{"id":30251624,"date":"2010-10-11T20:44:21","date_gmt":"2010-10-11T20:44:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lecanardnoir.posterous.com\/brian-josephson-changes-his-statement-regardi"},"modified":"2010-10-11T20:44:21","modified_gmt":"2010-10-11T20:44:21","slug":"brian-josephson-changes-his-statement-regardi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.quackometer.net\/blog\/2010\/10\/brian-josephson-changes-his-statement-regardi.html","title":{"rendered":"Brian Josephson changes his statement regarding the John Benneth lecture on homeopathy"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The following is the latest explanation as to why Benneth was allowed to talk at Cambridge<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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http:\/\/sms.cam.ac.uk\/media\/1074586;jsessionid=1CC5B0A9560E74B2FA93747DB5F9655D?format=mp3&quality=high<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Statement\u00a0
———\u00a0
The invitation to this speaker to speak on a scientific subject, which it must be stressed was not in any way an official\u00a0invitation\u00a0from the Department, in no way constitutes approval of\u00a0the unpalatable videos he has posted on YouTube. \u00a0It may noted however that these videos appear to be the speaker's peculiar way of responding to equally unacceptable attacks on homeopathy, attacks that, to the extent that they were to achieve their aims, could quite possibly have adverse implications for the health of the nation (in the latter connection, one might note that two fairly senior colleagues of mine at Trinity, who have tried\u00a0homeopathic\u00a0remedies as a last resort, have felt that benefit had been gained from their use).\u00a0<\/p>\n

Objections were received from some at having an\u00a0amateur,\u00a0unqualified\u00a0speaker, to which one can only answer that amateurs may be perfectly able to study a subject and give a coherent review, as John Benneth in fact did. \u00a0The fact that in some places he was confused about the science does not mean the lecture was of no value, since a professional audience can determine where there are misconceptions and make the appropriate adjustments, and the speaker did competently dispose of some of the false objections that have been made to\u00a0homeopathy.\u00a0<\/p>\n

There were also objections on the grounds that by allowing the speaker to speak in the Mind-Matter Unification Project's seminar series we were 'giving a platform for his views'. \u00a0His view is that there are good reasons to suppose that persistent structures in water, a possible basis for homeopathic practice, exist. Is it wrong to make the arguments supporting this hypothesis more widely known, thereby opening them open for discussion? \u00a0Would it have been better instead to have suppressed\u00a0discussion\u00a0by not allowing the lecture to be given?\u00a0<\/p>\n

I must finally address the 'pseudoscience' claim which is the other main reason why correspondents wished us not to hold this lecture in the department. \u00a0Here I will be brief, and simply make this statement:\u00a0<\/p>\n

"Memory of water can be readily disposed of by any of several easy to understand, wrong arguments".\u00a0<\/p>\n

The fact of the matter is that no argument is better than the assumptions on which it is based, and almost all arguments contain hidden assumptions. \u00a0It is obvious, is it not, that if chemical reactants are mixed the system will proceed monotonically to its equilibrium state? \u00a0And so everyone thought, until they were forced to accept by the evidence of their own eyes that oscillatory chemical reactions exist. \u00a0And so it is with arguments against memory of water; unsustainable assumptions are slipped in before believers' eyes, and not noticed, in a way that magician James Randi, also someone whose presentations might be thought problematic, would be proud of. \u00a0And, further:\u00a0<\/p>\n

"belief that something is impossible, however strongly held, does not constitute proof that it actually is impossible".<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The following is the latest explanation as to why Benneth was allowed to talk at Cambridge http:\/\/sms.cam.ac.uk\/media\/1074586;jsessionid=1CC5B0A9560E74B2FA93747DB5F9655D?format=mp3&quality=high Statement ——— The invitation to this speaker to…<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30251624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.quackometer.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30251624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.quackometer.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.quackometer.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.quackometer.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.quackometer.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30251624"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.quackometer.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30251624\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.quackometer.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30251624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.quackometer.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30251624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.quackometer.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30251624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}