Hacker News Reader

Comment by halviti | Hacker News Reader

Terrible article.

My dad is a medical doctor. Because I spent a large amount of my life living in the same house as him does not make me a medical doctor.

If I tried to treat someone who was suffering from pneumonia, and they died because of something stupid that I did, would modern medicine be responsible?

You can hate on homeopathy all you want, but the conclusions being drawn here are utterly ridiculous, and anyone that finds themselves agreeing with this FUD suffers from a severe case of confirmation bias.

View on HN

Are you saying that homeopathy is effective when administered by someone who does know what they're doing?

Because the alternative conclusion is that homeopathy is never effective, and the conclusion being drawn is true.

No, please read. There are no conclusions to be drawn here.

Just because someone does something stupid does not mean anything.

There is no evidence that this woman ever studied homeopathy, or that this whole wet towel thing is even a treatment used by homeopaths.

So when does someone doing something stupid mean something?

It's very simple. You produce evidence or proof that two things are related.

Living in the same house as a medical doctor does not make me a medical doctor, nor does it make modern medicine responsible for my actions.

The argument isn't that she was a homeopathic "doctor". The argument is that she was influenced by the ideas behind homeopathy, and because of that influence the "treatment" she administered made sense to her. Her logical reasoning had been clouded by her belief (essentially a religious belief) in homeopathy. This is akin to religious groups who refuse to allow medical treatment for their children, who subsequently die.

This

Especially in the 1800's where medicine was only slightly better than doing nothing (if you were lucky and it didn't go horribly wrong)

I'm sorry if I misread that. The distinction between "homeopathy done correctly by people who have studied it" and "random stupidity as done by untrained people" can be a subtle one. Very subtle.

"or that this whole wet towel thing is even a treatment used by homeopaths."

Sympathetic magic is the basis for homeopathy. Like produces like is a fundamental essence of the practice.

He's saying that homeopathy is not directly lethal when applied by someone who knows what they're doing.

There was a case recently where a woman was doing unlicensed "plastic surgery" by pumping rubber cement into incisions in people's butts. Her absolute incompetence can't be reasonably used as a critique against the plastic surgery industry.

There are plenty of perfectly good data points to use against homeopathy practitioners. This case is definitely not one of them.

Except homeopathy practitioners are not medical doctors and even "correctly applied" homeopathy will not cure anyone to begin with.

Drinking water (homeopathy) is not going to cure my (hypothetical) cancer, it will kill me since I (hypothetically) refuse other treatments.

On the other hand, drinking water would not have killed Boole.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com