science is charectarised by constant progress,moving more closer to truth or mystreis of nature step by step.In science a old outdated,misfit theory is replaced by a more accurate & relevent one.Inspite of this, scientific community accepts changes & corrections with great difficulty & resistence. Albert Einstein, who less than a century ago completely shook the foundations of the vision of the universe, the concepts of gravity, space and time, concepts which were strongly rooted in the scientific world, since the time of Euclid and Newton. Yet, as always happens in these cases, he was not believed by the scientific community of his time. similarly homeopathy which contradict some of the scientific concepts of present generations is not believed by present scientific community. As we all know&condemn religious fundamentalism as an antithesis of broader,progressive thinking in the same way this “scientific fundamentalism” is equally blind which act as hurdle in using the benefits of disciplines which are highly usefull & gift to humanity but differ from present scientific concepts.these “blind scientific fundamentalist forces” are totally unscientific as they defy the true scienctific spirit of open senses,proressive ideas & an attitude of changing for the better.

And why have you now blocked all the skeptics who answered your question? Thats cowardly. and we are all laughing at you by the way http://.answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylc=X3oDMTB1a2x0anY5BF9TAzIxMTU1MDA0NDMEc2VjA3BlZXBfZQRzbGsDcQ–?qid=20100309183945AAcyGTW

FAIL FAIL FAIL

Bravo fella’s

A thorough and sound debunking of this paper by Dr Rachael Dunlop can be read here: http://scepticsbook.com/ You’ll have to scroll down.

Here is an excerpt:
“I won’t even bother dealing with the discussion and conclusions, because by my analysis, they are based on flawed data.
One thing I will say about Homeopathy Plus! yelling “Homeopathy as good as chemotherapy for breast cancer” is not a conclusion you can draw from this study.
For all the reasons I have addressed above as well as the really obvious point that these studies were conducted in cell culture. This is a very different situation to a whole animal.
Cells bathing in a bath of homeopathy is very different to the processes which occur in vivo, for example the treatment must survive the low pH of the stomach, cross the gut, escape metabolism in the liver and get to the site of the cancer then do it’s job. This is a very complex process and very difficult to control. Studies in cell culture can provide data about the mechanism of action of a compound, but rarely do they relate to the processes in a human.
Never extrapolate results from a culture dish to a whole animal. You will undoubtedly be wrong and look like a fool.”

This is an unblinded study done by researchers with a VERY STRONG interest in a positive result, and the results are indistinguishable from the solvent-only control. That’s why the results are all essentially the same for the different products.

This is a classic example of wishful thinking or outright deception on the part of the researchers, and as one reviewer wrote, an EPIC FAIL on the part of the journal reviewers (if there were any).
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2010/03/a_homeopathic_bit_of_breast_cancer_scien.php#more

Nonsense is published all the time. This is just another example.

I think this is how debates between alt med proponents and skeptics should go. Proponents say something, give evidence and skeptics try to refute it. No mention of big pharma, paid hacks or any other BS from Truthseeker and his ilk.

Dave and Sharp have already dissected this terrible study quite well. The fact you think this is proof of anything, shows how low the Alties are willing to set the bar for confirmation bias. I had already debunked that one a few weeks ago, though damned if I can find the answer. However…your link is to a partial report on a biased website run by notorious AltMed promotor and quack, Ralph Moss. The actual study is published in an online “junk journal”….basically, it is not peer reviewed, and pretty much anybody can publish anything. That is not off to a good start.
http://www.spandidos-publications.com/ijo/36/2/395

The entire article is not available without joining, and I’m not going to do that. However, we don’t know any of the details of the study, what kind of controls etc. Though it is ostensibly through the University of Texas (NOT one of your nations premier institutes of higher learning, BTW. I’m sure they do fine work, but they are known more for football than cancer research)…the authors did their work through an obscure Indian homeopathic “institute”.
One must consider there are very strong inherent biases as this is a study conducted by true believers…which is why these sorts of studies need peer review and scrupulous attention to blinding and randomization.

Also…one small obscure study is PROOF of nothing. And just to be pedantic, the term ‘proof’ really only applies to mathematics (eg, there are long proofs that 1+1=2) All that we do in science is provide evidence in support of a hypothesis, or evidence that fails to support a hypothesis. Since science is a constantly learning, self-correcting process, there is never any definitive proof of anything.

I also find it a bit ironic, that someone who usually hangs out here and at Curezone lambasting doctors, scientists , Big Pharma and science and knowedge or education in general is now citing those very sources when they appear to (!!) support your preconceived beliefs.

As well, Orac (Dr David Gorski…an actual breast cancer researcher and clinician) managed to obtain a copy of the actual paper, and has done a very thorough ripping of it, linked by Dave above.

However, good on you for at least attempting to ask a serious question. (Better than the recent Skepdoc, Rhianna and Dave are the same person silliness of one of your cohort)

Dave and Sharp have said it all (great answers guys). I have nothing to ad. The study was akin to something high schoolers would produce. With the absence of any statistics, the “study” is worthless.

You people really need to learn how to interpret information. One of the worst attempts to justify homoeopathy I have ever seen, almost as bad as DocB’s a few weeks ago. I have new found respect for Tony I copypaste. At least he put forward worthy arguments.

EPIC FAIL.

(On the plus side Cyndiann, well done for having the backbone to allow us skeptics to answer, rather than blocking us. -Truthseeker et al, Onlymatch4u, Minx, Janie and SoulQuack, take note!)

“Interestingly, the inhibitory effects on cell viability of the remedies in both the MCF-7 and MDA-MB-231 cells were distinctly greater for each of the doses tested than those seen in cells treated only with solvent.”

Which translates as the treatments killed the cells better than the solvent alone. Okay, so it looks like it did when you eye ball the histograms, but they have no evidence for this – they didn’t do stats, therefore they cannot say this!

But why not keep the fail going;

“MCF-7 cells were found to be more sensitive to all four remedies than the MDA-MB-231 cells”.

Again no statistics, so this statement cannot be confirmed. When you do science properly and you run statistical analysis, you are entitled to say,
“MCF-7 cells were found to be significantly more sensitive to all four remedies than the MDA-MB-231 cells”.

Unless you’re these authors, then you just get a great big FAIL stamp on your work.

Also note that they state that the control treatment (that is the solvent) also induced cell death in all cell types;

“As shown in Fig. 1A, the solvent reduced the viability of all three cell types; the overall reduction in cells at different doses of solvent was about 30% for MCF-7, 20-30% for MDA-MB-231 and 20% for HMLE cells.”

Ummm, hold on a sec.

This is your control treatment, which means it should not be causing cell death. It is designed to be inert, functioning as a carrier of your treatment, in order that you can measure the impact of the treatment alone. If your solvent or vehicle is killing your cells you have a fundamental problem. You need to go back to the drawing board and find a different solvent to deliver your treatment.

This is a very big problem right here.

If the cell death induced by the solvent is significant, then the rest of the paper is worthless. But because there are no stats here, there is no way to tell if death by the solvent is significant. According to the above statement, the alcohol killed ~30% of the cancer cells compared to no treatment at all. Although this effect was increased when the treatment was present, there remains a large problem with your model if your solvent is killing the cells.

Perhaps this explains why there are no stats in this paper? Because they may in fact show that the “inert” solvent also significantly kills the cancer cells?
Once again, there is no way to know this without access to the raw data, or the statistical analysis.