Focus on Alternative and Complementary Therapies
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Focus Alternat Complement Ther©2005 Pharmaceutical Press
Focus Altern Complement Ther 2005; 10: 38
RCTs have yet to deliver consistent data unequivocally supporting or denying the efficacy of homoeopathy. In addressing this problem, Weatherley-Jones et al. (Homeopathy 2004; 93: 186–9) recently questioned the implicit assumptions of RCT methodology, which are that specific (e.g. remedial) and non-specific (e.g. consultation) effects of treatment are considered independent of each other; placebo effects are deducted, supposedly leaving behind specific effects of the remedy. If specific and non-specific effects of homoeopathic treatment are not independent but intimately correlated, i.e. ‘entangled’ in a sense derived and generalised from Atmanspacher H. Found Phys 2002; 32: 379–406, the use of this term in quantum theory, what will then be the effect of applying the RCT methodology? The aim of this present study was to use a previously developed algebraic entanglement model of the homoeopathic process (Milgrom LR. Homeopathy 2003; 92: 152–60) to investigate this question.
The model predicts entanglement breaking during RCTs by:
If entanglement between patient, practitioner and remedy is a necessary concomitant of homoeopathic intervention, then the more rigorously it is tested via the RCT methodology, the less likelihood there is that the efficacy of homoeopathy will be demonstrated. Like a similar effect of observation from orthodox quantum theory known as ‘the collapse of the wave function’, RCT methodology essentially disrupts the very thing it is trying to observe: it is therefore fundamentally flawed. Small positive effects of homoeopathic intervention sometimes shown by RCTs may be considered the result of residual entanglement during remedy manufacture. An opposite entangling effect is predicted for double-blinding homoeopathic pathogenic trials (i.e. provings; Walach H et al. Homeopathy 2004; 93: 179–85)
