At the same time as it’s being ridiculed as a pointless stunt, the 10:23 campaign has prompted an entire backlash website of its own, at 1023homeopathy.org.uk.
It’s not a very good website.
One post in particular caught my eye today, thanks to @giagia and @Crispian_Jago, among the many others who’ve kept my Twitter feed busy lately with more #ten23 news and gossip than I know what to do with. I know I’ve been railing on homeopathy a lot lately, but I’m not bored of it yet, and this is my blog, so you’ll have to play along.
Possibly the thing that most annoys me about the anti-campaign blog is the poor quality of the writing. In their description of the 10:23 event:
They are going to “prove” that there is nothing in homeopathy by “taking a whole bottle of homeopathic pills” (very scientific eh).
See, they’re not even trying to make that parenthetical syntactically coherent. But another contender for the most annoying thing about this blog might be the quality of the research. First of all, on the issue of whether there is literally “nothing in” homeopathy, it’s simply a mathematical fact that no active ingredient remains in a typical homeopathically diluted solution – even homeopaths don’t deny this.
But the phrase “nothing in it” can also be taken idiomatically, as an assertion that there’s no value to it, because it doesn’t work. And although this is something that the 10:23 campaign uses in their slogan, and claims to be true, they’ve never said that the group overdose event is going to prove this fact.
I assume this blogger put “prove” in quotes like that because he thinks it implies sarcasm, because he’s certainly not actually quoting the campaign’s own statements about their aim. What the campaign actually says is:
At 10:23am on January 30th, more than three hundred homeopathy sceptics nationwide will be taking part in a mass homeopathic ‘overdose’ in protest at Boots’ continued endorsement and sale of homeopathic remedies, and to raise public awareness about the fact that homeopathic remedies have nothing in them.
“Raising awareness” has always been what it’s about, which is why it’s so funny when detractors accuse it of being a publicity stunt. Yeah, no shit. We know homeopathy is bunk because of science. This campaign is not doing science. It’s doing something noticeable to try and get people to understand the science that’s already been done.
From the woo-blog:
This will once and for all prove there is nothing in homeopathic remedies…or is it?
I know I’ve already argued against this point, I just love how the rhetorical question at the end completely fails to match up with the rest of the sentence… or did I?
Anyway, it then goes on to explain why the 10:23 campaign is so ill-conceived. Apparently those pesky skeptics who think they’re “proving” all sorts of things (they may not have ever claimed it, but you can tell they’re thinking it) would see how wrong-headed they are if they took the time to understand how homeopathy works.
Homeopathic remedies will only have an effect if you are susceptible to them… If you are not susceptible to it, the remedy will not act upon you. This is a basic principle of homeopathy, and what makes it so individualised to the person…
Homeopaths talk a lot about this, that their alternative treatments are specifically tailored to the individual patient, something that mainstream medicine apparently never does. But the focus of the campaign, as mentioned earlier, is that the pharmacy chain Boots currently mass-markets generic homeopathic treatments on their shelves, which anyone can just go in and pick up. They aren’t individually tailored at all. So surely this blogger should be entirely with the 10:23 campaign on this point? At the very least, he’s failed to respond to what they’re trying to do.
Taking one remedy at a time is the same as taking a whole bottle (with potencies beyond 12C). Of course the denialists know this point, and that’s why they know they will be safe in taking the whole bottle as it is the same as taking one pill.
They do know they’ll be safe, but not for the reason you think.
This was actually new to me before I started reading the counter-attacks to 10:23. Apparently taking just one pill has an identical effect to taking a whole bottle (with certain potencies), because they both equate to taking one dose. But doesn’t that mean that you could get the same effect from taking less than one pill? Couldn’t you chop up the pills into smaller fragments before taking them, thus giving yourself many times more doses than you paid for? There’s just as much active ingredient in one flake from a pill as there is in the whole bottle, after all, so one bottle full of pills could last for ages.
I can’t make any sense of this. I’m not aware of any actual medicines that work this way. You don’t see over-the-counter painkillers with labels saying “Hey, take as much as you want, it’s the same as taking just one.” Why would this be true for homeopathy? Well, it’s their magic, let them make it up however they want to. But it’s clear that they’ve just had to find some way of rationalising the fact that it’s apparently impossible to overdose on their sugar pills.
Oh, there is actually an answer to the question of why it would work this way: apparently “this is what homeopaths have found”. Hmm. They’ve found that whether people take one pill, or a whole bottle, the outcome is the same. I think I’m seeing a different obvious explanation than they did.
Also, this still misses the point that it’s a publicity stunt. The 10:23 campaigners are not doing a scientific test here. Those have been done, and you guys lost. Repeatedly. You can’t now complain that they’re doing the attention-grabbing gimmick wrong.
I won’t go through the whole next section of bullshit with a fine-tooth comb, but it’s a typically wacky explanation of what homeopaths call “provings”. You might expect these “provings” to actually prove something, but don’t hold your breath.
In a “proving”, you give a homeopathic treatment to somebody in good health, and watch to see what symptoms they become ill with. Seriously. This is how they decide what disease a homeopathic treatment will cure – give it to someone healthy, and see what disease it looks like they get.
Guys. The universe does not work like this. Magic works like this, and to the best of our knowledge the universe is not fucking magic.
This is also something you don’t see much of in science-based medicine. See, actual doctors have a different way of deciding whether a treatment cures a disease, which involves giving the treatment to people with the disease and seeing if they get better. It’s a radical notion, but goshdarnit if there isn’t some actual sense to it.
Oh god, am I still ranting? Surely that’s quite enough of me.
Hmmm, one of Australia’s biggest homeopathy websites begs to differ on the issue of dosage
The remedy was correct – it matched your symptoms and was the:
* Right strength (potency)
* Right amount (dose)
* Right number of repetitions (frequency)
AND…
Even when the remedy is a good match for your symptoms it can temporarily intensify them if:
* The dose is too large,
* The potency incorrect, or
* It has been given too frequently
If anything, one big problem the sceptics might have with the “more educated” believers is that they are all effectively acting as provers so an overdose of sleeping pills will keep them awake. So if they use sleeping pills, as I believe is the intent, and they stay awake, they will actually reinforce the case for homeopathic provings (especially if the use the popular “non drowsy” sleeping pills!). And if they fall asleep, they’ll support the case for efficacy. It’s a potential win/win for nonsense but the publicity will still be a laugh.
Of course if the box contains an overdose warning, that is something that will need to be publicised.
“…to the best of our knowledge the universe is not fucking magic.”
Genius. Just genius.
:-)
But doesn’t that mean that you could get the same effect from taking less than one pill? Couldn’t you chop up the pills into smaller fragments before taking them, thus giving yourself many times more doses than you paid for?
Actually that’s completely consistent with the whole idea of homeopathy. The whole “science” of homeopathy is predicated on the notion that diluting the “medicine” down to imperceptible levels makes it more effective. So hey, why not?
I am a bit worried about the 10:23 campaign though. It has the possibility to backfire if people get sick after downing an entire bottle of homeopathic “medicine” after all. And I can’t imagine eating an entire bottle of sugar pills in a single sitting would do much for my stomach personally, so I hope that the folks involved think about that beforehand and make sure they aren’t downing sugar pills on a completely empty stomach.
I once knew a very nice herbalist and aromatherapist who did however believe in some of the shadier stuff. She told me, in all good faith, that if you write the name of a homoeopathic remedy on a piece of paper, stand a glass of water on the paper, and then drink the water, it is miraculously just as effective as taking the remedy in pill form.
Presumably the main reason why so many people still believe in homoeopathy is that it utilises the single most effective form of treatment known to man: the placebo effect. In my experience it uses it rather well, as homoeopaths have more time to sit with their patients and go into details than your average harrassed GP does, so the patient is more likely to be convinced that their treatment will work. Homoeopaths will ask their patients about the oddest tiny little details, such as which side they sleep on (for something completely unrelated to that physically, obviously it’s relevant in the case of, say, increasing shoulder pain), and this makes the patient feel even more as if they are being taken seriously and the homoeopath really cares about them and will fix the problem. It probably provides a useful example of how to get the patient in a state where they are thinking positively to the benefit of their recovery, but of course it’s all completely fraudulent and should be stopped. Anyway, perhaps doing something like extending the standard time a GP spends with a patient might increase the likelihood of recovery, although it’s not as if the NHS has time to spare.
I think a vital part of any campaign to boost public understanding of science-based medicine, and why alternative medicines are generally rejected by the mainstream community, has to be to explain the placebo effect. I know I’ve been guilty of over-abbreviation myself before and said things like “Homeopathy doesn’t work”, but really what we’re saying is that it doesn’t work better than a placebo.
And the various aspects of the placebo effect often involved when someone visits a homeopath are far from negligible – like you say, they get to have a nice long sit down and a pleasant chat by someone who expressing probably genuine concern for their overall well-being, and that really can do people a lot of good, for their health and happiness. And in an ideal world the NHS would be able to take some lessons from the positive effects that a lot of alternative practitioners have had – it’s just that these effects have nothing to do with the efficacy of the medication itself.
Absolutely, and however nice the person they’re having a sit-down with, however good their intentions, it’s still a fraudulent therapy which could end up causing a patient to turn down genuine and necessary medical treatment in its favour.
I’d still say that homoeopathy doesn’t work, just that it’s not homoeopathy that’s working, it’s a bog-standard placebo. I do think that it provides a very useful study of how the placebo effect can be well applied, because there are techniques in there which should be very useful as long as they’re applied as part of an honest and effective type of medicine. Finding out which questions to ask to reassure the patient the most and make them feel that they are being treated as an individual, that sort of thing. User compliance can be shockingly low with some meds, either because the patient distrusts them (antidepressants, for instance), or because the meds needed tweaking and the patient gave up instead of going back to the doctor.
Something else that occurs to me is that people can get very emotional about illness. My mother is convinced that homoeopathy works because when she was being treated for breast cancer, she took a homoeopathic medicine as well as conventional treatment, so she thinks that it saved her life and can’t bear to think otherwise.
It’s more than just placebo. It’s self-limiting conditions – like colds and aches – too.
And then there’s coincidence – when something that might not normally improve just happens to improve – those miraculous recoveries that occur after you start using homeopathy (or praying to Mary MacKillop or performing rain dances or …)
None of them is an easy sell because for placebo you’re effectively telling the patient “you’re just imagining your illness. If you imagine wellness instead, you’ll get better”. Short version “you’re nuts”. I know that’s not the message being transmitted – but it is likely the message being received.
Explaining away miracles is no easier. People have to have a definitive reason why something happened. It doesn’t matter if it’s prayer or fake medicine or numerology or giving all their cursed money to a psychic healer – they’ll likely never get their head around the Law of Large Numbers explanation.
>>Homeopathic remedies will only have an effect if you are susceptible to them…
Oh, well, that explains it then. How terribly convenient. Like ‘you can only see fairies if you believe in them’.
Friggin’ idiots.