Ooh, the big fat homeopathic fibber!

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/science/other_medicine.shtml

Peter Fisher, Woo to Royalty.

"There is a surprisingly large number of clinical trials of homeopathy, over 200 clinical trials of homeopathy and everybody who's looked at them, everybody you can do something called mesh analysis where you get all the results and pool them using a statistical technique called metanalysis. Everybody who's done that concludes that the evidence says homeopathy really does work compared to placebo, it is not a placebo effect."

Words fail me. Perhaps someone who has collated the meta-analyses could send him their abstracts.

In the programme, Anna Ford was letting David Reilly get away with making very puffed up claims about his own research, which was pretty frustrating.

[Rolfe]

This is a big part of the problem, isn't it. They tell lies. The vet homoeopaths do it too. You've read them.

Now scientists aren't supposed to tell lies. It's not polite to imply that a fellow professional is telling lies. To the point where it is the person who makes that suggestion who will often get the flak.

Still, it's a pity they couldn't find even one person to say, "that isn't really true, is it Dr. Fisher? (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?s=&postid=1870619770#post1870619770)"

Rolfe.

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

Thanks for the link back to that.

I was Googling for some means of contacting Fisher and I found this great page;

http://www.ucl.ac.uk/Pharmacology/dc-bits/quack.html

With this priceless quote from him;

"Over these years we have come to believe that conventional RCTs [randomised controlled trials] are unlikely to capture the possible benefits of homeopathy . . . . It seems more important to define if homeopathists can genuinely control patients' symptoms and less relevant to have concerns about whether this is due to a 'genuine' effect or to influencing the placebo response"

[Rolfe]

"They'll come and take you away, you know." Comment from my laboratory manager, hearing me giggling helplessly at that last link. I liked the article by Edzard Ernst best, but the quote from Peter Fisher really is something that ought to be rubbed into homoeopaths' noses at every opportunity.

Now, Dr. Fisher, could you run over that bit about why you need to select the correct remedy, again?

I don't really have room in my sig, but still....

Rolfe.

[Suezoled]

Scene1
Homeopath: "yes there are lots of studies proving my method is valid. I'm busy right now. I'll get back to you next week."

Later:
Homeopath: "well excuuuuse me that I've been late. I've been busy curing bubonic plague and eczema from babies. Now if you hold on to your pants I'll get those studies out later.

still later:
Homeopath: "look you stupid bint, I don't care what you say. I know it works. I've seen it. Maybe my studies aren't good enough for you. I can see you don't recognize greatness when you see it."

even later still:
Homeopath: "yeah well, I can name milions of medical doctors who foul up every year, and people DIE from it."

And then stick in somewhere:
Homeopath: "there are many studies that prove themselves. But you're being mean to me, so I'm going to withold all the precious knowledge I have that could save the world from strie, because we are the persecute miracle workers wa wa wah."

And finally:
Homeopath: "I've told you already. But you don't listen. I think you are stupid. I run intellectual circles around you. Bye bye loser. "

[Deetee]

I never knew these broadcasts were on or I wouldn't have missed them!

I'm working my way through the transcripts now, with vomit bowl handy...

Exerpt:
"I'm Katherine Armitage, I work as a homeopath from Health Foods, Fulham Road. I use flower essences and homeopathy as my main therapies. I also work as a healer. A lady from up the road was getting very bad hot flushes and last week she came in and I suggested a remedy to her - apis mel - which is honey bee sting in potency. She's a very busy lady, always rushing around, not very much time for herself and busy like a busy bee flying around."

So, "busy like a bee"..... try apis. Very individualised.

[Deetee]

but to give him his due.......

FISHER:
"One of the things that annoys me particularly when you hear people who are not members of health professions denouncing immunisation - it's what I call the spoilt brat school of medicine, they've never seen diphtheria or polio, they assumed it didn't exist - it never existed or those things weren't the terrible diseases that they are. The fact is the reason they've never seen them is that immunisation is an extremely effective treatment and kids don't get paralysed from polio, they don't die of diphtheria anymore and it's entirely down to immunisation."

[The Don]

Which is like saying "Joe Stalin - what a lad, killed 30 million but he wasn't all bad 'cos he loved his mother" ;)

[Matabiri]

From http://www.ucl.ac.uk/Pharmacology/dc-bits/quack.html , I quite liked the Dr Detox bit. Particularly, because I'm weird

Perhaps the most shocking of the prescriptions is the “Metabolic Detox�, for several reasons. Firstly the name is mumbo jumbo, and the amounts of the ingredients are not stated. Not may people are likely to recognize that Jethhi-Madh is the Hindi name for common or garden liquorice, or that cassia angustifolia is the Latin name for Senna (pods or leaves?), a rather old-fashioned laxative that might well account for patient's discomfort if given in a sufficient dose (the dose is unstated). The other ingredients, vidang, himej, ajwain are spices used in ayurvedic medicine which have never been tested for effectiveness or toxicity, and 'unaqua soddi chloredum' is nothing known in medicine (it sounds suspiciously like incorrect Latin for water-free common salt). Vidang and ajwain are herbs that are alleged to cure worm parasites, but they have not been tested properly. The last ingredient, 'niscot', is a mystery.

"Niscot" is, of course, "tocsin" (an old word for an alarm bell) backwards. Wonder if that was deliberate?

[anonimouse]

Originally posted by The Don
Which is like saying "Joe Stalin - what a lad, killed 30 million but he wasn't all bad 'cos he loved his mother" ;)

It makes him simply deluded instead of completely insane and revolting.

[Eos of the Eons]

Sniff.

Foul smell. Those folks who want the prestigious title "healer", but don't want to spend the time and brain power on an actual education. They really stink the place up.

Sad thing is, that dung heap seems to grow in spite of the vile odor. People are allowed to lie and buy crap diplomas, and the resulting rot grows and grows and grows. It spreads around innocent people and stuffs up their brains with claims that they can cure anything that can ail anybody the way a sinus infection stuffs up a nose.

Who will drain this accumluating puss? It's a job that must be done, but it won't be pretty when all that snot flies. So far there is little action, and we'll have to hide under piles of kleenex when they really get to work on it. I'm willing to stockpile the kleenex, but where are the people that can clear this up?

[Rolfe]

Originally posted by Eos of the Eons
Sniff.

Foul smell. Those folks who want the prestigious title "healer", but don't want to spend the time and brain power on an actual education. They really stink the place up.However, that hasn't much to do with the present thread, because Peter Fisher is a qualified doctor.

This is really my main concern in all this. The unqualified woos point to the medically qualified woos as "proof" that their delusions are real science, because people with real scientific qualifications espouse this garbage. And their professional bodies don't slap them down, for political reasons.

The tendency of these medically qualified people to tell lies, as Peter Fisher is doing, is particularly reprehensible. First, their false statements are often accepted at face value by their unwary fellow-professionals, who can't quite seem to get their brains round the possibility that they are being lied to, and the statements are trumpeted as "proof" by the woo brigade, who of course think that doctors are evil and stupid, except when they espouse woo-ism, when of course their sterling academic qualifications add respectability to the woo.

But whatever Peter Fisher has done, there's no doubt he did at one time spend time and brain power on an education. Just a pity it didn't take.

Rolfe.

[Eos of the Eons]

Yep, most of the dung heap IS the lies by those "more qualified". They feed the egos of the dung shifters.

I guess an education obviously doesn't help one's integrity and ethics. It just helps them build smellier crap, and more of it.

Sighs.

[geni]

They lie. They lie and we must be merciful.






Well perhaps not