Nano is the new nothing
November 13th, 2007
*** Numbers in this post are liable to change. Homeopathic maths is tough! Thanks to all the eagle-eyed readers out there who’ve corrected my sloppy zeroes. ***
Author Jeanette Winterson, who you may remember from such “magical realist” novels as Sexing the Cherry, is busy defending homeopathy in the Guardian today. Her article will get ripped to shreds by a thousand bloggers, so I’ll just concentrate on one aspect that I found vaguely humorous. Says Jeanette:
Objections to homeopathy begin with what are viewed as the impossible dilutions of the remedies, so that only nano amounts of the original active substance remain, and in some cases are only an imprint, or memory… …Such particles are also able to pass through cell walls, and they can cause biochemical change.
Oh Jeanie, if only this were the case with homeopathy. Let’s leave aside the ridiculous notion of water having a “memory” (you have to wonder, if you split the water into two bottles, which bottle will the memory live in?). Let’s look instead at that word nano. This doesn’t mean “very small”, it means “one billionth”, or in math terminology 10-9. A typical homeopathic remedy is 30C. This means it has been diluted down so that it is one part active substance mixed with 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
-000,000,000 parts water.
Nano = 10-9
Homeopathic = 100-30 or 10-60
This means that a “nano” solution, if you want to call it that, is one billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion (1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) times stronger than a homeopathic solution.
Interestingly, a 10-23 solution is likely to only have only one poor, lonely, molecule of active ingredient left. Therefore a standard 30C solution has only a 0.0000000000000000000000000000000000001% chance of having a single molecule of active ingredient.
It’s not just Jeanette who’s confusing “homeopathic” with “nano” – here’s Dana Ullman, who thinks that homeopathy is “nanopharmacology”. Very Small Pharma being obviously better for you than Big Pharma. Yuk yuk.
To conclude: homeopathic measurements are not nano. They are non-existent. Yet another example of homeopaths adopting scientific phrases and getting them all confused, like the cargo cult they are.
Entry Filed under: General
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12 Comments
1. Rich | November 13th, 2007 at 12:08 pm
Isn’t nano 10-9?
2. Rich | November 13th, 2007 at 12:08 pm
“Ten to the minus nine” – you know what I mean… :-)
3. Tony Finch | November 13th, 2007 at 12:18 pm
I’d like to know how homeopaths wash their equipment.
4. Frank the SciencePunk | November 13th, 2007 at 12:35 pm
Whoops, yes, a systematic typo on my part, sorry!
There’s bound to be some more zeroes out place, 50pts for each you find.
I’ve actually been thinking about this one. Namely, the water they use to prepare a 30C solution is likely only to be pure to about 20C (that’s a wild guess, BTW). Certainly in homeopathic preparations, the contaminants are always present in the greater concentrations than the “active” ingredient.
5. manigen | November 13th, 2007 at 5:14 pm
Hang on, shouldn’t that be 0.00001%?
6. Danny Chrastina | November 13th, 2007 at 6:32 pm
1C means 1 part per 100, or 1e-2. So 30C is actually 1e-60. “Pure” 18 megohm deionized water has impurities at the level of 30 parts per billion, which would be about 4C. See http://www.resysinc.com/QuestionAnswer.htm
7. Frank the SciencePunk | November 13th, 2007 at 6:52 pm
No freaking way! Homeopaths are insane. I don’t think I have blog space for that many zeroes. I thought a C was a .1 dilution and an X was a .01 dilution.
I knew all the numbers on this post would be wrong. Homeopathic mathematics is worse than calculus.
8. coracle | November 13th, 2007 at 9:27 pm
re washing kit, I think the argument is probably that Homeopathy is down to the shaking so washing with dirty (18 MOhm) water wouldn’t have any effect. Probably depends on the flavour of homeopathy that you favour though, Hahnemania vs Kentopathy may disagree.
On the other hand, wasn’t there something about if your supplies were running out, you could just rinse out your container for more supplies?
9. Danny Chrastina | November 13th, 2007 at 10:06 pm
Regarding shaking, there are those who point to cavitation – the formation and collapse of tiny bubbles – as the mechanism by which something or other is supposed to happen. But you get cavitation when you open a tap a little bit. It makes that hissing sound. A kettle which is just about to boil also does it. So water going through a tap or valve somewhere is probably being succussed.
The Korsakovian dilution method just involves filling and emptying the same phial over and over again. See the “high potencies” section at Helios, or read about LM.
I get the impression that homeopaths behave as if somehow the homeopathic preparation is supposed to know which symptom the practitioner has in mind and not have any other effects, positive or negative, on anything else.
10. HJ | November 18th, 2007 at 5:08 pm
“Very Small Pharma being obviously better for you than Big Pharma”
Gold, absolute gold.
11. HJ | November 18th, 2007 at 5:09 pm
Your link for DUllman m/h comes as an error, just fyi.
12. Frank the SciencePunk | November 18th, 2007 at 5:37 pm
Cheers, HJ – link is fixed.
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