Inconsistent with health and healing

In his editorial introducing Lionel Milgrom’s latest paper, “A New Geometrical Description of Entanglement and the Curative Homeopathic Process” [1], Alex Hankey (“Self-Consistent Theories of Health and Healing” [2]) can’t even spell homeopathy: he cites Simon Baker’s letter to eCAM (in response to “Journeys in the country of the blind” [3]) as “Re: Homeoathy and hubris”. There’s also a citation to a letter written by someone called “Chrastana”. (This is after Lionel Milgrom got confused between Simon Gates and Simon Baker and ended up replying to Simon Bates.) There’s clearly little hope for any sort of scientific or technical accuracy when basic proof-reading is clearly beyond both Hankey and the staff of J. Alt. Complement. Med in which this is published.

It doesn’t take long for Hankey to have a dig at so-called “scientific conservatives” as if the ones who are desperately trying to dig a 200-year-old quasi-mystical idea out of the deep grave marked “contradictory to all of current modern physics, chemistry, biology, and medicine” are the innovators, not the scientists who have shown why we need to leave Hahnemann’s ideas behind. To summarize: the past couple of hundred years have seen the development of the germ theory of disease, the discovery of viruses, the development of genetics, the discovery of DNA and of its structure and the birth of molecular biology generally, the development of atomic theory and the arrangement of elements into the Periodic table, and the formulation of quantum mechanics and special and general relativity. All of these things are very well confirmed by experimental evidence and most of them contradict the principles of homeopathy. The germ theory of disease contradicts those who still believe in miasmas, molecular biology basically contradicts all that stuff about the Vital Force, and atomic theory explains that the kind of dilutions frequently used by homeopaths contain nothing of the supposedly active ingredient (as if containing a tiny amount of it would really make any difference anyway). But sadly, quantum mechanics, if understood poorly enough, seems to give the homeopaths hope that they haven’t actually been wasting their lives. In the final insult they then claim that it’s the rest of us who are stuck in an old paradigm. When Philippe Leick said that [4]

“the claim that dilutions beyond Avogadro’s limit can have any specific effect linked to the properties of the original substance... if solved to the satisfaction of the adherents of homeopathy, probably will revolutionize physics.”

he was pointing out just how much we’d have to throw away if it were true (which it isn’t).

One thing which has come out of quantum theory of the solid-state is the transistor, and therefore the computer, without which none of this would be happening. David Chalmers and Roger Penrose are invoked by Hankey to explain what’s wrong with modern science, in that it apparently doesn’t have a theory of consciousness.

Now the only Penrose I’ve read is the The Road to Reality [5], so I’ve mainly bypassed all that quantum-gravity–consciousness [6] nonsense [7,8]. (In The Road to Reality Penrose complains that string theory [9] is useless because so far it’s only been able to create the graviton, and then tries to explain his twistor theory, which he’s been working on for 40 years, and which has so far only been able to create half a graviton. But he’s an extremely clever mathematical physicist even if I think he’s wrong about a couple of things. His insights into thermodynamics and entropy are interesting [10,11].)

But when it comes to the philosopher David Chalmers, Hankey cites “Facing up to the problem of consciousness” [12] which is a bit shorter than Penrose’s and is dealt with in another post, in which I try to argue that Chalmers’ dismissal of Penrose’s “nonalgorithmic processing” knackers Hankey’s “putting together” of Penrose and Chalmers. Chalmers has already considered Penrose’s ideas, and even if they were right (which I for one am not sure about) they aren’t what he was looking for. He isn’t particularly interested in general quantum mechanics either, which further knackers what Hankey is trying to suggest (and probably what Milgrom is trying to suggest, or at least what Hankey is trying to suggest about it). Chalmers also basically knackers all of homeopathy and frankly quite a lot of CAM by dismissing vitalism.

Hankey says that “creative thinkers... recognise such laws as necessary bases from which to depart...” and in doing so misses the point that you have to understand a rule completely in order to know its limitations (these guys only think they understand the rules based on some popularizations) and the Dalai Lama quote about “The most important rule is to know how to break the rules” was probably about politics rather than science, in which the rules really can be broken because they are made up and imposed by humans rather than being discovered facts about the universe. Every research scientist, meanwhile, is trying to test, extend, and validate whatever laws have so far been discovered in whatever field he or she happens to be working in (and maybe even helping to discover new laws). It’s what we do all day.

It’s interesting how Hankey and those like him immediately react to criticism by complaining about the attitude of the complainants rather than by pointing to evidence for their positions: it’s becauese they lack the tools to deal with criticism, what without having any actual evidence. He just has philosophy and mysticism, understood at the same superficial level as he understands quantum physics.

In the end Hankey sees all of Milgrom’s work as having “striking confermation” because of the shape he makes up at the end is bit similar to another shape Hankey can think of. Analysis of Milgrom’s work will have to wait until another day - until then you can make do with “mere chemistry”.

References

1.  L. R. Milgrom, J. Alt. Comp. Med. 14, 329 (2008).
2.  A. Hankey, J. Alt. Comp. Med. 14, 221 (2008).
3.  L. R. Milgrom, Evidence-based Complementary and Alternative Medicine 4, 7 (2007).
4.  P. Leick, Homeopathy 97, 50 (2008).
5.  R. Penrose, The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe (Jonathan Cape, 2004).
6.   S. Hagan, S. R. Hameroff, and J. A. Tuszyński, Phys. Rev. E 65, 061901 (2002).
7.   M. Tegmark, Phys. Rev. E 61, 4194 (2000).
8.  H. M. Wiseman and J. Eisert, arXiv.org e-Print archive physics, arXiv:0705.1232v2 (2007).
9.  B. Greene, The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory (Vintage, 2005).
10.  R. Penrose, J. Stat. Phys. 77, 217 (1994).
11.  J. Bricmont, Physicalia Magazine 17, 159 (1995).
12.  D. J. Chalmers, J. Conciousness Studies 2, 200 (1995).

This document was translated from L^AT_EX by H^EV^EA.