Homeopathy: The Test - Horizon - BBC

[OEMarekS1]

@Johnson731NA none of the doctors i met knew about how to treat patients. Always the same text 'try this anibiotics it may help' and now I know why. THEY GET MONEY OR GIFTS for pushing different drugs on pattients.

[OEMarekS1]

Shouldn't they conduct those experiments on some live beings? Maybe homeopathy just doesn't work without an organism. Such experiments make me think that scientists are just complete idiots. They always miss some important factors just to prove their claims. I'm sick of it :)

[EudaemonicGirl]

@OEMarekS1 They used humans cells, in which you would see an improvement if the medicine worked. Be using people, other factors would disrupt the experiment, such as the placebo effect, environmental factors, their own immune system etc. It would not be as "scentifically rigorous" as the Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge, and mainstream science, requires.

[OEMarekS1]

@EudaemonicGirl

It doesn't matter... how do you know that human factor is not the most important thing here? Take some wheat and treat it with butter. Will it taste the same as a bread with butter? How can we compare cells separated from the body with cells inside of living organism???!!! This is nonsense.

[EudaemonicGirl]

@OEMarekS1 It does matter, because otherwise homeopathic remedies could not be tested. The "human factor" is what separates pseudoscience from proper science and real medicine from placebos or scams.

[OEMarekS1]

@EudaemonicGirl

Frankly speaking I don't care about "proper science", because there is no such thing. I like it, it's cool, measurable and so on. But it is limited to our current knowledge which is only our projection of reality. Our knowledge is based on models. Models are based on observations. Unfortunately bservation is the weakest element of the whole science. Organism works as a whole. You can't cut off a hand and test brain medication on it. It will NOT work... will it?

[EudaemonicGirl]

@OEMarekS1 Yes, there is such a thing like "proper science" which is different from pseudoscience and junk science. Observation might be the weakest part, but that's why you try to eliminate as many interfering factors as possible. The original test by Benveniste was about allergies, and allergies are triggered by specific cells who react to foreign particles. This is the basis of what causes allergies, therefore those cells should be tested and they work separately from the organism.

[EudaemonicGirl]

@OEMarekS1 Comparing that to removing a hand to test brain medication is just silly. The cells inducing allergy work on their own, while the hand have not much at all to do with the brain when it comes to medication. You can remove certain things from the human body and they still will be viable for testing, like blood and cells. Sure you can test homeopathic medicine on live beings, then you would need a double blind test with a placebo. I'm sure you can find studies on that online.

[EudaemonicGirl]

@OEMarekS1 And finally, if homeopathy can't be tested the traditional way, it is not medical science. It can't be proven to be beneficial for people and save lives. That fact is not hard to understand because water and sugar pills is even to a lay person not medicine.

[OEMarekS1]

@EudaemonicGirl

Never mind.

[EudaemonicGirl]

@OEMarekS1 Admitting defeat?

[OEMarekS1]

@EudaemonicGirl

Nooo... I don't want to waste my time. I don't care if you believe it or not. I know it works even on little children while anything else failes (from my experience). So you will never convince me. You can try with ohers. One day science will understand more about this world. With our conventional medicine we are still very primitive. Sorry, but this is the truth. In the future we will know ways to perform self-healing.

[EudaemonicGirl]

@OEMarekS1 Primitive? How is extensive research, millions of dollars, modern laboratories, testing and distribution of medicine by highly educated professional primitive in any way? Water is primitive. Anecdotal evidence is not enought to proclaim something as true, that is the difference between science and various kinds of superstitions. We can "self-heal", it's called the immune system, cell division and blood coagulation to stop bleeding wounds. Sometimes the body needs help from medicine.

[OEMarekS1]

@EudaemonicGirl

Nearly all that conventional medicine does is a cruelty. "Healing" with chemicals that cause other health problems. Pleease... this is funny. The more of this crap we eat the more of it we need! Now surgery... doctors don't even want to talk about how lame they are. They are all learning... on us. And because deseases develop so fast, doctors can't be educated enough. Doctors are good actors. You can see one of them giving talk on TedTalks. Search for memory of water. Have fun.

[Johnson731NA]

@OEMarekS1 FAIL.

[OEMarekS1]

@EudaemonicGirl

I overreacted a bit, but this is what I see. Big corporations pushing away real working medications. Scientists that made those tests are highly educated and so on. But limited only to their knowledge. I am even more sceptical because of a presence of a "magican". This guy makes this "test" highly questionable. I'm not buying that.

[OEMarekS1]

@EudaemonicGirl Homeopathy can't be tested in a traditional way. Is this really so hard to understand? Weak people with closed minds will never understand it

[ForbiddenFragrance]

In the 80's first experiment it was rather obvious, certainly not for the poor french scientist who lost his reputation like a child. They even mentioned in the movie he performed tricks in the lab. James Randi is absolutely brilliant because he challenge the scientist on their own field because none of them thought that he could be anything more than an observer. So, if BBC wants to win their 1 million they should look back on their tapes.You can see in all movies how JR visited every lab.

[Primordialfan1]

@ForbiddenFragrance

BBC Horizon did a rigorous experiment in order to prove homeopathy.

It failed. Get used to it.

[ForbiddenFragrance]

@Primordialfan1 Indeed, it is a very orthodox experiment with a magician!

[Primordialfan1]

@ForbiddenFragrance

Experiment conducted by experts in several fields at highly prestigous institutions supervised by a SKEPTIC.

It's ok. I knew you meant to say that.

[ForbiddenFragrance]

They forgot the essential - to film all the hand movements of James Randi. As a "magician" he is skilled with tricks, in other words introducing enough random errors each time he is near an experiment. The entire BBC story is based on the fact than James Randi is a "passive observer" like any genuine spectator when probably he's not. It's his business to trick our eyes. Everybody pays attention to the accuracy of the experiment like a child looks on a Magic show when things seem to defy nature.

[GeorgeMoonie]

The real discovary here is why the original (and acceptable experimental procedure) give rise to the results vindicating homoeopathy - It means further ivestigation is required to discover why, then to introduces the changes to prevent "false positives" in the future.

[telephas1c]

@GeorgeMoonie - Any one study, particularly small and poorly controlled ones, can have a mild positive result. Effectively that's a negative result. You'd want a much much bigger effect size if there was anything to homoeopathy; i.e. large, blinded, placebo controlled trials that show a replicably positive effect. What we do see is the positively-biased noise of placebo vs placebo research. The better controlled the study, the smaller the effect and greater the chance of no effect.

[webbess1]

LOL- what's wrong with inviting fraud busters?  Those are just the people you'd want to bring for something like this!

[unuxual]

This was less about homeopathy and more about the new age understanding of how energy follows directed thought. When seen from this angle, this whole documentary makes sense. Horizon's conclusion coming only from the realm of traditional science discounts all science in quantum mechanics and quantum entanglement which have models which explain how it does work. Look up Shrodinger's Cat on Google if you don't know what I'm talking about :)

[telephas1c]

@unuxual @unuxual Surely you can do better than a vague hand-waving 'quantum' explanation, especially considering there hasn't yet been an effect demonstrated. Quantum theory cannot explain how homeopathy works, any more than it can explain how withcraft works, because neither of them work. Cherry picked studies can seem to show anything you like, but none have ticked all the boxes (large, blinded, placebo controlled, rigorous, and replicable) - if any had, I'd be convinced.

[miuixtli]

Ahaha BBC. You almost had me there. Srsly ppl, just watch the whole thing. 

[DrNancyMalik]

204 human studies published in 86 peer-reviewed international medical journals out of which 96+ are FULL TEXT out of which 94 are PDF which can be downloaded at bit.ly /rrpWCm

[seba20sa]

this was shown at the BBC? seriouslly, the BBC?

[davem876]

"Homeopathy is impossible" - GOOD.