playlist Flere videoer fra ZuluFightrunner
This is depressing! ... I don't mind them drinking water with urine molecules in it, but if we can't even convince people how silly this obvious thing is, then there is no hope of teaching them about more obvious, complex issues...
fjoo 1 month ago in playlist Flere videoer fra ZuluFightrunner
I actually feel sorry for Peter Fisher. What a dreadfully depressing existence he has attempting to justify something which has no robust evidence whatsoever.
SlippDigby 1 month ago
@SlippDigby Dear what is your deviance, I suggest bring it up! if you can.
drabnasir 1 month ago
This has been flagged as spam show
@SlippDigby if you are interested in reading some of the research then type faculty of homeopathy into google then click research...
TKRoGan1 6 days ago
There is no controversy - homeopathy is bullshit!
waysgoose 2 months ago 6
I don't even understand why this issue was given an hour an a half of peoples' time. It has been proven time and again that homoeopathy has no greater affect than a similarly administered placebo and continuing to listen to people who dither on about it is a waste of time and resources and the people who get dragged into it - like Ben Goldacre - at the kind of people who's time could be better spent not dealing with these morons
FunkyMonkeyJunkie302 2 months ago 3
@FunkyMonkeyJunkie302 This is what BIG PHARMA says, if you want to know what are the scientific measures and hypothesis related to the Conventional Medicine. Just see the W.Lippon Cott Pharmacology. You will see no certainty in the evidence it says it is believed to do this and that. So do not judge until you do not obtain enough information on any subject.
drabnasir 1 month ago
Excellent impartial debate !
gabsave 2 months ago
his entire argument falls apart when you simply ask what the mechanism is for the water to "remember". "it just does" isn't an answer.
osaka35 2 months ago 2
0:24:00-0:24:50 homeopath compares water to a flash key saying both "store data". I mean seriously, does he really believe that?
enigma2213322133 3 months ago 2
only thing worse than homeopathy is audio/visual being out of sync, arrgh! >_<
MrJablong 3 months ago 2
I'm amazed at how weak the argument being put forward for homeopathy in the opening 10 minutes actually is. Not a single reference to evidence. He just says it's very popular and even guys from Harvard acknowledge that it's popular, so 'clearly' it works. - How dumb are we meant to be?
WalterLiddy 3 months ago 2
Well, it's not surprising that at an event concerning homeopathy the majority of people participating believe in it. Someone who doesn't would likely not bother going.
WalterLiddy 3 months ago
I facepalmed so hard at the outrage over support of the placebo effect in infants and pets. It's not about the infant or pet understanding that they are receiving medicine. It's about the parent or pet owner applying a ritual that is understood on some basic level to comfort them. If you put a placebo in a hamsters food before presenting the food to them I highly doubt and I think the science would back me up that the placebo would do nothing.
brrrdman85 3 months ago
This is a positive situation. This ensures low IQ people will die trying to use homeopathy for easily curable diseases, bringing a slight bit of evolutionary process back to the genetic pool.
BTW, there are more idiots in Britain than the US it seems, as none of the magic based treatments (including other mysticism branches like acupuncture and magic crystals) are funded by the US government presently.
brendanmcwilliams 4 months ago 3
52% think homeopathy work? R.I.P sanity
mancno1 4 months ago 2
Perhaps the population being treated homeopathically for cholera had higher survivor rates, not due to the treatment, but due to bad regular treatment of blood-letting - - they just may have avoided a type of treatment that would have, in fact, made them weaker.
baystategal 4 months ago
Here in Germany, we have many regular doctors that also use homeopathy, while themselves not believing in it. And when you ask them they tell you that they think its the placebo effect.
the trick is, health insurance pays for homeopathy, and for each use of homeopathy they get paid for 30-45 minutes of talking with the patient. Normally they only have 5 minutes per patient. Some doctors want to talk longer to some patients, and sometimes that really is useful. so they game the system this way.
kurtilein3 4 months ago 4
one thing i think about:
every glass of water, if it comes from sea water, rain, flowing in any river, or is shallow groundwater, has water molecules in it that once were urine of Julius Caesar or Mahatma Ghandi, and this even is true if you only look at what these people peed at a specific day. and if you get really old water, its still somewhat contaimnated with dinosaur poop.
really, HOW does the water know that it should remember the homeopathic stuff, and not dinosaur crap?
kurtilein3 4 months ago
@kurtilein3 Homeopath answer: God did it.
syn010110 4 months ago
Peter Fisher is an idiot.
kurtilein3 4 months ago
It does seem really interesting that Ben Goldacre is talking about bad science and not trying to defend ALL medicine and ALL research, without exception. There is a ton of bad science in both medicine and clinical research. Ben frequently goes after this too. So to suggest that there is a double-standard,at least as far as Goldacre is concerned, is ridiculous. This is just rhetoric and pseudoscience. Everything Fisher says is unsubstantiated.
Ahabite 4 months ago
I love how people assume that popular implies effective. These people then seem to infer from this fallacy, that it is only a matter of time until it is proven to work.
Homeopathy, which has never been shown to work with any statistical significance let alone stat-sig with effect size measures, is effectively nothing but placebo, if even that. All Fisher does is employ rhetoric.
Ahabite 4 months ago 3
i know about Homeopath and how effecive it is - I have a relative with multiplle medical problems who started taking homeopathy treatment over thirty years ago She received the treatment on the NHS by quilified doctors who were also homepaths - Resutl she still has the multiple problems. All these years it has been obvious she has been conned by charlatans
Trotsentry 4 months ago
08:10 "Well of course it works!! Of course it works!! It's 210 years old and it's all over the place!!"
This is the proof? That's like saying that so many people believe Jesus' mother was a virgin that she must have been. And of course Thor exists! He's over 1900 years old!!
mikegalsworthy 4 months ago 2
Having said that, I was more impressed with Fisher's later arguments. It's true that 'debunkers' in the scientific community are hypocritical about quality. I'm a scientist and have seen it. Withholding data is always appalling - as is makng written claims about the literature before exploring it (Dawkins). Good that the quality of logic improved.
mikegalsworthy 4 months ago
at about 12 mins where is this eveidence? id like to read it!
benjimac666 4 months ago
"of course it works" and his reasoning for this is because it's popular? Ever heard of Argumentum Ad Populum; the logical fallacy known as the argument from popularity. I highschool freshman on the debate team would have clowned this fool within minutes of his idiotic rhetoric!
Naked4Jesus 4 months ago 3
wow, this is a rlly depressing video
Dpesh7 4 months ago
@peterb1968 If nothing else, there _is_ at least some hydrogen dioxide in it.
langbei 4 months ago
"Well of course it works... Of course it works! It's two hundred and ten years old and it's all over the place!" I had to pause the video while I swooned at the sheer complacency of this. An argument from the duration and proliferation of something? Really? Really though? Actually really? Really actually? For sure?
Tit.
Epistemofo 4 months ago 10
Water doesn't contain structures! It is a liquid. Are they saying that if you mix a remedy then the thing becomes useless? I cannot understand these people.
jenko4292 4 months ago
@jenko4292
Yeah, what the hell was all that about? "Structures?" Yeah, like a very well understood H2O molecule. And if it's distilled water, that's about it. There are no "structures," hiding in water, much less mysterious, not-yet-understood, super chemical memory having structures that somehow spiritually treat the body because they are "beyond matter" as that other idiot said. It's simply not true and some quack in a suit saying it with a straight face doesn't make it true.
NekoMouser 4 months ago 2
Billions of people believe complete nonsense: Like using conventional drugs and antibiotics for chronic diseases.
mohanaturo 4 months ago
Homeopathy can be defined as a treatment for people who failed high school chemistry.
randomizer1666 4 months ago 7
@randomizer1666
It's worst than that since I did fail high school chemistry, but does absolutely not believe in homeopathy.
I think it's for people who need Religion 2.0, like New Age stuff.
Cheers mate!
HalfFullYeah 4 months ago
What a bunch of gullible quacks. Absolutely ludicrous.
Ignitionnet 4 months ago 4
He needs to stop using popularity as proof. Billions of people believe complete nonsense
JimboWizbo 5 months ago
"Does homeopathy deserve proper scientific investigation?"
"Should people have the choice of homeopathy on the NHS if other treatments have failed or caused side effects?"
Holy shit, what dishonest and loaded questions! Shows just what kind of man he is.
un2mensch 5 months ago
Peter Fisher has clearly been using homeopathic remedies for hair loss.
un2mensch 5 months ago
Small trials tend to prove homeopathy works, so they are more reliable than large trials? If that's true they should do trials on individuals only. What kind of logic is that!?
aethanum 5 months ago
Oh fuck I'm so depressed. It seems like there are as many morons in the UK as there are in the US.
grundgemonster 5 months ago 44
@grundgemonster
What is it about getting to the top of the developed world that makes people want to turn into idiots?
NekoMouser 4 months ago 2
@NekoMouser white guilt
aronpeterson121 4 months ago
@grundgemonster it's humanity man. Only a minority are smart, unfortunately :s
Destro7000 3 months ago
@grundgemonster Not quite USA is a bigger country, although seriously you will encounter such morans anywhere, with exception to the antartic and antartica and other planets and empty space where no humans exist...
ecos889 1 week ago
ben goldacre on the other hand continues to do great things to eliminate fuzzy thinking in science
Lankyboy2003 5 months ago 52
@Lankyboy2003 Everyone is just speaking again Homeopathic Medical System, why do not you try to see the actual reasons behind it. And your Pharmacies are not doing research in the issue? Afraid...they will lose the money that are gaining from their medicine. I think you should consider this.
drabnasir 1 month ago
@drabnasir Pharmaceutical companies would love homeopathy to be true. They would make an order of magnitude more money that way. What's more profitable? Spending decades researching a compound hoping it will work to cure or treat something and that it isn't to dangerous to use, or some water and whatever the fuck at extremely low concentrations and therefore cheap to make.
TrueMetis 1 month ago
The scariest thing to me is that Peter Fisher is obviously an intelligent person. Seems like a waste of a good mind to me. He knows homeopathy inside and out, spending hundreds of hours researching the 'subject' when he could have been doing something truly meaningful with his life. Shame.
Lankyboy2003 5 months ago 3
hang on a sec ... "you can do a proving on a substance that has been boiled and one that hasn't been boiled and you can see the difference". Sound slike a slam-dunk fo rthe JREF prize then. Wonder why he hasn't claimed the cool $1M - that would go a long way in Iran
salerio61 5 months ago
@salerio61 @1:12:10
salerio61 5 months ago
That charlatan was talking about some "coherent water structures" -- this is a huge load of bulls**t. There are no such "structures" or "water memory". Why no one replied to his pseudoscientific blah-blah-blah?
drnovikov 5 months ago
> homeopathic medical community
You cannot have it both ways. It's either homaeopathic or medical.
drnovikov 5 months ago
peter fisher sounded good (almost convincing) up until his ridiculous analogies between homeopathy and computer disks - what a load of bullshit. These blokes would be more credible if they just flat admitted there is NO plausible biochemical mechanism and it is more to do with patient care, attention etc i.e. mental healing
MrEmuexport 5 months ago
Homoeopathy works only as a placebo.
Task5003 5 months ago
I'm a critical analyser...blah blah blah.
rossl0201 5 months ago
3 Nobel Laureate scientists have done studies on high dilutions( similar to Homeopathic) and have proven their effects.
1. Hans Von Euler -
Nobel Laureate Chemistry 1929
2. Brian David Josephson -
Nobel Laureate Physics 1973
3. Luc Montagnier -
Nobel Laureate Physiology & Medicine 2009
mohanaturo 5 months ago
when will we put the common good before the benefit to our pocket?
rouzbehazshab 5 months ago
Does homeopathy work? Yes, it does. It works as well as a placebo, because that's exactly what it is.
Is modern medicine better? Heck yes. Also, Mr. Fisher is a matriarch copulating offspring of a nobleman and a commoner and a fraudulent pill peddler, and his simian countenance betrays an unusually rich species diversity in his heritage.
Vidar33 5 months ago
Iranian Homoeopath - ..."The Homoeopathic remedy is only Homoeopathic when it is used and shown to be effective, otherwise you're only talking about a potentized substance." (1:05:52)
Sneaky disowning of negative results there.
josephdorrell 5 months ago
Melanie: "...we are certainly not in the business of rubbishing conventional medicine..." (1:02:34)
[~1 min later]
Peter (about conventional medicine): "...those nasty toxic drugs...' (1:03:26)
LOL
DarkArcticSun 5 months ago 3
"Water can store information about substances with which it has been in contact, and subsequently transmit it to *PRESENSITISED* biosystems."
"Presensitised" by real medicine, do you think?
Wallyrus 5 months ago
(Paraprased) "I know that Homeopathy works because it is popular and it's not going away, so you might as well get used to it."
Also, these peer reviewed studies he mentions, which confirm homeopathy as being effective treatment DO NO EXIST.
Wallyrus 5 months ago
i have the person's name who's voice has been put on this video.
it is boris johnson the conservative higher education's spokesman.
go check and compare!!!!!
rouzbehazshab 5 months ago
this guy's voice sounds familiar!!!!!!!!!
of course it does not match the speaker.
this is a false video.a fraud.
rouzbehazshab 5 months ago
Those statistics showing the widespread use of homeopathy is not an argument for its efficacy, but is an argument for why there should be a harsher clampdown on it. Nothing this fraudulent should be so widespread.
tpr007 6 months ago
So is this view expressed by the Iranian homeopath held by all homeopaths? That if a remedy doesn't work, it wasn't homeopathic to begin with? That's a pretty easy and rather devious way of getting out of evidence-based testing. "Didn't work? Doesn't count, it wasn't homeopathic." "Oh, it worked this time? ONLY THIS TRIAL COUNTS!"
phizzyphizzy 6 months ago
@sabertooth1980. You're very funny. Have you watched Dara O Briain's bit on homeopathists/nutritionists? I think you'd like it.
rachelmdw 6 months ago 2
its 12 minutes in and fisher hasnt given any proof of homo pathy working..Acupuncture has been around for a long time, its a miserable failure.
As to the journals, I read them, the math is terrible guys.
Finally, he claims only 180 papers in 1991 after 200 years..man that is comforting..
foathkent 6 months ago
Opening argument - argument from popularity.
Followed by attempting to undermine Richard Dawkins - how exactly is his assertion that clinical trials need to be undertaken "bad science"? Oh, right - it isn't.
And then lots of waffling about nothing... just as well Ben Goldenacre didn't go in to destroy this cretin or this could have been nastier than if he'd dropped the soap in the shower of a rape jail.
ProphetTenebrae 6 months ago
He even said at the beginning that there were studies, but he would give them out later "if anyone wanted to see them"! Surely, he should have spent his talk time going through the studies! Ridiculous.
emmabrwn6 6 months ago 3
What the Hell was Dr Fisher blithering on about? He spoke for about 15 minutes and said nothing - surely, this would have been the perfect opportunity to talk about studies and present results, finally proving for all the world that homeopathy works. Instead, he just said "it works, it's all over the world, here are some stories about what some people have said."
emmabrwn6 6 months ago 3
Homeopathy turned me into a newt. I got better though.
MegaWaylander 7 months ago
its 210 years old and its all over the place.
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
Good for a laugh at least.
JohnSnowstorm 7 months ago
@JohnSnowstorm
Wrong.
You really should learn about a topic before writing crap about it in a public place wouldn't you agree?
Fact:
The principles of healing like with like are as old as water itself.
Fact:
Hippocrates taught the principles of healing like with like 2000 years ago.
Fact:
Dr. Samuel Hahnemann coined the word 'homeopathy' only 200 years ago, but the principle itself goes back to beginning of time.
pianoplayeruk 6 months ago
@pianoplayeruk Right. All these healing processes have been around for centuries yes? well the ones that were tried and tested and proven right are what we now call ''medicine''. Anything else that was tested and discredited is homeopathy, but people in general are fairly scientifically illiterate and as a nation we have a pretty poor screening process for things like this so it is still legal even though it technically breaks the trade descriptions act because it does fuck all.
lemur12341 6 months ago
@lemur12341
Your continued argumentative manner merely serves to araldite my view of you as being someone who knows absolutely nothing whatsoever about water and its properties, and now too I see we can add to that list the clear fact that you know nothing about pharmacology either.
Homoeopathy is about healing people.
Pharmacology is about selling ineffective drugs.
Please don't bother to reply as your tedious persistence has already become tiresome.
pianoplayeruk 6 months ago
@pianoplayeruk talking like an intellectual doesn't make you one. anyway, how are they in any way ineffective. tell you what lets compare the 'fundamentalist medicine' and homeopathic treatment of malaria. A sane doctor would prescribe malarone or doxycycline which acts as a preventative measure against infection, you know vaccines right? One particular homeopath prescribed a pill that uses your energy to make a malaria shaped hole so the malarial mosquito cant infect you. fact. Evidence please?
lemur12341 6 months ago
@lemur12341
Are you totally stupid or are you just making a special effort for me? Open your eyes.
The pharmaceutical industry has a vested interest in seeing homoeopathy get a hard time because homoeopathic preparations cannot be patented.
Pharmaceutical drugs however can be, even if they prove to be addictive, have terrible side effects and are otherwise usually ineffectual.
The pharmaceutical industry fears homoeopathy because it works.
Pharmacology isn't about health, its about money.
pianoplayeruk 6 months ago
@pianoplayeruk The industry has a vested interest in discrediting homeopathy because it offers dangerous unproven treatments that for some reason don't need a patent to be sold for things like AIDS and cholera. As a UK resident pianoplayer 'UK' my NHS prescripted drugs are free cure me and are therefore effectIVE. homeopathy which you have to buy on the other hand is given alongside and diluted so much that the active ingredient is barely there, so you're healed by the drug not homeopathy
lemur12341 6 months ago
@pianoplayeruk are you retarded?
I'm merely quoting fishers opening statement, in essence you are telling the 'homeopathy expert' to learn about his topic before talking crap about it.
"Fact:
The principles of healing like with like are as old as water itself."
that's an interesting definition of the word fact seeing as the first molecules of water formed about 13-14 billion years ago.
JohnSnowstorm 6 months ago
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pianoplayeruk 6 months ago
Like cures like? So a homeopathic solution of arsenic would cure death?
steeltable218 7 months ago
@steeltable218 not exactly, but it's just as insane
ocdfreak 7 months ago
Does homeopathy work?
Yes
It significantly reduces mass....of your wallet.
WaltonSauce 8 months ago
How funny is Dr with the baby and his unashamed vanity at trying to get himself and his baby on camera by standing behind the speakers in the audience. Ha
brit4friends 8 months ago
surely a glass of water would be just as effective, if water has 'memory'?
nathanATO1 8 months ago
That's like saying god exists. Well, it's been around for over 2000 years woshipped my millions so of course therefore it has to be real.
Utter nonsense.
Domzdream 8 months ago
I like Ben when he's not being smarmy, I just think he's a little naive and idealistic on the mainstream side, partly because he hasn't worked as a bench scientist and also because he hasn't worked with drug companies. I think this alternative health stuff ought to be let alone as long as it is kept under control, regulated. If the NHS ditches it it will flourish unregulated. That's the strongest argument against Ben's position, in my mind.
DJSpinoza 8 months ago
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DJSpinoza 8 months ago
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DJSpinoza 8 months ago
What do you mean THE CONTROVERSIAL part is the dilution? I'm sorry but I'm pretty sure that treating a disease by giving a person a toxin that causes the very symptoms you want to alleviate is very fucking controversial. You don't give someone arsenic to alleviate arsenic poisoning! The whole thing is a bunch of crap.
ARKAtheist 9 months ago
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littleduncan 9 months ago
Oh...
From the very words of a prominent figure in the international homeopathic medical community, Peter Fisher:
"The controversial part, of course, is the use of very high dilutions. Homeopathy uses dilutions. Very high dilutions, including so-called ultra-molecular, these are dilutions diluted beyond the point at which we know and that we are not disputing that no molecule or molecular trace of the original starting substance is present."
It is as Peter Fisher states.
thedeeliciousplum 10 months ago 2
Dear NHS: Stop giving money to pseudoscientists, stop building hospitals where pseudoscience is practiced, step up and fulfill your obligation to the public: tell them why homeopathy is supernatural bunk.
sleepcity 10 months ago
I can't believe he compares a USB stick to water! It's just bonkers
littleduncan 10 months ago 2
@littleduncan What he's saying is that simply looking at what things at made up off (in this case water) is not sufficient. Just as in a USB/CD drive, they can be made up of several elements. The reorganisation (however small) of these elements can completely modify it's function. In CDs, without adding/removing any elements, but simply reorganising its elements, you're effectively making a huge change by either adding or removing data on it. Interestingly, water can be treated similarly :)
abhishgva1 9 months ago
@abhishgva1 USB sticks/solid state devices have been developed over decades using a well understood theory. The atoms in these devices have been specifically arranged in such a way to make them work in the desired fashion. Water cannot be treated similarly as it is a fluid and has no periodic/lattice electronic structure which is crucial to the way in which these devices work. The atoms in fluids constantly 'reorganise' themselves, that is why you can't compare them to a USB stick!
littleduncan 9 months ago
@littleduncan Indeed water does not have a rigid lattice structure as in SSDrives materials. But water is fundamentally H2O, there's no denying that. Within a glass of water, structures made up of several H2O molecules can appear. Homeopathy assumes that even without any physical foreign atom present, its influcence/imprint can be left behind in the form of such structures :)
Search YouTube: How Homeopathy Works Dr Rustum Roy-092207 AUDIO ONLY .mp4 and also check out the ppt file on the link
abhishgva1 9 months ago
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littleduncan 9 months ago
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littleduncan 9 months ago
This has been flagged as spam show
@abhishgva1 The rigid lattice structure in solid state devices is in no way comparable to the oligomers that could be potentially formed in water. Yes, water has some complex properties that are not understood. Does that prove homeopathy works? No.
littleduncan 9 months ago
@littleduncan I agree his comparison is simplified. Word limit stoped me from saying it earlier. Keep in mind that his comparison is for the layman. I have a feeling you are yourself scientifically/engineer minded. Hence we both recognise it. The links explain the water structure theory, and not homeopathy. I will get back to you at a later time (after exams!) and let you know of other sources, until then do check(on YT) Mass Homeopathy Overdose by hpathy and do check the sources he speaks of :)
abhishgva1 9 months ago
I can't believe he compares a USB stick to water! It's just bonkers
littleduncan 10 months ago 2
I just got to the bit about the water and the USB drive - I can't believe that he even attempted this - Yeah go on Peter, it's all just Silicon with 'trace impurities' of Boron and Phosphorous (incidentally more likely to be Galium Arsenide rather than Silicon) but don't forget to mention the very VERY critical effect of electron and hole concentration that make the bloody thing work! Water is not a semi-conductor - Analogy Fail...
Catling121 10 months ago
Does it work? "Of course it does! It's everywhere!"
Does God exist? "Of course he does! Lots of people say so."
Did Saddam Hussein have weapons of mass destruction? "Of course he did! George W. said so!"
If it weren't for his shiny bald spot I'd swear that first speaker was 12.
PelicanGodOfJupiter 10 months ago
Comparing water and a USB drive? WTF!!! Talk about logical fallacies!!! MAJOR FAIL!!!
fassstar 11 months ago
Ah grand - the old natural things are healthy argument. So that would mean that atropine, morphine, strychnine, tetrodotoxin, botulism, the Black Death, anthrax, black mambas, hurricanes and cometary impacts are all on the list of things that are ok.
0mniaV1nc1t 11 months ago
To listen to Fisher here, he's actually quite a lot like some of the creationists out there. He's holding to on to easily debunked bullshit, distorting the evidence for an audience who he knows probably aren't familiar with it themselves, accusing the scientific establishment of conspiring against him, equating man-made objects with nature... need I go on?
Then he asks 'does homeopathy deserve proper scientific investigation?' Well, of course it does. And it has been. It still doesn't work.
0mniaV1nc1t 11 months ago 2
Wow, having seen what the homeopaths in the audience had to say - it really just reinforces what I hoped wasn't true - all homeopaths really are just pathological liars, aren't they?
sunyavadin 11 months ago 3
Ugh. I told myself I would watch the whole thing. but 15 minutes staright of Fisher talking makes me want to gut my eyes and ears out. The stupidity. It burns!
Joe22c 11 months ago 2
It's depressing how many people voted "yes" at the start.
Also, it's silly that the organizers ask that the initial results not influence the voters.
See Asch's study on conformity to see why that is a bad idea.
Joe22c 11 months ago
"Moving on to a slightly more serious question...." The fact that this is a serious question with regards to allocation of taxpayers money is testament to the failure of science education in the UK.
wideheadofknowledge 11 months ago 2
I'm surprised Dr. Goldacre did not just explain the theory and methodology of homeopathy in it's own terms. That would be enough to convince any thinking person that homeopathy is complete nonsense and non-science.
hardinmichael1981 1 year ago 3
Science: It's not a popularity contest.
hardinmichael1981 1 year ago 3
Of course the world is flat. Because that's what the vast majority of people thought for most of human history.
hardinmichael1981 1 year ago
I'm amazed by the floppy disk to water analogy. Sure, floppy disks are made of simple chemicals, but they chemicals are arranged in solid patterns, wherein the information is stored. Water, on the other hand, is fluid and doesn't hold information in a pattern. The important difference is clear and undoes the analogy.
How can this be anything but disingenuous?
logician360 1 year ago
@logician360 As I commented, it's very similar to the creationist claim that natural and man-made objects are equivalent.
0mniaV1nc1t 11 months ago
Wouldn't all homeopathic "treatments" simply take on the character of the glass, plastic or ceramic container in which they are mixed??? Anyone?
wowsdrawkcab 1 year ago
@wowsdrawkcab As far as I know glass is inert - that is why it is used in experiments - I think ceramic must be the same. However plastic definitely is not, some release oestrogen especially when heated. You ask a good question - the more I have read about homeopathy the less trust I have in it! I think a success rate equivalent to a placebo means you have very low expectations!
topsyish 3 months ago
Dr. Fisher: You seem to be under the impression that persistence and efficacy are synonymous. I counter that there are a lot of rituals that people engage in that have nothing to do with the desired effect, and that don't actually do anything but give the participant a feeling of accomplishment.
Homeopathy has been demonstrated not to work. It therefore does not work, and any anecdotal benefits must be ascribed to psychological reactions to the process of homeopathic treatment.
Fordi 1 year ago
I do like Ben Goldacre, but he didn't do well in this debate. Homeopathy is so easy to crush, and why didn't he attack the "water-memory" concept? The water molecule is not a complex one, it's a very simple and well understood one. I have studied the physics of water myself, there is nothing complex about it. It's the most understood liquid, H-O-H! Finally, boiling does not change the molecule of water. 2. Why not do a trial between normal medicine and homeopathy? They claim it can do the same.
Poleschs 1 year ago
My mother had asthma, needed medication. She got also herbal medicine and tried it. It was just tiny straws, pieces of thin dried plants chopped on little pieces. Just dried grass basically.
She ate about a spoonfull every day for couple of weeks. Very ridiculous so far.
And here is the weird part: She was able to give up asthma medicine, proper medicine that is, for like 15 years after that. No reactions anymore, no problem breathing, no shorthness of breath from nature like before.
bary1234 1 year ago
@bary1234 Homeopathy is not herbal medicine.
Impossible3144 1 year ago
@Impossible3144 : Ok. But it sounds as crazy to me. That order of grass was alternative medicine still.
bary1234 1 year ago
@bary1234 The phrase "alternative medicine" doesn't really mean anything. The issue is that homeopathy dilutes the "medicine" until none of the original substance remains, so there is simply nothing in it.
Impossible3144 1 year ago
@Impossible3144 : "Alternative medicine:" It just means that what ever it is, it is not accepted as medicine. Either since it has not been tested enough, or because it has been rejected as inneffective or dangerous by science.
bary1234 1 year ago
What do we call "alternative medicine" which demonstrates efficacy in clinical trials? "Medicine" !
RoadRunnerLaser 1 year ago 11
I LOVE when he says "You have to remember that if it doesn't work, it's not homeopathy - it''s only" whatever he called the substance. Brilliant. That's just like when christians say "God always answers prayers - you can get "yes", "no", or "wait". An absolutely brilliant way of making testing difficult.
Not to mention when he says, about the efficiacy of larger trials: "that tend not to be the case with homeopathic trials" - because larger trials tend to be negative to homeopathy. Brilliant.
steffenml 1 year ago
We're still having to debate this obvious horseshit?!?
TheNamesBettyNyahhh 1 year ago
Interesting that just after Melanie from the society of homeopaths said that they don't rubbish conventional medicine, Fisher referred to 'nasty toxic drugs'
AllRightRotten 1 year ago
To listen to Dr. Fisher you'd almost think he was, I don't know, bent out of shape about the fact that homeopathy doesn't work... Actually, he sounds like a creationist.
"If the evidence contradicts my position it must be invalid evidence."
triskaidekaphobe13 1 year ago
He followed his logical fallacies with a flat-out lie... The meta-analyses on the randomised-controlled trial studies of homeopathy have shown no statistically significant benefit above placebo. The plural of 'anecdote' is not 'evidence'.
triskaidekaphobe13 1 year ago 3