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WHY DO PEOPLE believe in phenomena such as UFOs, alien abductions, psychic surgery and ghosts, when the evidence is so scant and unconvincing?
Why do some people insist there's a 'face' on Mars when it has been shown to be a trick of the light, or that crop circles are alien artefacts when the pranksters who created these ingenious hoaxes showed how it was done?
Why do people persist in believing there was once an ancient advanced civilisation, now lost, known as Atlantis when scores of archaeologists say no shred of evidence exists? Or even that acupuncture and homeopathy can treat major ailments, when a wealth of reliable studies show otherwise?
We know human perception is prone to being unreliable: just listen to the testimony from different witnesses to a fire or a traffic accident and you'll wonder if they are describing the same event. But why do so many people find themselves attracted to conspiracy theories, or the purported prophecies of a 16th century French apothecary Michel de Nostredame (better known as Nostradamus)?
Collective delusions do occur, and have done so throughout history: sociologists Robert Bartholomew and Erich Goode have detailed how false or exaggerated beliefs can often arise spontaneously, spread rapidly in a population, and temporarily affect a region, culture or a whole nation.
It's often dubbed (inaccurately, as it turns out) 'mass hysteria', and many factors contribute to the rise and spread of such collective delusions. These include rumours, extraordinary public anxiety or excitement, shared cultural beliefs or stereotypes, and amplification of these by the mass media, as well as reinforcing actions by authorities such as politicians, the police or the military.
Charles Mackay, the Scottish journalist and editor of the Illustrated London News, chronicled just how prone people can be to suggestion in his 1841 book, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds.
And it's clear that what he describes is not just a subject of academic interest or fodder for dinner party repartee: modern instances have destroyed jobs, companies and even economies. The global financial crisis, now reverberating through world economies, began with wild, unfettered debt everyone knew was unsustainable as it relied on borrowers to repay amounts that were clearly beyond their means. Was this not a massive collective delusion?
In economic booms and busts, from which we have cycled into and out of so many times, we can see this very same delusional behaviour at play repeatedly. Mackay reminds us that it is disturbingly familiar: at the peak of the 'tulip mania' in February 1637, he wrote, tulip contracts sold for more than 10 times the annual income of a skilled craftsman, and at one point, five hectares of land was offered in exchange for a single Semper Augustus tulip bulb.
Mass Hysteria
Whoever wrote this article obviously didn't do their homework! I am personally offended that you would state that there is no research that acupuncture and homeopathy work. Did you even look? Or is this just your own personal bias? I could flood you with current research on both subjects that satisfies even the most hardcore scientist and refutes anything to the contrary. IF, as you claim there is no evidence then why is the US Military now using acupuncture both on the battlefield and in PTSD treatment? If there is no evidence, why is it being incorporated into mainstream medicine at the most prestigious medical facilities in this country and others? In my opinion, the naysayers of this ancient medicine are those afraid that a more holistic, cost effective, less invasive approach actually has validity and will take a small portion of their pie. Homeopathy was proven many years ago and only unseated by the huge pharmaceutical companies because it couldn't be patented. Are you aware that homeopathic formulas carry a NDC[National Drug Code] just like pharmaceuticals? Before you attack something you don't understand I suggest you do a little background work and offer some valid current scientific evidence before inserting your bias into your articles as fact. And this is a science site? Yeah, right.
Margaret Ashton, MSOM, AP
Memory Water
This is a late reply, but I couldn't NOT reply.
Here is the first two paragraphs explaining homeopathy from the Society of Homeopath's website. You don't need to go to critics to make this stuff sound ridiculous.
"Homeopathy is a system of medicine which is based on treating the individual with highly diluted substances given in mainly tablet form, which triggers the body’s natural system of healing. Based on their experience of their symptoms, a homeopath will match the most appropriate medicine to the patient.
It works on the principle of “like cures like” - that is, a substance that would cause symptoms in a healthy person is used to cure those same symptoms in illness. For example, one remedy which might be used in a person suffering from insomnia is coffea, a remedy made from coffee."
SOURCE: http://www.homeopathy-soh.org/about-homeopathy/what-is-homeopathy/
Homeopathic treatments are diluted to the point that no molecules of the original active ingredient actually remain. This is probably a good thing, because I for one cannot find any good evidence for the use of coffee (sorry, coffea..) to treat insomnia.
As wikipedia points out, "As homeopathic remedies usually contain only water and/or alcohol, they are thought to be generally safe."
Samuel Hahnemann's "finding" that water had memory in the 1700's (and subsequent inability to ever repeat the result) resulted in a treatment (WATER!) that was probably much safer than some of the dodgier "ancient" medicines of the time (bleeding, and so on).
While the general public remain ignorant of what scientific, evidence-based enquiry actually means, rorts like homeopathy will continue to steal their money and steer them away from the best medical treatments we have available to us right now.
Also knows as...
placebo.
Mass Journalism Hysteria
Armchair skeptics, junk journalists and unscientific writers who rely on flippancy and ridicule instead of doing their homework about such things as Homeopathy, seem to have infested our media culture - symptomatic of the anti-scientific and anti-intellectual devolution characteristic of them.
Here are some utterly preposterous ideas - trips to the mooon, lasers, the idea that ulcers are caused by an "undiscovered" bacterium that can somehow exist in the acidic environment of the stomach. Yet, ALL of these "absurd" "delusional" ideas were discussed for decades before being proven. The discoverer of the H. Pylorii bacteria ended up eating some of them to demonstrate the symptoms of a pyloric ulcer and FINALLY shut up the armchair skeptics - the know it alls who are all to eager to ridicule things like Homeopathy before the research investigating it has barely gotten to first base, and in the light of two centuries of clinical reports and case studies clearly indicating curative effect well above placebo.
NO research supporting it? Please don't insult our intelligence - go look in the cochrane database. NO molecules in the high dilution solutions? Try doing some reading, such as Ennis, Inflammation Research, vol 53, p181. Or, try reading what Nobel prize winning scientist Brian Josephson had to say about this at his web site.
Comparing Homeopathy with UFO's? A more correct comparison might be to compare some of the skeptics with the Leprechauns. The Leprechauns appear to have more credibility. And the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow? Ah! That is reserved for the big pharmaceutical companies.
Mass Hysteria
One wonders why you didn't discuss the greatest mass hysteria delusion of all time - that being God.
One does wonder, indeed!
One does wonder, indeed!
MassHysteria
Exactly.
so true
so true
Mass Hysteria
It seems that this article touched a nerve. One reader wrote, "I could flood you with current research on both subjects that satisfies even the most hardcore scientist and refutes anything to the contrary." I would love to see that research and so would the millions of Americans that can't afford the medications that "big pharma" is peddling. I have also noticed that the so called "alternative" medicine is not cheap. But I guess that its okay to charge lots and lots of money when you are motivated by "wholistic" things rather than results.
That is another thing that I simply can't understand. It would be a simple thing to produce results, yet no results are ever forthcoming, just accusations of some grand conspiracy. Do you understand this point? You claim you have studies which "prove" the efficacy of the treatments. So how come these studies never, ever, ever translate into higher cure rates in the real world. Those higher cure rates would end the debate, so where are they? No, that never happens, all you get are ad hominem attacks and claims of persecution and conspiracies.
Another reader wrote, "...the know it alls who are all to eager to ridicule things like Homeopathy before the research investigating it has barely gotten to first base, and in the light of two centuries of clinical reports and case studies clearly indicating curative effect well above placebo."
Really, so which is it, two centuries of research or the research hasn't gotten to first base, whatever that is. Then can you answer me this? How come, if this sort of treatment is so effective, did practitioners of this "craft" allow so many people to be afflicted with polio, smallpox, typhoid, or simply die agonizing deaths from infections prior to the introduction of penicillin? This is what I find most egregious about this alternative medicine nonsense. They rant and rave about everyone "being against them" and "holding them down" yet, why didn't they use these so-called "effective treaments" to cure diseases that medicine was unable to at the time? Why the need to discover penicillin and the other antibiotics when, according to one reader, effective treatments existed for centuries prior? See, it is easy to make all sorts of claims but quite a different matter to look at history and see the noticable absence of evidence as to the efficacy of these "treatments".
If the comments of the readers were actually fact-based, then there would have been no need to develop vaccines and treatments for diseases that they claim their techniques can cure. I mean, really, how simply does one need to lay this out? Also, if these treatments were available to people as they suffered from polio, died from infections and communicable diseases, why weren't these "more holistic, cost effective, less invasive approach(es)" made available. No need to answer me, but you do need to answer all those parents who watched their children die from things you claim you could have cured. Why didn't you?
Mass Hysteria
Hells yeah!!