From Jack Mott
I think the mention of homeopathy in your article about things that don’t make sense (19 March, p 30) is incomplete without some mention the BBC TV Horizon programme on this topic, the transcript of which is at www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/2002/homeopathytrans.shtml
The Belfast results you report were tested with a double blind procedure and came out null as expected.
• A number of readers have pointed out that the results of the Horizon programme, first broadcast in the UK in 2002, debunk the Belfast homeopathy results. Immediately after the broadcast some critics insisted the study was too small to give a definite answer either way: even Madeleine Ennis said the Horizon experiment was incapable of allowing any kind of definitive conclusion (New Scientist, 7 December 2002, p 10).
But there were also counter-claims. The experimenters behind the Horizon programme stick by their results, and Ennis’s protocols certainly have their critics (Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine, vol 6, p 68).
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On the other hand, in 2003 Swiss chemist Louis Rey published a peer-reviewed paper claiming that, even though they should be identical, the structure of hydrogen bonds in pure water is very different from that in homeopathic dilutions of salt solutions (Physica A, vol 323, p 67). As yet, we simply don’t have the final answer.
Houston, Texas, US
