All entries for Monday 21 December 2009

I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that.

Writing about web page http://www.badscience.net/

Homeopathy is a system of medicine which is based on treating the individual with highly diluted substances given in mainly tablet form, which triggers the body’s natural system of healing.

Dilutions are made up to either 1 part tincture to 10 parts water (1x) or 1 part tincture to 100 parts water (1c). Repeated dilution results in the familiar 6x, 6c or 30c potencies that can be bought over the counter: the 30c represents an infinitessimal part of the original substance.

Quotes copy/pasted from http://www.homeopathy-soh.org/about-homeopathy/what-is-homeopathy/

So a 30c dilution will be a one part tincture diluted in to 100 parts of water, which is diluted with another 100 parts of water, which is diluted with another 100 parts of water, repeat another 27 times. Homeopaths claim that the result of this process is an effective medical treatment.

In Bad Science, Ben Goldacre describes a 30c dilution thus:

Imagine a sphere of water with a diameter of 150 million kilometres (the distance form the earth to the sun). It takes light eight minutes to travel that distance. Picture a sphere of water that size, with one molecule of a substance in it: that's a 30c dilution.

If you read the above linked homepathy page you will of course find an explanation of how such a substance can be an effective medial treatment. The explanation is not one I find credible, but there are plenty of people who do.

Another part of this book which has stuck in my mind is the manner in which HIV and AIDS has been handled by the South African government.

South Africa's stand at the 2006 World AIDS Conference in Toronto was described by delegates as the 'salad stall'. It consisted of some garlic, some beetroot, the African potato, and assorted other vegetables.

Ben Goldacre is a medical doctor who works for the NHS and the topics covered in this book are almost exclusively of a medical nature. It's not just about medicine though, or even just about bad science. It's very often about the appallingly inaccurate and/or misleading manner in which most science stories are reported by the media. It's about how a study which finds that under certain circumstances the number of instances of X appears to have risen from the previously observed 4% to 6% will appear in a newspaper as 'new study finds 50% increase in cases of X'. It's about how a lot of medical studies have flaws but how, despite what some people mistakenly believe, those flaws do not necessarily invalidate the findings. It's about how some people can't understand that when the scientific community decides that something previously considered to be true is not actually true after all, or is only true under certain circumstances, this is called progress, not failure. It's about how in this country a storm of controversy can rage for the best part of decade regarding the use of a vaccine, whilst in the rest of the developed world it's use continued unabated by any such contraversy. It's about how some people will dress up common sense as something proprietary, the difference between someone who lies and someone who bullshits and about how people who do one or more of these things in relation to matters of science have managed to make a lot of money out of it.

You should read this book.

Mike Willis : 21 Dec 2009 16:08 |  Tags: Book Review |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem