Homeopathic treatment for Divorce: voodoo flower essence

The concoction called Surprise Shock Divorce Combination essence I found here (http://rainfloweressence.com/Merchant5/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Store_Code=R&Category_Code=DHE) was tested by a friend at his lab's HPLC (High Pressure Liquid Chromatography) Releasing Divorce/ Loss Anger essence (http://www.alibaba.com/product-free/100905519/Chysanthemum_Flower_Extract_Herbal_Extract_Chrysanthemi.html) reveals chromatographs no different than the Shock Divorce essence above.

Homeopathy: a huge molecule of a funny flower

Using expedient generalization, I told the "doctor" about high molecular weight molecules having little chance of making it into the homeo dilutions, the "doctor', having no background in math or chemistry, conveniently abandoned the defense of the unique protein dilution, and stated that high dilutions which have no chance of retaining a single original molecule do preserve the memory of the molecule. I requested any scientific article showing experiments with water having memory. It is a very fair request: after all, scientists dedicated lifetimes to studying seemingly small, insignificant aspects of water's chemical properties. Surely, homeopathy should be basing its hydro-memory facts on years of research using at least atomic-, and ultraviolet- absorption, mass spectrometry gravity and high pressure liquid chromatography.

The homeodoctor quickly showed me to this passage "...succussion whereby the energetic blueprint or pattern of the substance is held in the remedy but without any of the original material." -no empirical data exists to substantiate this belief. from this site which is highly popular with patients. I offered a bait (a hypothetical scenario) that in the case of having to recover from mercury exposure, a patient would be given a dilution or succussion of mercury. The homeodoctor agreed(!) To which I offered that the succussion probably no longer contains a single ion (they forgot the existence of such) of mercury, and such a patient would be better off saving money and drinking municipal, (somewhat contaminated enough to contain sadi mercury) water from a kitchen faucet. He let out genuine laugh and grew thoughtful. QED. Enough said.

Homeopathy treats the individual rather than the disease so the range of conditions that can be helped is huge! Whilst a diagnosis can seem useful, in homeopathy it is rare that the same complaint is always treated with the same remedy

here is a good example:

A 30X ( 1:1000) dilution means that the original substance has been diluted 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 times. Assuming that a cubic centimeter of water contains 15 drops, this number is greater than the number of drops of water that would fill a container more than 50 times the size of the Earth. Imagine placing a drop of red dye into such a container so that it disperses evenly. Homeopathy's "law of infinitesimals" is the equivalent of saying that any drop of water subsequently removed from that container will possess an essence of redness. Robert L. Park, Ph.D., a prominent physicist who is executive director of The American Physical Society, has noted that since the least amount of a substance in a solution is one molecule, a 30C solution would have to have at least one molecule of the original substance dissolved in a minimum of 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 molecules of water. This would require a container more than 30,000,000,000 times the size of the Earth. Actually, the laws of chemistry state that there is a limit to the dilution that can be made without losing the original substance altogether. This limit, which is related to Avogadro's number, corresponds to homeopathic potency of 12C or 24X (1 part in 1024). Hahnemann himself realized that there is virtually no chance that even one molecule of original substance would remain after extreme dilutions. But he believed that the vigorous shaking or pulverizing with each step of dilution leaves behind a "spirit-like" essence—"no longer perceptible to the senses"—which cures by reviving the body's "vital force." Modern proponents assert that even when the last molecule is gone, a "memory" of the substance is retained. This notion is unsubstantiated. Moreover, if it were true, every substance encountered by a molecule of water might imprint an "essence" that could exert powerful (and unpredictable) medicinal effects when ingested by a person.

Skilled immigrants are returning to their native countries

The first article is from the 16 March 2009 edition of Business Week, page 68, by Vivek Wadhwa America's Immigrant Brain Drain. His discussion focuses mainly on Chinese and Indian skilled immigrants, and their reasons for returning to their native countries are simple - better quality of life (even at a lower average pay), better career prospects (China is figuring out how much it will grow this year, not whether it will grow or fall, and growth creates careers), and the comfort of family and friends. Immigrants have started 52% of Silicon Valley's tech companies, and get many of the Masters and PhDs awarded in science and engineering. And demand for their skills is growing in their home countries. So why can this be bad for America's economy? The ominous portend of this trend is discussed in the second article that appears in the March 7th edition of the Economist, in an article on page 84 Give my your scientists ... - restricting the immigration of highly skilled workers will hurt America's ability to innovate. A few paragraphs that make use of patent data in an interesting way:

Addressing these issues requires data on just how inventive immigrants are, a question that until recently was the province of educated guesswork. But William Kerr, an economist at Harvard Business School, used name-matching software to identify the ethnicity of each of the 8 million scientists who had acquired an American patent since 1975. He found that the share of patents awarded to scientists born in America fell between 1975 and 2004. The share of all patents given to scientists of Chinese and Indian descent living in America more than tripled, from 4.1% in the second half of the 1970s to 13.9% in the years between 2000 and 2004. Nearly 40% of patents filed in 2005 by Intel, a silicon chip maker, were for work done by people of Chinese or Indian origin. Some of these patents may have been awarded to American-born children of earlier immigrants, but Mr. Kerr reckons that most changes over time arise from fresh immigration. What of the criticism that these workers are displacing native scientists who would have been just as inventive? To address this, Mr. Kerr and William Lincoln, an economist at the University of Michigan, used data on how patents responded to periodic changes in the number of H1B entrants. If immigrants were merely displacing natives, increases in the H1B quota should not have let to increases in innovation. But Kerr and Lincoln found that when the federal government increased the number of people allowed in under the program by 10%, total patenting increased by around 2% in the short run. This was driven mainly by more patenting by immigrant scientists. But even patenting by native scientists increased slightly, rather than decreasing as proponents of crowding out would have predicted