rationalskepticism.org

TMB wrote:

Shrunk wrote:Wrong. It is precisely because of the "variation of individual response to disease and treatment" that randomized controlled trials are necessary. If there was uniformity in response, then trials would be unecessary.

I would say wrong again. Randomised, controled trials exists to ensure that causation is not mixed with correlation, when it comes to efficacy of various drugs and treatments. However it also highlights just how much of any medical process is taken as self evident. We do not conduct randomised, controled trials to confirm that swelling arises following a bone break, we infer this on anecdotal evidence and using our judgement of inference. If someone does not feel well and they are also running a fever, we do not run a trial to make sure we are not confusing cause with correlation. This are extreme examples, but it highlights just how much we rely upon self-evident things in any human system, not only conventional medicine.

And therefore you conclude that a statement like "Soft tissue swelling often accompanies a fracture" is no more scientifically valid than, "Water possesses a 'memory' for substances that have been dissolved in it, but not all substances, just ones that have been intentionally introduced by a homeopath and has been 'potentized' by shaking in a specific manner (but don't ask us what this 'specific manner' is because we have no idea, which doesn't mean we can't still do it anyway). Even though this 'memory' cannot be demonstrated in any empirical manner whatsoever, and is inconsistent with all known principles of physics, we nonetheless know it exists and, moreover, makes this water an effective treatment for all illnesses, including cancer and AIDS."?

Seriously?

If that's not your point, then I'm not sure what your point is. That in clinical practice physicians often, of necessity, must rely on hunches, intuition, experience and inductive reasoning when solid empirical evidence does not exist to guide a particular decision? That physicians often err in assuming how strongly supported their interventions are actually supported by evidence? That physicians are often unable or disinclined to provide a patient the optimal degree of individual attention, and it is therefore incumbent upon patients to take an active participatory role in their health care?

I would not disagree with any of these statements, and any one would be the basis for an interesting discussion. But, as Mr. Samsa has reminded us, none of these are the topic of this discussion.

This discussion is about homeopathy, a doctrinal belief that attempts to present itself as scientific, but which bases it's premises on quasireligious pseudoscientific dogma, and whose adherents continue to practice in defiance of rigorous scientific evidence that their interventions are no more effective than placebo.