I like to say that the quality of life is measured by the things we can take for granted. But it brings a healthy peerspective to stop once a year and not take them for grant.

Dangerous nonsense and completely off topic. I wonder that the moderators let this stand!

For example, you are still claiming that the leptospirosis project is evidence for homeopathy, when this has been comprehensively critiqued elsewhere. You don’t appear to understand the meaning of terms like double blinded or randomised controlled trial. And nobody in the world uses homeopathy to “treat cancer successfully”. The idea that medicine would pass up a genuinely effective treatment for cancer is simply risible.

Twelve years ago I applied for the James Randi Educational Foundation award to prove homeopathy. James Randi accepted my application, corresponded with me over a protocol, and then months later dismissed me as being inconsequential, claiming he was going to put Nobel laureate physicist Professor Brian Josephson and immunologist Jacques Benveniste to the test instead.

Canadian Syd Baumel of the Aquarian wrote to Prof . Josephson to inform him that my application to JREF preceded theirs. Prof. Josephson replied to say he never applied for Randi’ Challenge, was not interested in the Challenge, and Randi was sent back to me.

The basic protocol which Randi said would win the Challenge was a simple one. It would be to provide a method by which to identify placebo from verum in a double blind trial, of which there are several.

Randi finally ended correspondence with me. I’ll leave it to him to say why.

Since that time I have lectured at the Cavendish Laboratory at the invitation of Prof. Josephson on the supramolecular chemistry or the homeopathic remedy; Josephson says, “The idea that water can have a memory can be readily refuted by any one of a number of easily understood, invalid arguments.”

He describes how many scientists today suffer from “pathological disbelief;” that is, they maintain an unscientific attitude that is embodied by the statement “even if it were true I wouldn’t believe it.”

Does JREF suffer from pathological disbelief? If not, then prove it with my simple test for homeopathy, accepted by James Randi.

Leading a team of material scientists, the renowned Professor Emeritus Rustum Roy wrote a review of the literature on water structure and postulated it’s relevance to homeopathy, showing that the substances used in homeopathy have physical indices that identify them from their vehicles (as I proposed); Roy says that the literature “does definitively demolish the objection against homeopathy, when such is based on the wholly incorrect claim that since there is no difference in composition between a remedy and the pure water used, there can be no differences at all between them.”

Nobel laureate Luc Montagnier produced a series of experiments showing that high dilutes as used in homeopathy radiate an EM signal and have filterable crystalline-like nano structures, h-bond structures associated with their signal.

When Montgnier was asked if he is concerned that with hiss research into the natures of high dilutes as ue in homeopathy he was drifting into pseudoscience, he replied adamantly: “No, because it’s not pseudoscience. It’s not quackery. These are real phenomena which deserve further study.”

In 2010 top water chemist Professor Emeritus Martin Chaplin of London South Bank University has said that water does indeed store and transmit information concerning solutes through its hydrogen bonded network.

There has been an explosion in the research of homeopathy. In 2007, Teela Johnson and Heather Boon wrote a review for pharmacists of the research in homeopathy in an article for the American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education entitled Where Does Homeopathy Fit in Pharmacy Practice? Am J Pharm Educ. 2007 February 15; 71(1): 07.

They say, “Several meta-analyses have also concluded that homeopathic treatment is significantly better than placebo. The first was carried out in 1991 by Kleijnen et al. They identified 107 published papers that scientifically evaluated the efficacy of homeopathically prepared treatments. Of these studies, 81 reported positive effects for homeopathy, with 9 of the 11 highest quality trials showing positive results.
A second, extremely rigorous, meta-analysis was conducted in 1997 by Linde et al in an attempt to ascertain whether or not the clinical effects of homeopathy are due to placebo effects. They evaluated 186 clinical trials that tested the efficacy of homeopathically prepared treatments. Of these, 89 reported sufficient data to be included in the main meta-analysis. After controlling for publication bias, and quality of evidence, their results showed that homeopathy performed significantly better (combined odds ratio was 2.45 in favour of homeopathy) than placebo, with a confidence interval of 95%. Additional scrutiny, including methodological revisions by the authors themselves in a subsequent paper, confirmed these findings.”

The Cuban government has used homeopathy to stop its annual leptospirosis epidemic; the nation’s number one rated medical facility , the MD Anderson Cancer Clinic, has use homeopathy to treat cancer successfully in vitro and in vivo; the American Medical College of Homeopathy has opened this year in Phoenix, Arizona; the legislature there is now licensing homeopaths under the Doctor of homeopathy (DH) designation, medical doctors trained in the use of homeopathics as MD(H).

In light of this information, and the fact that my original protocol to JREF has not changed, I submit to you that my claim on the JREF award is now more valid than ever, and the challenge to you is to make good on it, and to put the original protocol, as submitted to JREF in January 0f 1999 to the test, using independent scientifically qualified judges who have the credentials for approving the final protocol for such a test and disposition of the award.

signed,
John Benneth, Homeopath
503 819 7777

Interestingly, there’s a similar descriptivist/prescriptivist argument currently going on over at Sandwalk, except there it concerns the definitions of “agnostic” and “atheist”. In that case the positions are reversed, with the rational/skeptic side of the debate arguing for a descriptivist use of the terms, while the prescriptivists are arguing for a narrow definition of “atheism” that excludes the vast majority of non-theists. So it goes.

You can be generally “glad” to be alive (which is kind of meaningless, because you don’t have any data about the alternative, but nevermind that now), but to be “thankful” you need to be thankful to (not just for) someone or some thing. Gratitude requires a recipient; you can’t be “generally thankful”, which is the whole point of Pratchett’s joke (which seems to have wooshed over some people’s heads here). People who “give thanks in general” are either being hypocritical or thanking their imaginary bearded friend in the sky.

I disagree. Thanks do not require a direct recipient any more than sorrow does. Compare the following:

Person A: “I’m thankful to be alive”
Person B: “Who are you thanking?”

Person A: “I’m sorry you’re unwell”
Person B: “Why are you apologising to me?”

Person B is wrong in both cases, for much the same reason.

@#6 WeatherWAX! (inscrutable witchy glare)

Grateful I think traces back to a word that meant “raised voice”, same as grace.

Can we not think about, and raise our voices about, the good things in life, without having to believe these things were given to us? Do we really need to put more thought into attacking the beliefs of others than in thinking and talking about the good things in our own lives?

Me, I’m grateful for my wife, my daughters, my ability to make a living, my friends, our liberty, those that inspire me, and those strangers that do the things that make our lives safer and easier than people have have experienced at any other time in history.

And for this blog, of course.

Also thankful for people like you Phil, as well as James Randi, Rebecca Watson, Neil Tyson, and all the others in the rational and skeptical community that provide a voice of sanity in an insane world.

Obviously, there’s also my family, whom I hope (though doubt) will learn to become more skeptical in their world views and thinking processes.

(Of course, this is assuming that ‘guys’ also includes girls!)

Events happen, but it’s up to us to do with them what we can. Be glad for that, be thankful.
The world is what we make of it. Make it a good one.

Amen (in the colloquial sense of strong agreement). Happy Thanksgiving to our American brothers and sisters, from your neighbours of the north.
-dan, mariana