When Social Media meets the New Age

There is a fascinating little vignette of Social Media's bite going on right now on the Grauniad. The Ethical Blog section put up a Q&A session for Neals Yard, a right-on Covent Garden Homeopathy store, and asked for questions about remedies.

No doubt they were expecting the sort of questions that gentle New Age souls ask when they come into the store about what product to buy, how best to heal this or that etc. What they have got is 5 pages (and counting) worth of Real Life scientists and skeptics asking hard technical questions about documented evidence for Homepathic remedies, how the science works etc etc.

I must say I have been encouraged by this - my view for a long time is that Social Media has risked being too much a creature of the New New Age tendency, but this shows that as a system it has grown up.

Here are some choice quotes:

Linked below is a book on 'Homoeopathy for Mother and Baby'. Given that homoeopathy has never been shown to have any effect distinguishable from placebo, do you regard it as ethical to profit from publications which seek to exploit the anxiety of new mothers to sell pseudo-medicines?

......

Your website states that:

The correct homoeopathic remedy will stimulate a sick person's vitality to send healing energy where it is needed

1) what do you mean by "vitality" and how does a homeopathic remedy stimulate it?

2) what is "healing energy"? What units is it measured in and where does it come from?

.......

> A homoeopathic remedy is not just a minute quantity of a substance, it has also been through a process of potentisation which enables the remedy to act as a catalyst on the subtle energies of the body. Homoeopathic remedies are therefore very sensitive and should be stored in a dark, cool place away from strong smells.

Would Neal's Yard like to explain in detail and give evidence for the process of "potentisation"...

Alternatively, would they like to explain which are the "subtle energies of the body", what units they are measured in or indeed how they can be differentiated from the "obvious" energies?

Or, on a slightly pedantic note, how an energy can be catalysed? Since the chemical definition that I understand for a catalyst is "A substance which lowers the activation energy of a reaction by providing an alternative reaction path/mechanism..."


Haters all .

Apparently Neal's Yard have yet to to reply to the flood of questions, which is of course leading to more commentary. A very interesting lesson here about the Social Mediation of tigers, tails and tall tales.

(Disclosure on my position - as a trained scientist myself, I know that diluting something by 10 to the power of 30 or higher means there is no chemical effect, so the technical thesis of Homepathy is laughable. Also, I know as a chronic sufferer of Man-Flu that that at its worst, when I seek the inevitable remedy of tea (large doses) and sympathy (homeopathic size doses ) , it works as I then get better - because time is a great healer.

But I also know as a lay observer that giving people a bit of hope and attention can have amazing impacts - the "placebo effect" as its known. Thus to me, Homeopathy is "mostly harmless" as its a way of entertaining the patient as nature heals them. Where it gets harmful is when people start to use it in situations that can kill and where we know placebo effects can't help. Neals Yard tried to bring out a Homeopathic Malaria cure for example, and thats a step too far)

Update - Grauniad has bottled it and closed commenting at 215 comments over c 24 hours

Update II - Neal's Yard has decided not to answer. Risky strategy in a digital world. Good comment from PR veteran Mark Borkowsky:

Brands have to deliver on their brand promise – if you say you're the greenest company, you'll get challenged eventually. In the past people challenged companies via word of mouth, letters pages and radio phone-ins. Now technology enables the public to transmit word of mouth in a lethal way, which means brands have to at least be having a dialogue with punters to say they're looking into issues. You cannot crawl under a stone and hope for business as usual. Digital means business as unusual.

Business as unusual - Like that.....