When Geeks Marry Hippies II

Last summer, we visited my father-in-law and assorted members of Dr. H's family. This included his sister (SIL), a self-described hippie, her husband (BIL), a geek with hippieish tendencies acquired by marriage, and their two children. Dr. H. is a full-time geek and part-time hippie. Dalton and Curie were both super fussy before bedtime. SIL and her husband inquired as to what the problem might be, hoping to help.

"It's teething" I announce sadly.

"We have homeopathic teething tablets!" SIL says cheerfully.

Uh Oh. Dr. H. looks at me, presumably willing me not to speak.

Shockingly, I can't help myself.

"We don't do homeopathy. As a physchembio-ist, I can't possibly." I say.

"What do you mean?" SIL asks.

"Look, I really don't want to get into this. I understand that some have proposed theories that get around the Avogadro's Number problem, but I don't find any of them credible." I say. "I gave them acetaminophen."

This statement turns out to be problematic, because I've assumed SIL and BIL know about the Avogadro's Number problem, a fundamental flaw of Homeopathy. Instead of discussing the Avogadro problem, I have jumped ahead and begun criticizing the alternative theories developed by homeopaths to get around Avogadro. At this point, I am assuming that SIL and BIL have heard of these also. It turns out that SIL and BIL do not know about the Avogadro's Number problem, just as most other people have not. In fact, most people have not heard of the assumptions that underlie homeopathy in the first place. SIL and BIL are aware of these assumptions, just not the Avogadro problem.

Unfortunately, I do not yet realize this, so I begin to explain why one of the Avogadro problem work-arounds doesn't hold water. One mention of vibrations of water molecules and I've convinced them I know nothing about the topic at hand.

"That's not what homeopathy is." SIL says, patiently.

At this point a few sentences of clarification are exchanged. However, things are still messy because I jumped into the argument in the wrong place, and everyone is talking at once. Fortunately, BIL is quite good at negotiating such conversations and getting everyone onto the same point. "As I understand it" says BIL, "the idea is that you choose some ingredient that may have negative effects similar to those you are experiencing. Next, you dilute it heavily. At the high dilution, it no longer has the harmful effects, but your body still recognizes its presence, and reacts to it."

"I understand that, but what I'm saying is that most remedies are diluted so heavily there are no molecules/ions of the original substance left. Or more correctly, only a very, very small chance your particular dilution has one."

SIL says, "I agree that would be a problem."

I breathe a sigh of relief that we agree on this last point. We leave it more or less at this point. SIL believes there must be more to this story, and thinks, perhaps I am getting something mixed up.

Several weeks later, I politely send them the article by Bob Park linked above.

They use other remedies for teething now.

Last fall, my Physchembio for Poets class and I went through the calculations for a 30X homeopathic dilution. They looked at the numbers. I said nothing. They looked at each other. I looked at them. One of them finally said "So, it's just water?" This is exactly why I like teaching general education classes.


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By way of explanation: I had to wait for 15 minutes to pick up a prescription yesterday and was trapped near the homeopathy aisle, thus provoking this rant.