Madam, – Paul O’Donohue’s charge of “witchcraft” against homeopaths and reflexologists (Science Today, September 9th) reminds me of the medieval naysayers who perfected the art-form in the persecution of doctrines or beliefs they did not understand or which challenged their perspective of the prevailing world order. It is a pejorative charge easily levelled but difficult to withdraw.
Just because Mr O’Donohue does not understand the effects of sequential dilution or foot massage does not mean that they can not have clinical benefit. To be honest, I don’t understand the scientific bases for these practices either but prefer to keep an open mind.
Why shouldn’t water retain a “memory” of particles dissolved in it in any case; our Newtonian perspective of the universe has been complemented by a quantum perspective for almost a century.
Quantum physics provides a non-deterministic approach to understanding these phenomena. If you can accept that you exist as merely a probability of being here or not being here; and are observed at a particular point in space-time, as an infinite set of non-zero probabilities collapsing into a single reality when you make a measurement, then what’s so difficult about sequential dilution?
There are other practices (eg prayer and meditation) which have physical effects that are not easily explained medically either. Indeed Mr O’Donohue disparages the effect of the “Wiccan” treatments as working “no better than a placebo” but the placebo effect is also a phenomenon that is not readily explained by science. – Yours, etc,