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Henry Bremridge wrote: > > http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/2002/homeopathy.shtml "To Randi's relief, the experiment was a total failure. The scientists were no better at deciding which samples were homeopathic than pure chance would have been." Just a hunch, but I'd think Randi would be delighted to see someone win the million dollar challenge. And lets face it Randi's health isn't exactly good at the moment so he doesn't have long to see any potential winners prove their case. Given the money mostly isn't his, and is tied up in a prize fund account at Goldman Sachs. And if he wasn't interested in the supernatural, or fringes of science, he wouldn't be involved in all this stuff, it would be natural that he'd want to see a winner. Random rant follows.... feel free to ignore One thing that does annoy me is emphasis on the placebo effect when many folks discuss fringe medical treatments. Whilst there is some evidence for the placebo effect (improvement caused by believing you are being effectively treated), a lot of the protocols used for clinical trials are there to prevent problems with other confounding factors such as natural progression (for many medical conditions people get better with time), or patients giving doctors the results they believe the doctor wants. One of my friends insists on telling me that homeopathy can't be a placebo effect if it works on animals or babies, and indeed if there were evidence that it did work on animals or babies, rather than just being perceived to work, I'd have to agree. There has been a number of serious scientific papers questioning the size, relevance, and even existence of the placebo effect. One meta-analysis of placebo controlled trials which also included an untreated groups, showed no statistically significant improvement for non-subjective outcomes (i.e. People on placebos claimed they felt better, but when symptoms were objectively compared with the untreated group there was no observable difference). So whilst I'm fairly confident in the placebo effect being real, it isn't necessarily what explains many of the results of medical treatments effective or otherwise. It is also sloppy terminology to use it as a catch-all for the other effects. -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html