From: bsimon@elvis.stsci.edu (Bernie Simon)
Subject: Re: Homeopathy
Organization: None. This saves me from writing a disclaimer.
	<2061@snap> <1992Oct13.061339.11874@spdcc.com>
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1992 12:54:28 GMT

> But it wasn't well designed.  That was the whole point.  It was an
> example of someone making an outrageous claim and then fabricating
> results to support that claim.  Whether this reflected malfeasance or
> not on this guy's part is neither here nor there.  It was a bogus
> result, and it was a waste of everyone's time to have to go to the
> trouble to point out the problems.  It would have been easier and
> simpler to reject it ahead of time.

About Benveniste's paper in _Nature_. Here's a brief summary of what
happened with my comments. First, Benveniste submitted a paper to
_Nature_ on basophil degranulation by homeopathic dilutions of
histamine. The referees of the paper inisited that the study be redone
by other laboratories before they would publish the paper. This was
done, by two laboratories in Italy and Israel, which observed the same
result. The referees then insisted that the paper included some
hypothesized mechanism for the observed result. This was also done.
_Nature_ then published the paper with a box warning that the results
of the study should not be accepted pending further study. The editor
of _Nature_ then assembled a team to visit Benveniste's laboraratory.
None of the team members were medical researchers. They observed
Benveniste duplicate his results six times. Each time, they insisted
that the design of the experiment be changed and repeated again. The
seventh time, the trial did not come up with a positive result.
The team felt that this "disproved" the effect and did not conduct any
further trials. In the next issue of _Nature_, they published a report
on their investigation along with a reply by Benveniste. They also
published a statistical study of Benveniste's original experimental
data claiming that the distribution of the data could not be
attributed to experimental error, i.e, there must have been conscious
or unconscious fraud.

My comments are the following. First, the referees of the paper were
correct in requesting that the study be reproduced by independent
laboratories, since the result was so at variance with accepted
scientific theory. However, the referees should not have insisted of a
hypothesized mechanism for the result. Purely empirical or
observational results should be acceptable in a scientific journal.
Second, publishing a warning box with the article was an insult to the
author and an insult to the intelligence of the reader. Third,
changing the design of an experiment until you get the result you want
seems like a very poor approach to science to me. Fourth, the whole
way _Nature_ handled the affair seems more like a cheap publicity
stunt than a serious scientific investigation. They could have sent a
team of medical researchers to the laboratory before the study was
published instead of sending an unqualifed team of observers,
including such publicity hounds as "Amazing" Randi, after the study
was published. The only part of this "refutation" I take seriously is
the statistical analysis, and that only because my knowledge of
statistics is not great enough to either verify or refute it.


--
Bernie Simon	(bsimon@stsci.edu)		similia similibus curantur

Newsgroups: sci.med