Homeopathy had No Place in Pharmacy: Canadian Pharmacist

[Godhumor]

48. So, so, so much horseshit disguised as word salad

Where did a chemist who apparently specializes in designing new molecules to be used in photodynamic therapy get such talent at throwing around quantum mechanical terms willy-nilly and applying it to the quackery known as homeopathy? Somehow, reading this, I got the feeling that, even though this particular journal claims to be rigorously peer-reviewed, the reviewers of this particular article were not quantum physicists. Homeopathy, as you recall, is the quackery in which it is claimed that by diluting an active substance to the point where not a single active molecule is likely to be present, somehow imbues the water diluting it with its therapeutic power.

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So, when well-established laws of chemistry and physics supported by high levels of data and experimentation demonstrate that, barring the supernatural or some new discovery yet to be made that would invalidate many of our presently understood scientific laws and theories, homeopathy has to be a sham, what’s an altie to do? Invoke quantum mechanics, of course! All sorts of strange things are postulated in quantum mechanics, nonintuitive things. I particularly like Dr. Milgrom’s claim that quantum properties can be physical without being observable. Never mind how that quantum theory was derived from physical observations that didn’t fit with the existing theory of the day. Never mind that effects predicted by quantum mechanics can be observed experimentally, effects such as wave-particle duality. Speaking of which, I wonder if he’s worked out the wave function for the practitioner and the patient to use in this “quantum entanglement that he’s talking about. Of course, the fact that quantum entanglement does not violate Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, as information is not transmitted, does make the above explanation sound a bit dubious. For homeopathy to work, some sort of information would have to be transferred to the water or, in the case above, between the practitioner and the patient, perhaps via the water, all of which sounds a lot like magic (which is all homeopathy really is, magical thinking). Besides, quantum entanglement refers to particles, such as photons, and in large numbers of particles, these effects tend to average out.

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In any case, no observable, experimentally verifiable connection between quantum theory and the alleged therapeutic effect of homeopathy has ever been shown. Of course, it doesn’t have to be, does it, if you can get away with the claim that quantum theory somehow provides a mechanism. It’s apparently a possible mechanism for homeopathy that, if we are to believe Dr. Milgrom, might not be “observable” even though it is “physical” (whatever Dr. Milgrom means by that). Even though I hadn’t taken quantum mechanics since Physical Chemistry in college, I recognized a lot of hand-waving woo when I saw it. I had to get a hold of the whole article. So I fired up my trusty browser just before I was going to leave work to see if I could download a copy of this amazing piece of quantum homeopathic altie woo in its entirety. My critical thinking skills shuddered in anticipation of the pseudsocience and quantum mysticism likely to be found within. (Deepak Chopra, anyone?) I couldn’t wait to see what kinds of equations and throwing about of quantum theory jargon Dr. Milgrom used, seeing if any of it would stick.

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Leaving aside the unsupported assumption underlying the article that homeopathy actually “works” and that does something more than provide a nice cool drink of water to the patient seeking an actual remedy, the above explanation is breathtaking in how utterly ballsy it is. It basically comes right out and says that you can’t prove that homeopathy works and that randomized clinical trials aren’t the way to test homeopathy! After all, to the woo brigade, if homeopathy “works” by some sort of “nonlocal” effect mediated by quantum mechanics (quantum entanglement, for example, as discussed by Dr. Milgrom), then its mechanism can never be experimentally tested and verified in a double-blind randomized, placebo-controlled trial, nor, apparently, can its effects be predictable or reproducible! If homeopathy “works” by these mechanism, then, if we are to believe the above, time reversal paradoxes will prevent its mechanism from ever being scientifically studied and validated! I wonder if he’s saying that studying homeopathy would cause time to reverse itself. (Now that I’m on the wrong side of 40, I’d certainly be willing to pay for that. Imagine the possibililties for using homeopathy to reverse aging!)

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http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2006/06/30/your-friday-dose-of-woo-its-no/