Oxford Skeptics in the Pub
You know, having asked David Bellamy earlier in the week to use his influence as Patron of the British Homeopathic Association, to urge them to unequivocally condemn those lay homeopaths who travel to Africa to treat HIV, malaria and TB with sugar pills, you might be surprised to learn that I am not expecting...
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Dear Professor Bellamy,
I am writing to you to ask for your help as Patron of the British Homeopathic Association.
But first I must say that I am somewhat surprised that you have taken this position. You were one of the people that inspired me to be interested in the natural world and to take a...
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It has come to my attention that, this autumn, I will become a father for the second time. We have been very fortunate in that we are not spring chickens and achieving this feat has been quite straightforward. A near 100% hit rate.
For many couples, it is not so easy. Getting pregnant can take...
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Kenyan leading newspaper, The Standard on Sunday, has reported that an undercover investigator has exposed how a homeopathic clinic, claiming to treat people with HIV, is advising clients to stop taking life saving anti-retroviral drugs.
(See Update below: The Independent has now covered this story in detail with article, leader comment and columnist’s reaction.)
The paper...
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Science is a human activity. And as such, it is subject to the full range of fallibilities of thought and action that people are capable of. Within science you will find sloppy and wishful thinking, error and even fraud. But science, rather uniquely, has methods designed explicitly to minimise human biases, reduce error and...
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From the very first decades of homeopathy’s existence in the early 19th Century, mainstream scientists have dismissed its claims for one simple reason: the extremely dilute nature of the remedies. As Oliver Wendell Holmes remarked in 1842 “So much ridicule has been thrown upon the pretended powers of the minute doses”.
Today’s modern understanding of...
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On the 1st of October, a rather unusual talk was held at the Cavendish Laboratories in Cambridge, entitled “The Supramolecular Chemistry of the Homeopathic Remedy”.
The talk was at the invite of Nobel laureate Brian Josephson and was to be given by a chap named John Benneth. Josephson is a known supporter of parapsychology, telepathy...
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Six weeks ago I wrote about how Liverpool Homeopathic ‘hospital’ was advertising that it offered cancer treatments based on the supernatural beliefs of mystic Rudolf Steiner. Observing that mistletoe grew on trees like a cancer, his homeopathic reasoning concluded that therefore mistletoe could be used to treat cancer. Given the obvious absurd and anti-scientific...
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The publication of the report of the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee Evidence Check into Homeopathy has resulted in a lot of misinformation about how much public money is spent on homeopathy. The report states that there are four homeopathic hospitals in the UK, based in London, Bristol, Liverpool and Glasgow.
How much...
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This is a minor one but it is worth a brief post:
George Vithoulkas is considered to be one of the top intellectuals in the homeopathic world. Revered for his teachings and fundamentalist approach to the teachings of Hahnemann, he is probably one of the best known homeopaths alive today. His writings underpin much...
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