Re: A larger presence, the unknowable total of all there is

"...for the purposes of popular discourse, it is not necessary for
homeopaths to prove their case. It is merely necessary for them to
create walls of obfuscation, and superficially plausible technical
do***ents that sup****t their case, in order to keep the dream alive in
the imaginations of both the media and their defenders."
--Ben Goldacre


On May 16, 11:11 am, Citizen Jimserac <Jimse...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> On May 16, 10:49 am, DharmaTroll
>
> NUMEROUS double blinded placebo controlled
> tests gave POSITIVE results for Homeopathy
> applied to various illnesses in
> MANY scientific journals, even non-Homeopathic
> ones.
>
> Here... perhaps you do not read well,

I read well enough to read the history of homeopathy, and how by
giving people a magic sugar pill, it saved lives because all the other
quack treatments, like blood-letting, etc., killed the patients.

I read well enough to see that the claims are absurd, that
homopathetic medicine consists of giving a sugar pill to someone and
telling them stories about magic water with woo-woo memories.

And I read well enough to see that homopathetic medicine has never
been distinguished from regular sugar pills, when you switch the magic
sugar pills with different ones.  There have been several reviews of
various studies of the effectiveness of homeopathic treatments and not
a single one of these reviews concludes that there is good evidence
for any homeopathic remedy (HR) being effective!  Homeopaths have had
over 200 years to demonstrate their wares and have failed to do so.
Sure, there are single studies that have found statistically
significant differences between groups treated with an HR and control
groups, but none of these have been replicated or they have been
marred by methodological faults.  Two hundred years and we're still
waiting for proof!  Having an open mind is one thing; waiting forever
for evidence is just a pseudoscience game.

And I read well enough to have read the review of the reviews of
homeopathic studies was done by Terence Hines (2003: 360-362).  He
reviewed Taylor et al. (2000), Wagner (1997), Sampson and London
(1995), Kleijen, Knipschild, and ter Riet (1991), and Hill and Doyon
(1990).  More than 100 studies have failed to come to any definitive
positive conclusions about homeopathic potions.  Ramey (2000) notes
that

"Homeopathy has been the subject of at least 12 scientific reviews,
including meta-analytic studies, published since the mid-1980s....
[And] the findings are remarkably consistent:....homeopathic
"remedies" are not effective."

You can post all the babble you wish, and all the nonsense links, but
there is not one legitimate clinical trial that's actually scientific
and replicated; and when people make sure that a study is done
legitimately, such as James Randi, somehow there have never been
differences from the magic woo-woo sugar pills and normal sugar pills.

Go figure.  What's next?  Are you going to claim that God interferes
with the serious, well-done tests so that the woo-woo effect only
shows up when the believers take the magic pill and aren't being
tested?

--DharmaTroll