For the last few days, homeopaths have been enthusiastically sharing a picture of a newspaper report that appeared in Times of India titled as “new study sheds light on effectiveness of homeopathic medicines”. Newspaper report covers a research paper titled “unravelling the low-frequency triggered electromagnetic signatures in potentized homeopathic medicine” published in the journal “Material Science and Engineering 2023” ” by Hari N Bhargava and co-workers belonging to Advanced Materials and Processes Research Institute, Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh 462026, India, and Government Homeopathic Medical College and Hospital, Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh 462003, India.
I just downloaded the research paper and went through the whole article eagerly, to know what is this wonderful “new study shedding light on effectiveness of homeopathic medicines”, but was utterly disappointed to see that the work was nothing about “effectiveness of homeopathic medicines” as the journalist depicted in his report. According to researchers themselves, their work was actually about a “novel experimental tool” or device they developed to detect the responses of certain low potency METALLIC elemental and compound drugs when subjected to low-frequency generated electromagnetic fields. According to them, “the work presents a novel experimental tool for classifying various homeopathic medicines under a low-frequency generated electromagnetic (EM) fields”.
Study was conducted using various metallic elemental and compound drugs in very low homeopathic potencies ranging from 1x to 6x. Obviously due to their failure in scientifically differentiating pre-avogadro or molecular forms of drugs and post-avogadro or non-molecular forms of drugs, our researchers jumped into the conclusion that the result they got by studying very low potencies of simple metallic elemental and compound drugs could be applicable to ultra-high diluted drugs as well, and to all vegetable, animal and mineral drugs having highly complex molecular structures and properties, using the blanket term ‘homeopathic drugs”.
See what the researchers say what their work actually was: “In the present work, a simplified custom-built primary copper wire-based excitation coil was designed and developed to generate electromagnetic fields by the controlled input excitation current and voltage. The electromagnetic fields were generated at 300 Hz and 4.8 kHz excitation frequencies. Homeopathic medicines of various potencies were investigated under generated electromagnetic fields, and secondary sensing coil was used to capture induced electromagnetic fields from the test samples. The captured response signal from the sensing coil was analysed and processed by the spectrum analyser to characterize homeopathic test medicines. Significant changes in the response signal were detected to classify the lower and higher potencies of the same medicine.”
Please note, by “higher potencies”, they mean 6x potency only, as they are much “higher” than 1x potency! Anybody having minimum scientific understanding can easily realise that these “response signals” they could produce in the samples they used were actually due to the metallic particles naturally remaining in those low potency preparations, and it has nothing to do with “homeopathy” at all! It is a common basic knowledge of physics that any metallic substance will respond to electromagnetic fields!
“The potentized test samples were prepared at decimal dilution scale of Ferrum with α lactose monohydrate and exhibited significant and distinct induced EM responses in the second sensing coil. The measured responses decrease logarithmically due to reducing Ferrum concentration.”
Observation that “measured responses decrease logarithmatically due to reducing FERRUM concentration” obviously means that the “responses” was actually due to the presence of elemental ‘ferrum’ in the sample, and not due to any ‘dynamic energy’ produced by potentization.
Researchers say, “quite substantial changes were also measured from the different homeopathic medicines (Plumbum, Zincum, Argentum, etc.) of 3X potency, as in the case of Ferrum 3X.” “Homeopathic test medicines were prepared using insoluble original metallic substances such as calcium sulphate, potassium hydroxide, and metals like Ferrum Metallicum (Fe), Zincum Metallicum (ZM), Argentum Metallicum (AM), Alumina, Antim-Tart, and Plumbum Metallicum (PM).”
Kindly note, all samples they used were low potencies of metallic elemental and compound drugs, which will surely contain those particles, that will respond to electromagnetic fields. They did not use post-avogadro diluted drugs, complex vegetable or animal drugs, since they obviously knew their “new tool” will work only if metallic particles are present in the test samples!
Author’s claim that “present work proposes a system developed in-house capable of characterizing different potencies of homeopathic medicines” has to be rightfully modified as “present work proposes a system developed in-house capable of detecting the presence of elemental particles in different low potencies of homeopathic metallic medicines below avogadro limit”.
Do not miss to read this very truthful statement by researchers: “due to the highly diluted nature of homeopathic potency, the probability of finding even a single molecule of the starting source material in the final homeopathic solution (dilution ratio ~ 10-30) tends to zero, so it isn’t easy to detect electromagnetic wave or magnetic photon in such solutions. Therefore, the transfer phenomena of the medicinal information to the solution and the living organism are still unclear.”
Here the researchers agree that it is not possible to “detect electromagnetic wave or magnetic photons” in high dilution drugs which do not contain original drug particles. More over, they confess that in the case of highly diluted drugs, “transfer phenomena of the medicinal information to the solution and the living organism are still unclear!”
My greatest wonder is, how a homeopathy research team of such a respectable academic stature could claim their study has “shed light on effectiveness of homeopathic medicines” by studying the “induced responses” of “metallic elements and compounds” in 1x to 6x potencies in generated electromagnetic fields!
What I have to say humbly to the respected authors of this research is, you may be successful in fooling the science-starved homeopathy community with this kind of gimmicks and media-sponsored hypes, but it will not take homeopathy a single step forward in making it scientific, whereas, it will make homeopathy a little more vulnerable to humiliation and alienation from scientific community! Kindly try to avoid this kind of situations!
Chandran Nambiar KC
REDEFINING HOMEOPATHY
REDEFINING HOMEOPATHY 