Homeopathy

Bill Morris - 1^st February 1990

6 Ruha Street

Palmerston North

New Zealand

The Editor

New Zealand Skeptic

72, Awanui Street

New Plymouth

9 July 1989

Dear Keith

Grant Duncan in his letter in the June 1989 N.Z. Skeptic has I feel been unfair to me in what I wrote about homeopathy; and he seems bent on being unfair to himself too.

I made no claim to have considered all the papers on homeopathy, but only those in English that I had been able to track down, I am not familiar with the German medical literature nor can I read German. I certainly would not rely on the English abstracts as “evidence”, but in any case, Clausen’s paper gives no indication that it is reporting a double blind controlled trial nor does that of Gassinger et al. Hitzenberger et al. is clearly unfavourable to homeopathy. Wiesenauer and Gaus’s paper fails to show statistical significance and then seeks a back-door entrance to respectability by talking of “clear trends”.

It is not I but Duncan who is misreading Gibson et al. (I assume he has read the whole paper). I suspect that he is confusing the ordinary meaning of the word “significant” with the technical, statistical use of the word. In the latter sense, differences can be both very small and highly significant, Couzigou et al. criticised Gibson’s revised paper on statistical grounds.

It really will not do for Duncan, having just not presented the “best scientific evidence possible”, to claim that it has failed to shake my faith in accepted beliefs and then to lump me with the charlatans of this world. I think the worst charge that can be laid against me is that of being honest enough to confess to unease if presented with an impeccably designed trial with results unequivocally favourable to homeopathy. Reilly et ai? induced just such unease and the reason is of course that it would conflict with many accepted paradigms of science.

When the paper was published I pored over it, feeling confused and puzzled. I obtained a copy of one of the key papers cited as validating their method of assessment and spent some time with a professional statistician looking for obvious flaws in both papers. I followed the correspondence in the Lancet and noted the criticisms, some of which were not valid. The only flaw that I could find was the one which I quoted. The correct course now is for someone to attempt to replicate the experiment.

It is easy to answer Duncan’s rhetorical question about where science would be today if scientists always felt ill at ease with evidence that conflicts with previously held theories. I think it would be roughly where it is now, as even a superficial acquaintance with the history and philosophy of science will show. Well tried theories and methods which “work” are generally slow to be discarded unless displaced by something powerful which explains or predicts better. While “There is … abundant historical evidence for an almost pathological psychological resistance by many scientists against the ‘paradigm shift’ needed to see their subject in a new light … nevertheless, the predominance of this indoctrination and intransigence may be exaggerated.”

I feel that Grant Duncan has perhaps overestimated the strength both of the scientific evidence in favour of homeopathy and my intellectual intransigence when faced with it. This would be a poor reason to withdraw from the Skeptics which need people like himself who are able to be challenging and provocative.

Yours sincerely

W.J. Morris, M.A.,M.B.,B.Ch, (Camb).

1. Gibson, R.G. et al. Homeopathic therapy in rheumatoid arthritis: evaluation by double blind clinical trial. Br. J.Clin.Pharmacol. 1980; 9:453-59.

2. Couzigou, P. et al. Letter, Lancet,1983; 2:482.

3. Reilly, D.T. et al. Is homeopathy a placebo response? Lancet, 1986; 2:881-86.

4. Ziman, J. An introduction to science studies. p97. Cambridge, 1984.