to think homeopaths really just make money out of the gullible?

[WidowWadman]

A remedy made from diluted bits of the Berlin Wall - seriously, that's surely just a test to find out how far they can push it, isn't?

CalamityKate said "Serious question though: why aren't people like Jasmuheen sectioned?"

Or prosecuted?

You should read the description of the test an Australian current affairs show did on the nutbag on Wikipedia.

linked to a Youtube of the first bit of that show a little while back wharrgarbl. Charlatan or whackjob? Or maybe both?

She comes across to me as being very hard, and very sure of herself. She's an utter fucking liar, and has no conscience whatsoever.

Has anyone posted this one yet?

A short and neat summary that includes many of the points already made in this thread (including a bit demonstrating how mind-boggling dilute these things really claim to be ... and Oliver Cromwell's urine).

Homeopathy works because the homeopath has maybe an hour to talk to patient about ails and ills, time they have never had before, and this alone makes them feel better, not the little white pills in a bottle.

On the German forum I'm on there is a regular poster who is a "Geistheiler" (translates literally to ghost healer) who is a fervent defender of all things woo, especially HP and the moment I enter an argument, even if I say something entirely unassailable in a calm and factual manner, she immediately comes on, does a heavy emoticon sigh and says "soviel Hass, ich gehe" (all this hate, I'm leaving). I find it quite funny mostly but you just can't have a discussion with someone who is so utterly committed to their ideas.

magdalen I'm a very experienced lab scientist even if I spend a lot more time at the desk these days but I just can't see how there can be any consistency in HP products even given the fact that there won't be anything left at the higher dilutions anyway. Even people who claim that they made HP remedies before, as someone working in a pharmacy told me once she had, couldn't tell me what the starting concentration before dilution of their solution was.
It's just all so vague.

Gracelo - which German forum is it? I'm intrigued.

You just can't have a discussion with someone who is so utterly committed to their ideas.

I know exactly that feeling. I've kept reading, but the language used, the ire, the unpleasant tone, the self-congratulation, just make the idea of a continuing conversation rather unrewarding.

Nowt so bitter as a defeated internet conspiracy theorist

widowwadman it's called rund-ums-baby and I only ever go to Aktuell, Kochen&Backen and occassionally Mehrsprachig. It's more netmums than mumsnet but I've been there since dd was born in 2004 and I'm staying mostly for sentimental reasons and to practice my German, which is atrocious these day considering that I'm a native speaker.

Oh, is it worse than urbia then? (A German place I mostly read/post on to keep using my German (deteriorating native speaker myself) and sneer. It's also more netmums than mumsnet. )

The Germans are woomeisters par excellence, what with medical students being able to study homeopathy as an optional unit counting towards their medical qualification.

Crumbledwalnut I try to be extremely careful how I word things in discussions about HP. I really stick to discussing scientific concepts and facts and I don't react to any of the emotionally manipulative bait I get offered in these discussions. If anything I'm a lot less blunt than my fellow average German these days after living in English-speaking countries for the last 19 years.
It's an attempt to avoid a proper discussion by turning it into an emotional issue and I object to that. Anyone who makes claims which can in some way have an effect on other people's health decisions has to be able and prepared to discuss and defends these claims and not go all huffy when someone challenges them.

Crumbled - Just how respectful do you expect people to be towards something as hilariously nonsensical as homeopathy?

I mean, everything else in the world works better at higher concentrations but this stuff works in the exact opposite way because it's been tapped energetically? Oh and if it actually worked, it would aggravate your symptoms because they cause symptoms like yours, if not kill you because most of the initial active ingredient (none of which remains, mercifully), is poisonous?

Come on! You have to see the humour here

I don't know urbia widowwadman I check it out.
One of the forums (fora?), Aktuell, was really good when I first came across it, there were proper discussions about interesting topics but it has changed a lot in recent years. Some good posters have left and it's all a bit boring now.
Geee, yes Germany is woo-central, isn't it? In one of my mother's magazines (Ratgeber Haus&Familie, if I remember right) there used to be ads for pyramide-shaped glass jars from Weck which somehow gave magical powers to the water that you kept in there. And Weck isn't a woo company, they make jam bottling equipment.

It's good to find my casual racism challenged. I would never have thought the Germans were woomeisters par excellence. I thought they would be all about the steely eyed Teutonic efficiency.

Spero the woo-meistery is exercised with steely-eyed teutonic efficiency, that's what's so scary.

Spero - Germany is the original home of Steiner/Waldorf schools, which are woo-central and promote homeopathy and all sorts of stuff like that. OK, Rudolf Steiner was born in Austria, but the first Steiner school was in Germany, and they still have loads there (state-subsidised).

That is truly terrifying. But it does make me think that Germany has to take the flak for a lot of what is actually Austria's fault...

The Germans are nutters*, but they make Exceedingly Good Cake.

• i.e. my DAunt is a nutter, but a lovely one. She's like a leftover from the Chalet School, and once said to me in total seriousness, 'Let us tramp through the woods and fields to refresh ourselves with natural beauty'. I think, on reflection, she may have learned English from the Chalet School books.

I think the main reason why your actual, gullible, woo-buying fucknugget gets so howly and defensive and starts almost pooing with rage when confronted with facts is this: woo-lovers hate scientists because woo-lovers are consumed with bitter resentment about the fact that they are stupid. They think that people actually being clever is something clever people do in order to spite them. Woo 'disciplines' make room for the thick and mentally lazy and comfort them with a lot of nonsense that only 'sensitive' ie thick and gullible people 'understand.

Ermagerd, SGB.....yes. They make you feel guilty for being smarter than them....for beating them with - ahem - cold hard facts as if they were cold, card metal hammers which is what you'd like to do.

Nyeeeerghhhhh....you're so insensitive and out of touch with nature.....heaven and earth, philosophy, Horatio......

Like I've said to woo-arses before..... I prefer answers from people who've actually lived AFTER germ theory. Shakespeare's great and all, but he would have thought red flannel blankets cured smallpox.

You might be onto something there SolidGoldBrass. I think they might also find conventional science boring, because of it lack of in-depth understanding. I have to confess I find physics intensely boring, but that is merely through not having very much knowledge of it (school physics lessons put me off for life)- DH understands things like astrophysics and finds them exciting (if not mind blowing/verging on woo), whereas to me it sound a lot like "blah blah blaah blah" .

Also, lots of people have a need to believe there is "something else out there", like with the ghosty stuff, because the world we see, hear, touch, taste, smell and can measure is not giving them comfort in their lives. Some will turn to religion, others to woo..

Years ago, I heard someone quote another Shakespeare line back at someone using the Horatio quotation, along the lines that one should carefully examine the claims other people make. I've been looking for it for ages but can't find it.
Does anyone know what it could be? I'd love to be able to whip it out when required.