"Why I put more trust in homeopathy than conventional medicine" (on CBT and GET)

[sb4]

Unfortunately many fans of homeopathy try to either promote it as having a scientific basis, or denigrate science in a misguided attempt to elevate homeopathy above it.

If you believe in the conventional wisdom of water science then it has no basis. If you believe it has many things wrong with it and fails to explain basic phenomenon then it could well have a basis.

 

[Snow Leopard]

If you believe in the conventional wisdom of water science then it has no basis. If you believe it has many things wrong with it and fails to explain basic phenomenon then it could well have a basis.

What are you talking about "water science"? "fails to explain basic phenomena"? Have you ever tried to measure the spectra of water? AAS, UV-Vis, IR etc? Have you studied soft matter, fluid mechanics? Homeopathy is inconsistent with all experimental sciences.

 

[sb4]

What are you talking about "water science"? "fails to explain basic phenomena"? Have you ever tried to measure the spectra of water? AAS, UV-Vis, IR etc? Have you studied soft matter, fluid mechanics? Homeopathy is inconsistent with all experimental sciences.

I have not done any of those things, I have simply read a book by a "water scientist".
Basic phenomenon include the strengh of surface tension, the magnitude of exclusion zones surrounding hydrophilic materials, water as a battery, and this http://www.i-sis.org.uk/DNA_sequence_reconstituted_from_Water_Memory.php
Non of conventional theory that iv seen explains this satisfactory however pollacks theory does.

 

[Wolfiness]

The point is well made that, like all quackery, CBT/GET's evidence base diminishes when you exclude low quality studies. I would ask the author to think about changing the beginning because after the first paragraph it's a decent blog article and builds bridges by displaying the sort of basic science nous which doctors really appreciate in their patients.

 

[Snow Leopard]

I have not done any of those things, I have simply read a book by a "water scientist".
Basic phenomenon include the strengh of surface tension, the magnitude of exclusion zones surrounding hydrophilic materials, water as a battery, and this http://www.i-sis.org.uk/DNA_sequence_reconstituted_from_Water_Memory.php
Non of conventional theory that iv seen explains this satisfactory however pollacks theory does.

The strength of surface tension, and "exclusion zones" can be explained using conventional (but up-to-date) physical chemistry (kinetics of EZ at such interfaces are explained by diffusion processes). I don't know what you mean by water as a battery, but batteries (and fuel cells) are explained using conventional electrochemistry. With an electrolytic cell driving a reverse process to electrolysis. None of this provides any plausible mechanism for homeopathy.

The DNA sequence reconstitution from water is a classic example of irreproducible research, no one else has managed to observe this phenomena. I wonder why?

 

[sb4]

The strength of surface tension, and "exclusion zones" can be explained using conventional (but up-to-date) physical chemistry (EZ kinetics for Nafion are explained by diffusion processes). I don't know what you mean by water as a battery, but batteries (and fuel cells) are explained using conventional electrochemistry. With an electrolytic cell driving a reverse process to electrolysis. None of this provides any plausible mechanism for homeopathy.

The DNA sequence reconstitution from water is a classic example of irreproducible research, no one else has managed to observe this phenomena. I wonder why?

They also can be explained by the charge separation of water into structured water around those hydrophilic surfaces. This is a far simpler explanation that can be extrapolated to other phenomenon.

I have read that the dna one has been reproduced multiple times however I cannot find this on google after a quick look.

I mean water alone as a battery as in https://www.google.co.uk/webhp?sour...pv=2&ie=UTF-8#tbm=shop&q=water+clock+battery+

The plausible mechanism is that structured water builds uniquely around different surfaces, when that structure receives electromagnetic energy it readmits it at different wavelengths depending on its structure. This radiant energy has the potential to influence the building of structured water in nearby water. So if this water structure remains even after the substance is effectively removed then it contains the information regarding the structure of the substance.

 

[Snow Leopard]

They also can be explained by the charge separation of water into structured water around those hydrophilic surfaces. This is a far simpler explanation that can be extrapolated to other phenomenon.

The plausible mechanism is that structured water builds uniquely around different surfaces, when that structure receives electromagnetic energy it readmits it at different wavelengths depending on its structure.

I really don't know what you mean by this "structured water", it doesn't sound plausible to me? (I studied chemistry BTW and I have measured various types of spectra of dilutions in water). The experimental findings (one paper was cited above) show that the EZ is not a static structure.

Also, "simpler", as in Occam's razor is not a scientific principle used to decide between theories. It is either correct, equivalent or wrong.

 

[sb4]

Structured water is a honeycomb structure of OH that builds on top of each other in layers. It's very similar to ice however ice has a proton/hydrogen connecting layers together, structured water doesn't, instead building in a staggered fashion such that each oxygen is lined up with the hydrogen below connecting them together with enough attraction to expel the proton yet have a more gel consistency.

This leaves the OH negatively charged and the H30 positive. This explains the battery but also potentially homeopathy.

Also, "simpler", as in Occam's razor is not a scientific principle used to decide between theories. It is either correct, equivalent or wrong.

I agree however when each phenomenon of water has many vastly complicated different theories yet one theory cleanly and simply explains all of them I think it gives it more credence.

 

[Snow Leopard]

Structured water is a honeycomb structure of OH that builds on top of each other in layers. It's very similar to ice however ice has a proton/hydrogen connecting layers together, structured water doesn't, instead building in a staggered fashion such that each oxygen is lined up with the hydrogen below connecting them together with enough attraction to expel the proton yet have a more gel consistency.

As a chemist, this makes no sense to me. I have imaged surface structures and I have never seen such behaviour of water.

Such an explanation is inconsistent with the experimental evidence of EZ - namely the diffusion processes.

 

[Jonathan Edwards]

Structured water is a honeycomb structure of OH that builds on top of each other in layers. It's very similar to ice however ice has a proton/hydrogen connecting layers together, structured water doesn't, instead building in a staggered fashion such that each oxygen is lined up with the hydrogen below connecting them together with enough attraction to expel the proton yet have a more gel consistency.

This leaves the OH negatively charged and the H30 positive. This explains the battery but also potentially homeopathy.


I agree however when each phenomenon of water has many vastly complicated different theories yet one theory cleanly and simply explains all of them I think it gives it more credence.

Unfortunately Gerry Pollack's theory is gibberish. I have looked into it in some detail and he makes very basic errors. Ideas about memory in water go back to 1979 and Benveniste's studies on mast cells. It turned out that the data were fabricated and Nature ended up with the biggest embarrassment of all time. The extraordinary thing is how many pharmacologists took it seriously. It simply cannot work for all sorts of very basic school physics reasons.

As someone has said ' It is good to keep an open mind but one has to be careful not to have such an open mind that one's brain falls out'.

Structured water is a very real phenomenon that has been known about for decades - as in the hydration structure of copper sulphate crystals, boundary water in various partition phenomena etc etc, but Gerry Pollack's structured water does not exist. Apart from anything else it has the wrong chemical formula!!

 

[Tyto alba]

I mean water alone as a battery as in https://www.google.co.uk/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#tbm=shop&q=water clock battery

Water will not power the clock. Water and a small amount of weak acid will provide an electrolyte solution for a galvanic cell to power the clock.

 

[BruceInOz]

Structured water is a honeycomb structure of OH that builds on top of each other in layers.

As far as I can see, structured water is a nonsense built on a tiny grain of truth. Structures have been observed in water but they last for less than a picosecond (1/1,000,000,000,000th of a second)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexagonal_water. They presumably form due to the very weak bonds between water molecules and any movement of the water instantly destroys the structure. And unless the water is at a temperature of absolute zero (minus 273.15 degrees Celsius or minus 459.67 degrees Fahrenheit in which case the water is ice) then the water molecules are moving just due to their temperature, enough to instantly destroy these structures as soon as they form. And this is without the shaking or succussion required for homeopathic preparations.

 

[Kati]

This is a very interesting piece which shows how bad PACE trial is.
I find it unfortunate (albeit necessary) that the writer went to great lengths to remain anonymous and publish as a first post on a blog. It reduces the number of viewing readers to members of our community and the odd one who is truly interested (or invested) in PACE trial.

 

[sb4]

@Snow Leopard It makes sense to me. Here's an image http://doublehelixwater.eu/store/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/ez-layers-closeup.jpg

Diffusion is also explained in this theory.

@Jonathan Edwards The water memory debacle is explained away in his book. I am interested in knowing why it cannot work, can you explain this further?

Also what is the correct chemical formula?

@Tyto alba If you look at water clocks they run on tap water. You refill them every couple of months.

@BruceInOz Yes the shaking does present a problem however if the staggered honeycomb structure does form it should easily be able to withstand the temperature.

 

[Jonathan Edwards]

@Jonathan Edwards The water memory debacle is explained away in his book. I am interested in knowing why it cannot work, can you explain this further?

Also what is the correct chemical formula?

To understand why it would not work all you have to do is think through what would actually happen. There are about twenty reasons why it cannot make sense.

1. For many homeopathic remedies the 'water with the memory' is evaporated off when the pill is made. So whatever memory might have been there is gone.

2. Even if there were memory holding groups of water molecules in the diluted solutions these would be further diluted so much that they would not have any effect of the sort the original molecule A had. So we cannot argue that the memory water is working because it looks like A - there is not enough of it to matter.

3. If water took an imprint of molecule A it would then be an 'anti-A' shape, just as the latex mold the dentist puts on top of your teeth is used to produce an 'anti-teeth' shape which is then filled with plaster to form a teeth shape. So the memory water is not going to act like A. If anything it will do the opposite by competitively binding any A present.

4. But even that is far too simple. The dentist's mold only works because your teeth are fixed in a jaw and you are only interested in the top of your teeth, not the roots, and the dentist remembers to pour the plaster on to the right side of the old having turned it upside down. Water does not have any of these options. So an imprint of molecule A will only be an 'anti-one face of A' shape. And that shape will fit with thousands of other molecules that have a similar face on one side but are different on other sides. And it gets worse and worse the more you think about it.

5. In order for this magic memory water to actually have an effect like A it will need to fill its 'anti-A shaped' dent with and A molecule. So to work it needs as much A as you started with - which completely destroys any point in using it.

The reason why we know that things are this difficult is that the human body does use 'anti-A shapes' in two very specific situations and in both of these extraordinarily complicated biochemical machinery is needed to get the copying to work. One is DNA, where a double helix is needed, together with a supply of bases attached to enzymes that are fitted up against the other strand at random until one fits - but you have to synthesise the bases first and have very precise regulatory mechanisms for the concentration of all the molecules. The other is antibodies - which I spent my life studying. Antibodies are anti-A shapes for antigens but they only work because the antigen is held in a particular position when it is recognised and the anti-A shapes cannot be made from A shapes. They have to be made at random in advance and then tried out one by one to see if they fit.

I could go on for several pages but you get the drift. Anyone who actually knows any biochemistry - or even high school chemistry should be able to see that the idea of water memory is nonsense. What is really intriguing is that professors of pharmacology in the 1970s actually believed it. It just shows how dumb a lot of people in science are!!

 

[sb4]

@Jonathan Edwards That makes sense however it is not the proposed mechanism for water memory. That is, the electromagnetic energy entering the structured water is readmitted based on the specific structure of the structured water. This results in different wavelengths of light being released for the different types of structure and bulk water, this essencially holds the image of the water, so no surrounding is needed. My only beef with this is how it's translated in its exact shape to other EZs forming. I would assume the light would be absorbed haphazardly by the surrounding bulk water...

 

[A.B.]

The birth of homeopathy was based on cinchona bark testing. The founder of homeopathy, Samuel Hahnemann, when translating William Cullen's Materia medica, noticed Cullen had written that Peruvian bark was known to cure intermittent fevers.[15] Hahnemann took daily a large, rather than homeopathic, dose of Peruvian bark. After two weeks, he said he felt malaria-like symptoms. This idea of "like cures like" was the starting point of his writings on homeopathy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinchona

This bark contains quinine, and according to Wikipedia almost everyone taking quinine has a variety of side effects. Even psychosis can apparently be triggered by quinine, which might explain why homeopathy is based on bizarre ideas.

PS: similarly, Freud was quite possibly suffering from cocaine induced psychosis, which might explain the bizarre ideas in psychanalysis.

 

[Jonathan Edwards]

@Jonathan Edwards That makes sense however it is not the proposed mechanism for water memory. That is, the electromagnetic energy entering the structured water is readmitted based on the specific structure of the structured water. This results in different wavelengths of light being released for the different types of structure and bulk water, this essencially holds the image of the water, so no surrounding is needed. My only beef with this is how it's translated in its exact shape to other EZs forming. I would assume the light would be absorbed haphazardly by the surrounding bulk water...

I am afraid that account is pure fairytale and nothing to do with electromagnetic theory. There is no image of the water. As you say, the light would be absorbed haphazardly. And it would not light because to get photons in the visible range you need the sort of energy jumps that occur with chemical change. Molecules carry energy bearing modes that depend on shapes, for sure, but these phononic modes will be associated with emission of very low energy photons in the radio frequency range. Since the wavelength of such photons is kilometres you cannot have an image - even with a lens everything would be totally blurred. I am afraid this is all complete pseudo physics.

To answer the chemical formula bit: My understanding is that Pollack says structured water has a formula (OH)n. If it did it would be an oxidising agent more powerful than sulphuric acid or bleach and would destroy almost anything biological in contact with it. The formula of water is known to b e H2O!!

 

[sb4]

@Jonathan Edwards I shouldn't have used the word image, I was just trying to help visualize. Having said this if visible light hit the water is the process not, electron raised , electron dropped, lower energy emf emitted? This part I don't understand so I won't try to argue against it. I wish I could get polack to address it.

What do you make of this http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dana-ullman/luc-montagnier-homeopathy-taken-seriously_b_814619.html ?
Seems it's not just gerry.

It also seems to account for some of the bigger mysterious, this isn't what pollack says, but it makes the creation of life easier. All life uses proton gradients for energy, if water naturally does this then that would explain a lot.
If life could tap into the "free" charge for work it would help explain why we are mostly water.

Structured water is OH and this is negative so if anything would be highly reducing, no? The hydrogen is kicked out and that is positive...

 

[Jonathan Edwards]

What do you make of this http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dana-ullman/luc-montagnier-homeopathy-taken-seriously_b_814619.html ?
Seems it's not just gerry.

It also seems to account for some of the bigger mysterious, this isn't what pollack says, but it makes the creation of life easier. All life uses proton gradients for energy, if water naturally does this then that would explain a lot.
If life could tap into the "free" charge for work it would help explain why we are mostly water.

Structured water is OH and this is negative so if anything would be highly reducing, no? The hydrogen is kicked out and that is positive...

The Huffington post article is just an example of journalistic gullibility. The fact that Montagnier has a Nobel prize means nothing. It is perfectly possible to do work that gets you a Nobel and fail to understand very basic aspects of science. It is also not unusual for Nobel winners to go slightly nuts afterwards. Francis Crick spent years trying to solve a problem in brain science that could not possibly work out the way he thought. Brain Josephson I know and he is delightful, but delightfully nuts. He has all sorts of weird ideas about the mind. Whoever these people are and whatever they did makes no difference to the homeopathy and water memory idea being a fairytale.

On the 'free' charge - this is just an example of a perpetual motion machine and the impossibility of that has been understood for 400 years and probably more. In simple terms you cannot be going downhill and uphill at the same time. That is how basic Pollack's failure of understanding is.

OH is neutral, not negative. OH-, or the hydroxyl ion, is negative because it has nabbed an extra electron from a hydrogen molecule. A stack of OH- ions would explode immediately because of the high charge density. OH is the hydroxyl radical which because it has a valency orbital half full (only one electron of the pair) it is extraordinarily reactive, desperate to join up with some other molecule from which it can borrow another electron. A stack of OH radicals would probably decay in a millisecond to water and hydrogen peroxide on its own but next to anything oxidisable would burn a hole in it.