Quick tips for critical thinking demo tomorrow...

[Z]

Hey, guys.

For our College Success Skills class, I've been tapped to do a presentation on Critical Thinking for the class (Yay, me!), and I want to do the classic Homeopathic Quack demo. I bought Coffea Cruda 30C, indicated for sleeplessness, and I just wanted to verify that 30C was, in fact, a safe dosage (they also had 30X and 6X, which, IIRC, are less 'potent' but may actually have coffee in them).

And if you have any general tips...?

The class is at 4 PM tomorrow (Wednesday) afternoon, EST. If you have tips, please post them prior to 3 PM tomorrow?

Thanks a mil!

Zedzimzoeybob

[Mojo]

A 30C preparation is pretty safe, unless you were to rely on it to actually do anything. That's an overall dilution of 1:1060 (the C indicates a 1:100 dilution, the 30 that this was done 30 times). Or to write it out in full, 1:1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,00 0,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. If you were to give two billion doses per second of something this dilute to six billion people, then on average one of them would receive a single molecule of the coffee about every 4 billion years. That comes from the Wikipedia homoeopathy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeopathy#Dilutions) article, by the way - it doesn't have a reference but I checked the maths when it was originally put up and it seemed to be OK.

The 30X remedy would also not contain any of the coffee, but would only be diluted by a factor of about a million beyond the point at which there was none left - Avogadro's constant is about 6X1023, so the point at which there would be effectively none left is 24X or 12C.

The 6X is a 1 in a million dilution, so while there will still be something there, it almost certainly wouldn't be enough to have any effect. There's a discussion somewhere on the forum in which people tried to identifiy substances that would have a substantial effect at that sort of dilution. I can't remember what the conclusions were. See also the note about permitted levels of arsenic in drinking water in the Wikipedia article.

[Careyp74]

I know the demonstration you are referring to, as a way to argue against homeopathy, but I think it is missing the mark on critical thinking.

Why not search through the web for debunked items like pictures and stories. The more realistic the better. Then explain how critical thinking can lead someone to the truth of things and show the debunking. There is a lot on here, one current one is the picture of the moving candles.

http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=156304

[Z]

A 30C preparation is pretty safe, unless you were to rely on it to actually do anything. That's an overall dilution of 1:1060 (the C indicates a 1:100 dilution, the 30 that this was done 30 times). Or to write it out in full, 1:1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,00 0,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. If you were to give two billion doses per second of something this dilute to six billion people, then on average one of them would receive a single molecule of the coffee about every 4 billion years. That comes from the Wikipedia homoeopathy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeopathy#Dilutions) article, by the way - it doesn't have a reference but I checked the maths when it was originally put up and it seemed to be OK.

The 30X remedy would also not contain any of the coffee, but would only be diluted by a factor of about a million beyond the point at which there was none left - Avogadro's constant is about 6X1023, so the point at which there would be effectively none left is 24X or 12C.

The 6X is a 1 in a million dilution, so while there will still be something there, it almost certainly wouldn't be enough to have any effect. There's a discussion somewhere on the forum in which people tried to identifiy substances that would have a substantial effect at that sort of dilution. I can't remember what the conclusions were. See also the note about permitted levels of arsenic in drinking water in the Wikipedia article.

Thank you, Mr. Spock. :D

Actually, these were the numbers I was looking for... just how many doses you'd need to get even a single molecule of 'active ingredient'.

Originally, I was looking at taking a critical approach to religion in the presentation, but in this Bible Belt-Buckle country, thought that might prove a bad idea. Instead, I'm going to open with the Homeopathy Suicide Attempt, discuss the basics of critical thinking and common fallacies, and go over a few urban legends that people around here pass off as fact, with a resources sheet that includes Snopes and JREF, among other things, to pass out. I have less than five minutes to present, in which I also need to present concerning an interview with a teacher - two presentations, total five minute span...

So it's going to be fast and furious. Mainly I want to focus on Internet Research and critical thinking, since this class is about college skills - preventing students from thinking Wikipedia is a good source for research papers, not using Boiron as a source of data about homeopathy, etc.

[jasonpatterson]

The 6x preparation would contain less coffee than a cup that held coffee but was rinsed out and refilled with water. If that's unsafe levels of coffee, then so be it.

Randi does a good demo of homeopathy in which he takes an entire bottle of 'medicine' at the beginning of a talk. I assume you're planning on doing much the same, drinking the entire coffee-based remedy (all of however many doses you got) at once and seeing whether you instantly fall asleep. Take care that the remedy that you've chosen doesn't actually contain anything but water and/or sugar.

[Z]

The 6x preparation would contain less coffee than a cup that held coffee but was rinsed out and refilled with water. If that's unsafe levels of coffee, then so be it.

Randi does a good demo of homeopathy in which he takes an entire bottle of 'medicine' at the beginning of a talk. I assume you're planning on doing much the same, drinking the entire coffee-based remedy (all of however many doses you got) at once and seeing whether you instantly fall asleep. Take care that the remedy that you've chosen doesn't actually contain anything but water and/or sugar.

Yep, that's the one - a bottle of the pill-form 30C preparation. A little research shows these are just basic, run-of-the-mill sugar pills, essentially. In fact, they look a bit like miniature, uncolored Smarties.

EDIT: Now watch me take the bottle and go into a diabetic coma... :p

[Pantaz]

Just be sure the "preparation" you've obtained doesn't contain additional ingredients. Many of the things sold as homeopathic actually contain herbal substances that may have physiological effects.

[Prometheus]

How will you eliminate the potential objection that the pills you use are a prop? Doesn't Randi have someone from the audience go out and buy them from a nearby pharmacy during his talk?

[athon]

I know the demonstration you are referring to, as a way to argue against homeopathy, but I think it is missing the mark on critical thinking.

Why not search through the web for debunked items like pictures and stories. The more realistic the better. Then explain how critical thinking can lead someone to the truth of things and show the debunking. There is a lot on here, one current one is the picture of the moving candles.

http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=156304

Ditto.

What you're doing, Z, isn't critical thinking as much as straight out debunking. If you were invited to do a class on pseudoscience, your demonstration would be a good one.

Critical thinking isn't about 'that is wrong - this is right'. It is about evaluating text for its inherent worth, discussing and ranking opinions based on the context of information.

It'd be far better to refer to statistical 'evidence' for certain claims (I love this graph (http://imgur.com/kfCmN.jpg), for instance) and discuss the merits and pitfalls of such information. Carey's suggestion of discussing such photographs is also a good one, as it allows you to demonstrate this evaluation and ranking process.

I strongly advise you to avoid debunking as a means of representing critical thinking. Put simply - it isn't the same thing.

Athon

[Kevin_Lowe]

Do you have some blinker fluid and a long weight? I find them very useful for these sorts of demonstrations. Any good hardware store should have both and the staff will be able to explain how you use them.

[Z]

How will you eliminate the potential objection that the pills you use are a prop? Doesn't Randi have someone from the audience go out and buy them from a nearby pharmacy during his talk?
With only five minutes, I don't have time for that sort of thing; but I am calling up a member of the audience to verify the product. It still has a price sticker from the store I purchased the product from. That's about the best I can do.

Meanwhile, the lion's share of my talk consists of talking points straight from our textbook - history of critical thinking, some common fallacies, using critical thinking when evaluating information resources, evaluation of web resources. The homeopathy debunking is as much attention-grabber as anything else.

What's going to make this interesting is that the locals are not very pro-homeopathy to begin with - I might have been better trying to 'debunk' the medicinal use of whiskey... :D

[jasonpatterson]

Do you have some blinker fluid and a long weight? I find them very useful for these sorts of demonstrations. Any good hardware store should have both and the staff will be able to explain how you use them.

Blinker fluid? Can you explain how you might use these two things, I'm curious...

[Z]

Blinker fluid? Can you explain how you might use these two things, I'm curious...

It's not all that different from brake fluid for the HEMTT/HEMAT vehicles in the army. The instructions are filed in the same army manual as the instructions for use of the light bulb repair kit, the replacement of the chem-light battery, and the manual testing of shock absorbers on M1 Tanks and MLRS vehicles.