Minutus

Dear Rochelle & colleagues

Your comments strike a chord in me. But I am not quite sure on the 'human
error' aspect.

When I was watching the prog and they were going through Beneviste's work,
they were again involved in re-coding and made a big fuss of sticking the
envelope containing the codes on the ceiling of the lab.

James Randi is a master magician and an expert in the art of 'slight of
hand'

How do we know that he did not do something then. He seemed to be directly
involved in the coding then. The Nature team were there not to investigate
but to discredit. It is so easy for him to switch things in his hands - that
is his expertise.
I became very suspicious. (I am not normally suspicious, but can sometimes
pick up vibs, which turn out to be justified!).
Jacque Beneviste being a scientist and seeker of the truth probably never
imagined that they would play such a dirty trick on him. Probably he still
has not cottoned on to this possibility!

I find it incredible that a two senior academics in two different countries
are willing to put their name on the line and all repeated experiments work,
yet when we come to an experiment like this where we get someone recoding an
earlier coding, we get random results. However, and very importantly - no
one explained why the effect was still there though!!! Why should 'water'
still have an effect on the cells?

The prog skimped over this aspect very quickly.

Was something switched again? My only explanation is that someone messed
with codes and it was not a random result.

I am VERY uneasy about it.

The paranoid in me says that they put up a very good case for homoeopathy
only to effectively knock it down. This is an old 'Aunt Sally' technique of
establishing one's point of view - used extensively in sale and marketing to
knock out the 'opposition' and establish as logical what you want to sell.

I wonder if James Randi would be keen to take up the offer of taking part in
a re-proving. I would love to see him twisting on the floor with severe
stomach pain on the floor and willing to part with his $1m just for the pain
to stop! If a drop in more water than there is on Earth (30C) has no
effect, he should be a willing participant. Any colleagues willing to
assist me in this?

Soroush
Message: 24
Date: Tue, 26 Nov 2002 22:45:08 -0000
From: "rochelle"
Subject: Horizon Program on BBC 2

I reckon it all went wrong with the human error in coding and uncoding the
vial. What do you reckon??
Other than that it supported homeopathy.

Regards
Rochelle
www.rochellemarsden.co.uk
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Hi Soroush,

I would also like to keep Randi out of any where that any experiments are
taking place. As you say he is an excellent magician!!! However if we
thought that so may Joe Public.I reckon that there was enough in the
programme to give homeopathy a good name. We will know that if our phones
begin to ring!!

Rochelle
www.rochellemarsden.co.uk
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Dear Friends,

Pls, don't let us react like a sect.
It was an EXCELLENT program, which explained Homeopathy very well (except
maybe the Vital Force principle) and was totally neutral in its approach.
Let's not be bad losers.
Yes, the outcome was not what we had hopped for, but instead of putting this
under the carpet and start blaming people and reproach them of being
dishonest, why don't we accept a fact as a fact.

Maybe Simon was right when He says:
"They forgot to find out what the symptoms were of the
creature from whom the blood (histamine) sample was
taken and match the remedy accordingly."

But then the Homeopaths which participated at the program should have
thought about that in ADVANCE.

And reproaching to the program(makers) and this Randi person that he would
have switched the labels is really a poor insinuation.
And don't forget, not everything about the program was negative or bad:
* they explained H very well
* they mentioned very clear how many people use H, even very famous ones
* they reported that there were done a lot of tests which proved that H
worked even better then placebo
* they mentioned very explicitly that H is an excellent treatment for
animals

The *only* thing what failed was the test which had to prove HOW H works.
Big deal !!!!
There will be other experiments.

And if Homeopathic society (and lab's etc....) would put their forces
together to conduct and or support much more of this basic work, instead of
focussing on dubious para-normal phenomena like paper remedies, dream
provings, ART etc....we would be at this VERY moment much further then we
are today, acting the injured party.

Jan

no being able to watch the program, here in the states, it sounds like it was another horrible
mainstream propaganda piece. a little truth to suck you in and camoulflage the deceit which is at core to the points being pushed. as to the surprise at 2 scientists signing onto this deceit? i wouldnt be surprised either. scientists are only people with their own biases and prejudices, firstly. and secondly, many of them are paid quite hansomly to prove (ide) whatever results are wanted by the funding agencies. i would say that watching this type of program is only an act of monitoring the opposition. FAIR, here in the States has been encouraging people to send a barrage of phone calls, e-mails, letters, faxes to mass media organs that misrepresent, distort by ommission or directly lie, demanding a public retreat, apology and/or correction on the issue. being an old cynic, i was very doubtful of the effect of such an action. however, i have actually seen some real responses in the media. you might try to organize such an effort against the BBC.

tanya

PS FAIR stands for Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting and was organized after the Gulf war when media people were spoon fed the information that the govt wanted printed.

> This is why I feel they weren't testing homoeopathy,

I agree.
Good point.

Jan

--- Jan_Klüssendorf wrote: > > It was
an EXCELLENT program, which explained

Jan

I agree with everything you say. The programme was
excellent and the result is what I certainly expected,
given the parameters. As I said, and you rightly
pointed out, they left out a vital principle.

As homoeopathy we look at the "whole" and this
includes applying our principles in whole. We do not
say it is homoeopathy, merely because it is diluted.
We say it is homoeoapthy when we take all the symptoms
from the presenting patient, put them together as a
whole and match them to a remedy that has been
accurately proven, according to set procedures.

This is why I feel they weren't testing homoeopathy,
or even the memory of water. They were testing if a
highly diluted substance (OF ANY KIND) could have any
effect on cells. It didn't and rightly so.

I feel that the programme gave a wonderful explanation
of how homoeopathy works, much better than most
brochures I've seen. They just forgot about the "how"
when deciding on how to test it.

Accusing Randi makes us seem like petulant juveniles.
Do we really care if science hails or stones us? I
don't!

Cheers,
(Miss) Simone H

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