Testable claim.

[Rolfe]

I spy someone who could soon be $1,000,000 richer!

Being sure about over-the-counter remedies (http://www.hpathy.com/FORUM/display_topic_threads.asp?ForumID=2&TopicID=1370&PagePosition=1), on H'pathy.Naturalhealth
There are also ways of testing the remedies too, so that you could distinguish them from just pure tap water.

QAman
How can this be done? I presume you mean testing of the lower dilution remedies?

Naturalhealth
No. This can be done for all remedies.Our very own "Homeoskeptic" (Naturalhealth) can do it! How! Tell us more!

Note also:When I go to Helios to get a remedy, I normally wait for it and I can see them making the remedy for myself, so I can see them going through the potentisation process myself with the dilution and succussion.Funny she never mentioned this when we were all discussing how they managed the logistics of all these remedies and whether they really did prepare each one individually! I wonder what "potency" they start with?

Never mind though, we can confidently look forward to the JREF Prize being awarded real soon now. Let's hear it for Naturalhealth, millionnaire!

Edited to add: I see she said, distinguish from pure tap water, not from the stock solvent. I'll be really disappointed if the answer is just that homoeopathic remedies are made up in ultrapure water, so you can distinguish that from tap water, or in a water/alcohol mixture, which again you can distinguish from tap water. Distinguish potentised remedy from chemically identical solvent is required, I believe.

Rolfe.

[exarch]

I can hardly refrain from quickly creating a new identity there and popping the big question ... :D

[Prester John]

I like the way NH only answered the second question posed by QAman.

[Prester John]

Looks like they deleted the thread, very quick censorship over there today. Gosh once more their intellectual superioritory and iron clad arguments shine through.

[exarch]

Originally posted by Prester John
Looks like they deleted the thread, very quick censorship over there today. Gosh once more their intellectual superioritory and iron clad arguments shine through.I had created a new username called "Randi's million" and said in big red letters "How do you do it?"

I guess they got the message :roll: :roll:

:dl:

At least now we know they're hypocrites as well :D

[Rolfe]

Originally posted by Prester John
Looks like they deleted the thread, very quick censorship over there today. Gosh once more their intellectual superioritory and iron clad arguments shine through. Topic: There are no thread's in the database relating to this topic(Love the punctuation. Eats, shoots and leaves indeed!)

Well well. Is this the first time they've actually deleted something rather than just locked the thread?

Now, I posted this thread as my last act of the morning before driving over to Portsmouth to visit a client. So the H'pathy thread was still there in a second browser window when I returned and saw from the remarks here that they'd deleted it. Gone, but not forgotten. It's on my hard disc now. I'm tempted to upload it myself and restore the link! I only saw as far as "No, this can be done for all remedies." Does anyone know if there were any more posts before nemesis (presumably in the form of JanZy) struck?

Naturalhealth, that was Grade-A brain-dead. All you had to do was to say that you could personally recommend Helios, Ainsworths and Freemans, and leave it at that. Unnecessary hostages to fortune are not generally regarded as good tactics.

Rolfe.

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Bet y'all didn't know that I can distinguish homeopathic remedies from pure gasoline.

~~ Paul

[exarch]

Originally posted by Rolfe
Now, I posted this thread as my last act of the morning before driving over to Portsmouth to visit a client. So the H'pathy thread was still there in a second browser window when I returned and saw from the remarks here that they'd deleted it. Gone, but not forgotten. It's on my hard disc now. I'm tempted to upload it myself and restore the link! I only saw as far as "No, this can be done for all remedies." Does anyone know if there were any more posts before nemesis (presumably in the form of JanZy) struck?Yes!! I posted with the username "Randi's million", and the comment in big red letters was "How do you do it?".

That's when the thread got unceremoniously deep-sixed :rolleyes:
I knew I should have kept that window active, although I thought they would just lock the thread :(

[olaf]

Originally posted by Rolfe
(?

Now, I posted this thread as my last act of the morning before driving over to Portsmouth to visit a client.

Rolfe.

you live in scotland. i have a sick animal. i will need to visit you.

portsmouth-- no

http://www.aboutscotland.com/tour/tourmap.html where?

[Rolfe]

What's she on about? :nope:

Rolfe.

[Lisa Simpson]

She thinks you live in Scotland, despite what your location thingie says.

[olaf]

maybe she moved. zep says she is a scottish lady. cat-riona is a scottish lady. she grew up in scotland.

that is okay. i will locate your practice. my animals are worth it.

[Rolfe]

Ignore her. I intend to.

Rolfe.

[Lisa Simpson]

Originally posted by Rolfe
Ignore her. I intend to.

Rolfe.

Oh, I no longer respond to Olaf; it's too much like the old adage of trying to teach a pig to sing.

But you did ask a question, and I deciphered the crazy-talk as best as I could to answer you. :)

[Benguin]

OI YOU LOT!

I got banned and my thread burned before I got chance to see the replies!!!!

I thought it was a fair question, too, I wasn't planning to be rude, just draw them out on the difference between their remedies and water.

[Rolfe]

Originally posted by Lisa Simpson
Oh, I no longer respond to Olaf; it's too much like the old adage of trying to teach a pig to sing.

But you did ask a question, and I deciphered the crazy-talk as best as I could to answer you. :) Yes, indeed, and I thank you for it. I doubt if Xanta will though, as she already threw a strop because I called her a nag (as in, "you can lead a horse to water...." so, much the same comment).

My "ignore her" was in fact directed at the post which came after yours. Which was the point I decided not even to access her new posts.

Rolfe.

[Rolfe]

Originally posted by Benguin
I got banned and my thread burned before I got chance to see the replies!!!!

I thought it was a fair question, too, I wasn't planning to be rude, just draw them out on the difference between their remedies and water. Of course it was a fair question. And it would have gone on just nicely if Naturalhealth hadn't thrown in that ridiculous hostage to fortune, quite gratuitously. Once that statement was there, there was no way the JREF onlookers were going to stay quiet.

I've got all of the thread apart from Exarch's last addition. I imagine that posting the whole page and relinking would be a copyright problem, but here is the bare text of the replies:militantmom
It would seem best to stick with a pharmacy that you know and trust. Otherwise you cannot be sure what you are purchasing.

Naturalhealth
The homeopathic pharmacies in England are all reputable. These are Helios, Ainsworths and Freeman's in Scotland.

Personally, I use Helios, as I think they are the best. All the people that work in homeopathic pharmacies that are responsible for remedy making in any way are all either trained homeopaths or homeopathic pharmacists. Being trained homeopaths and pharmacists, they will follow preparation procedure to the letter. They have their reputation to up hold and it is not worth that reputation. If people were not happy, they would soon lose custom and people would go elsewhere to get remedies.

When I go to Helios to get a remedy, I normally wait for it and I can see them making the remedy for myself, so I can see them going through the potentisation process myself with the dilution and succussion.

Helios are one of the largest homeopathic pharmacies in England. They have their reputation to consider, so it is just not worth their while doing anything that would destroy that.

Rest assured, all their remedies are exactly what they say they are.

There are also ways of testing the remedies too, so that you could distinguish them from just pure tap water.

QAman
"There are also ways of testing the remedies too, so that you could distinguish them from just pure tap water."

How can this be done? I presume you mean testing of the lower dilution remedies?

Naturalhealth
No. This can be done for all remedies.I have no idea at all who "QAman" is, if it wasn't you. But even that wasn't an unreasonable interjection. Naturalhealth dug the grave all by her own little self.

Then you can blame Exarch for shovelling in the earth.

Rolfe.

[Benguin]

Well QAman is not me ..

I'd love to know what this test is. But then I suspect you would too!

[Rolfe]

Originally posted by Benguin
I'd love to know what this test is. But then I suspect you would too! Not half! I really don't have a clue.

I have even less of a clue why she would assert there was such a test, when here, she didn't claim any such thing despite being asked the direct question several times. She clearly doesn't honestly believe in the test's existence or we'd have heard. Just the usual homoeopathic habit of saying whatever they fancy, irrespective of whether it is true or not, and hoping that mostly they won't be called on it.

My next question would have been, is is something I could do myself, or does the remedy have to be sent to a lab? Then I'd have tried my luck on how the test actually worked, or what it tested for. Except I was in Portsmouth.

I suspect it would have been something only a highly specialist physics lab could do, but rest assured, this is regularly used as a QA check. (Yes, whoever you are, QAman was a clever nick.)

Or maybe in the end, if pushed, it would have been a test which could distinguish the stock solvent, whatever that happens to be ("nuclear water"?) from tap water. Though in fact this ruse requires more sophistry aforethought than I credit Naturalhealth with possessing.

Rolfe.

[Benguin]

I would propose a test involving me posting solutions to one address and a key for the identities to another ...

Any one up for it?

I'll offer a tenner, I can't compete with Randi

[Lisa Simpson]

I'll put up ten bucks too, but I don't know if $20 US is much of an incentive to anyone.

I'd love to see the end results though.

[exarch]

OK, another try :(

Sorry 'bout that thread Benguin. I managed to refrain from posting a reply to it for almost 5 minutes :) (actually, I posted a response about 10 to 15 minutes after posting my first response here).

My post, as far as I can remember, (and as far as I can reproduce it again after this smegging board broke down on me again and swallowed my post :mad:) as posted on H'pathy:Posted with the handle "Randi's million"

Wow Naturalhealth, that's quite a claim you've made there.

So how do you do it?

The thread probably got deleted less than an hour after this was posted. I guess that means I now hold the record for fastest banning from H'pathy for asking an innocent question and being responsible for the first ever sencorred thread :D

This is definitely going in my sig for a while :D

[exarch]

Damn!!

By now 4 people have replied :mad:

[Rolfe]

Originally posted by Benguin
I would propose a test involving me posting solutions to one address and a key for the identities to another ...

Any one up for it?

I'll offer a tenner, I can't compete with Randi A friend of mine is currently trying to get homoeopaths to volunteer to participate in exactly this test. No prizes, low-key so as not to frighten the horses. Just a scientific study.

Amazing how many of them say this is completely unhomoeopathic and he doesn't know what he's talking about and so on - even though he's leaving the test design entirely up to them.

Of coures, he's expecting that they'll do a proving rather than an in vitro analysis, but no method is forbidden.

We conclude that homoeopathy only works when everyone knows exactly what has been taken, allowing you to tailor your explanation precisely to the circumstances that arise.

Rolfe.

[Prester John]

cough i was QAman cough cough.

(i work in a QA lab)

[Benguin]

A friend of mine is currently trying to get homoeopaths to volunteer to participate in exactly this test. No prizes, low-key so as not to frighten the horses.

Now you wouldn't be using a deliberately provocative turn of phrase would you!

I wonder ... given what the stuff is (or is not) would these people be committing fraud if they were selling just plain tap water?

:D :D :D :D :D

[Corallinus]

This is simply not true at all.

Most homeopaths will not tell people what remedy they are being given until at least the first or second follow-up consultation. They do not know what they have been given and the remedy still works.

Also, no self-respecting homeopathic pharmacy sells tap water. They are all homeopaths that work there, whether they are ordinary homeopaths or homeopathic pharmacists.

I have heard that their standards are very high and they have very good quality control of all their products. I once had a tour round Helios and it was brilliant.

Why not contact them and ask them. I am sure that they would be more than happy to give you a tour of the pharmacy and you can see them making the remedies. I had a great time when I went.

The guy at Tunbridge Wells is called John Morgan and he is a homeopath as well as being a homeopathic pharmacist. He was great.

[Rolfe]

:dl:

Rolfe.

[richardm]

Originally posted by Corallinus
This is simply not true at all.

Most homeopaths will not tell people what remedy they are being given until at least the first or second follow-up consultation. They do not know what they have been given and the remedy still works.


But they do tell 'em it's a remedy, right?

[Benguin]

Coral,

Leaving aside our views on the differences between tap water and homeo remedies ... the thread was actually about over the counter remedies. Unfortunately it got blasted from the hpathy 'discussion' board as it was dangerously close to a real question.

What we were talking about was the kind of stuff you can walk into a health food shop like Holland & Barrett and buy without speaking to anyone. Obviously if you watch someone make it from scratch you know you are getting what they say you are getting, and if you trust them to make it unsupervised it's just an issue between you and them.

I wanted to know how you would establish something bought in a box was efficacious (steady, rolfe) and not just tapwater, or solvent or whatever.

[Prester John]

Quality Control, what exactly does it mean ? Well its quite possible to produce homeopathic remedies in a "Quality Environment". Even get certificates such as ISO 9000 to show that you are a quality company. However what this shows is that you have procedures in place, lots of SOPs, with good document control etc, and that basically you make your product as YOU say YOU DO. Moreover you can prove it all with documentation.

This however does not imply in any way that the product does what you say it does, only that you made it to your own methods.

What NH was claiming was that they were able to test the remedies to show they were not tap water. This is different from the above, as it would involve actual testing of the remedies. Assuming it was not a clever differentiate tap water from "ultrapure" water dodge or some other similar word play, there is a claim that is testable. I would however guess that NH was impressed by their quality control claims and misunderstood what they meant.

[Benguin]

Yes, sorry, I shouldn't really have used the word efficacious.

Any difference at all would be of note.

I wanted homeopathic folk to explain to me how to differentiate their potions from tap water (or each other maybe) from the angle of asking how they would establish a company is selling correct potions and not just any old stuff.

[geni]

Originally posted by Corallinus
This is simply not true at all.

Most homeopaths will not tell people what remedy they are being given until at least the first or second follow-up consultation. They do not know what they have been given and the remedy still works.

They know that they have been given a remedy so the placebo effect still applies. You really don't understand blinding do you?

Also, no self-respecting homeopathic pharmacy sells tap water. They are all homeopaths that work there, whether they are ordinary homeopaths or homeopathic pharmacists.


Prove it


I have heard that their standards are very high and they have very good quality control of all their products. I once had a tour round Helios and it was brilliant.

Why not contact them and ask them. I am sure that they would be more than happy to give you a tour of the pharmacy and you can see them making the remedies. I had a great time when I went.
How do you get on these tours?


The guy at Tunbridge Wells is called John Morgan and he is a homeopath as well as being a homeopathic pharmacist. He was great.

Making up remedies doesn't require that much skill I've done it myself

[Rolfe]

Originally posted by Benguin
I wanted homeopathic folk to explain to me how to differentiate their potions from tap water (or each other maybe) from the angle of asking how they would establish a company is selling correct potions and not just any old stuff. This is precisely the point, and can we possibly drag the discussion back to it in the teeth of the homoeopaths' attempts to change the subject.

How is it possible to tell the "potentised" remedy from the stock solvent? For an OTC remedy (that is one you haven't either prepared yourself or watched being prepared), how can you tell that the manufacturer has actually given you something that has been through all the diluting and succussing from the (correct?) mother tincture, and hasn't just given you some of the stock solvent or stock sugar pills off the supply shelf? Or alternatively, has actually given you 30C Belladonna rather than 1M Pulsatilla?

By the way, simply asserting that no self-respecting manufacturer would do this doesn't even begin to address the question.

Real medicines can be analyed to prove that they contain what they say they contain. You can take a bottle off the shelf and test the pills to prove that each one really does have 300 mg aspirin in it.

Naturalhealth claimed that something similar was possible for homoeopathic remedies. Even if not to tell 30C Belladonna from 1M Pulastilla, at least to tell either of these from the stock solvent.

We want to know how. Particularly since if this is really possible, the person who can do it is owed $1,000,000 by the JREF (to paraphrase a rather more complicated contractural situation!).

Rolfe.

[Reginald]

Well as PJ says for the company to be ISO registered they have to have procedures and manuals. They also have to keep records showing that the procedures were adhered to at every stage. But as he quite rightly pointed out, all that does is state that you did what you say you did. A company manufacturing bolts without threads could get ISO registration.

What I would find interesting is that they will have to have inspection procedures. Those procedures would have to contain quantifiable parameters and tolerances.

In order to generate the procedure they would have to describe the product. I wonder just what they describe it as?

[exarch]

Originally posted by Prester John
Quality Control, what exactly does it mean ? Well its quite possible to produce homeopathic remedies in a "Quality Environment". Even get certificates such as ISO 9000 to show that you are a quality company. However what this shows is that you have procedures in place, lots of SOPs, with good document control etc, and that basically you make your product as YOU say YOU DO. Moreover you can prove it all with documentation.An ISO 9000 (QS 9000?) certificate isn't just about procedures and document control, is it? I think it also requires quality control and documented corrective measures. It does in our company. Not to mention frequent internal audits and at least 1 annual external audit by qualified auditing company (amthough in our company they seem to be most interested in the quality control department).

Not to mention that QS 9000 requires an ISO 14001 certificate (safety and environment), which means that they have to prove, among other things, that they don't pollute by dumping their waste product down the drain untreated.

No way in hell is a company like Boiron ever going to get those kinds of certifications without telling the truth about their homeopathic remedies: they're all tap water! Quality control confirms it, waste water measurements confirm it. And safety? Well, it ain't exactly a chemical hazard, now is it? So all they really have to do for the ISO 14001 is make sure they put the paper in the paper-bin and the plastic in the plastic-bin, etc.

[Benguin]

I know we keep saying tap water ... what is it they actually use? surely they would start with distilled water or something?

[Prester John]

We are ISO 9001 and registered, which covers design,development, production, installation and servicing the requirements of goods or services that are specified by the customer in terms of how they must perform. As Exarch said it does require corrective action, audit and QC.

The important item to note is that ISO does not define how you make your product, or what your customers requirements are.

For homeopathy by defining the requirements as remedies that have been diluted and succused in the correct homeopathic manner, you can avoid the need for actual testing of the remedies. All you would require is the documentation to show that all the remedies are manufactured as stated. Homeopathic customers are likely to define their requirements in these terms as well, thus showing you are meeting customer requirements. (To clarify, homeopathic remedies are defined as dilutions eg 6C, not as solutions 0.000000001M (Molar) belladonna(apologies to chemists)) .

Not knowing what quality scheme they use, if any for that matter its hard to comment specifically.

[geni]

Originally posted by Benguin
I know we keep saying tap water ... what is it they actually use? surely they would start with distilled water or something?

Hanneman probably didn't use distilled water so there is no reason for them to. How ever we have herd tell of something called nuclear grade water. I don't think we've worked out what that is yet.

[Rolfe]

The solvent is quite often described as an alcohol/water mixture, too. King Bio make a selling point of specifically using water with no alcohol, so they're teetotaller-friendly!

For the people who use the alcohol mix, we don't know precisely who they are, we don't know the proportion of alcohol to water, we don't know purity requirements for the alcohol, and most importantly we don't know what the presence of the alcohol in the mix does to all their woo-theories about memory of "water".

But it's all fairly moot anyway, since most remedies seem to be sold as sugar pills, and whatever the solvent was, it's all evaporated away.

Rolfe.