On Wed, 24 Mar 2010 15:40:16 +0000, Invisible wrote:

>>> I find the notion that a medicine becomes stronger as it gets diluted
>>> a rather strange one.
>> 
>> Especially when it's diluted to less than 1 part per *the entire
>> solution*.
> 
> I thought the idea is that "3 parts per million" means that if you had a
> million gallons of the stuff, it would contain 3 gallows of whatever?
> The fact that you have less than one gallon of the liquid doesn't mean
> there's nothing in it.
> 
> Having a liquid so dilute that the quantum nature of the atom becomes
> significant *does*, however...

That was the point Randi was making - some of the dilutions that were 
being advertised were less than one molecule per 6x10^23 atoms of water - 
or, as he also described < one molecule of caffeine (or whatever) per 
*more atoms of water than would fit in the space provided in the 
packaging*.  IOW, it wasn't a *diluted* solution, it was to the point of 
placing odds on one molecule being even *in* the container, and those 
odds weren't particularly good.

>> I think Darren had pointed to a couple of videos by James Randi about
>> homeopathy that talked about this crazy concept.
> 
> I did see a bit of Horizon where they took some Aspirin or something and
> diluted it to homeopathic levels, and then did a (small) double-blind
> randomised trial and found... about 0.02% difference between the two
> groups. In the wrong direction. But then, for the size of study they
> used, this is mere sampling noise.

I'd heard about that, yep.

Jim

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