Quantum Entanglement in Homeopathic Trials?
Most homeopathic studies seek to investigate whether homeopathic treatment can be shown to be effective within accepted methodologies of medicine, biology, chemistry and physics. However, there are theoreticians that argue that traditional research methods are inappropriate or insufficient to assess homeopathy. Calls for employing concepts from quantum physics in support of the ultra-dilution hypothesis, i.e. to counter accusations of relative paucity of positive results from homeopathic treatment in Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs), are made by several of these theorists, and even from within the community of homeopathic practitioners.
British homeopath Lionel Milgrom likes to dazzle his audiences with complex formulas derived from quantum physics to make his points. In a 2005 article1 he examined whether RCTs are redundant for testing the efficacy of homeopathy. He had observed that RCTs had yet to deliver unequivocal results demonstrating on the efficacy (or otherwise) of homeopathic remedies and individualized homeopathic prescribing. He asked if this could be caused by an implicit assumption inherent in RCT methodology that specific effects of a remedy and any nonspecific effects of consultation are independent of each other. He postulated a patient–practitioner–remedy (PPR) entanglement model as a necessary condition of homeopathic therapeutic interaction.
Milgrom called for alternatives to RCTs that can take into account possible entangled specific and nonspecific effects during trials of homeopathy. He theorized that since RCTs sometimes deliver positive results for the use of homeopathic remedies, that this may be caused by residual entanglement arising from homeopathic remedy manufacture. He proposed as one possibility that a homeopathic remedy “entails the entangled intention of those involved in its preparation” citing similar arguments by others. As a second option he proposed a surviving residual entanglement from remedy production but, ironically, as the cause of so-called Memory of Water (MoW) effects. Read more
