Milgrom’s paper invoking Quantum Entanglement – on the macroscopic scale, no less – as a possible explanation for the failure of double-blind randomised controlled trials to prove unequivocal efficacy of homoeopathic trials is an excellent case in point illustrating the desperate measures the proponents of alternative medicine will resort to in order to preserve their illusions.
The paper provides exactly nil, zip, zero, nada, nothing, null and void evidence that homoeopathy “cures where Conventional Allopathic Medicine (CAM) fails,” so citing the paper was, at best, a mistake, and, at worst, a quite deliberate attempt to deceive the audience.
Instead, the paper proposes a solution to the problem why homoeopathy fails to pass properly conducted tests. The proposal, however, shows only that the author’s understanding of Quantum Theory is considerably less than his knowledge of statistical methods, which he is clearly also not on top of. He blandly asserts that a macroscopic quantum coherence (or “entanglement”) exists among the state (or “wave”) functions of the homoeopath, the patient and the homoeopathic dilution.
He fails to give a rigorous account of either the posited entanglement or its originating mechanism. Technically speaking, he neglects to list his gauge field assumptions and the Hamiltonian of the alleged system is conspicuously absent. Thus, there is no basis provided in the paper upon which one could properly evaluate the physical plausibility of the proposal. Moreover, an average second-year university physics student will spot these suspicious omissions without any trouble.
Unfortunately for
Milgrom, such a clear-cut case of abducting well-established physics for the purpose of preserving the preposterous does him no credit at all. Physicists have yet to observe macroscopic quantum coherence, except in the case of Bose-Einstein Condensates, which in any case can only exist at temperatures a tiny fraction above absolute zero (–273.15°C). One might be forgiven for thinking that such anxious dredging of inapplicable notions can only be symptomatic of the hopeless sham homoeopathy seems intent on relegating itself to.
'Luthon64
