Homeopathy

[porphyry]

From a blog  article on the government funding of alternative medicine


Worst of all, there are two grants to study arguably the most scientifically implausible of all CAM modalities, homeopathy. For instance, there is an R21 grant funding a study called Polysomnography in Homeopathic Remedy Effects. Yes, you have it right. Your tax dollars are going to fund at least a study this year on homeopathic remedies (a.k.a. water). But it’s even worse than that. There was actually awarded an R21 grant to study homeopathic dilution and succussion and how they affect the dose-response curve of homepathic remedies. This latter grant actually proposes to study whether succussion (the vigorous shaking done with each homeopathic dilution) that, claim homeopaths, is necessary to “potentize” their remedies affects the dose-response characteristics of homeopathic remedies up to 30C dilution (30 times 100-fold, or a dilution factor of 1 x 10^-60). This is a dilution factor many orders of magnitude larger than Avagaddro’s number, which is makes a 30C homeopathic remedy nothing but water. Period. In fact, the investigators are actually going to compare stirring with succussion to see whether succussion, as homepaths claim, improves the dose-response curve. It beggars the imagination that such a project was actually seriously considered and then scored highly by a study section. 

Perhaps the experiment will have this single positive result, it will tell us whether James Bond was right to order his Martinis 'shaken, not stirred.'