Wikipedian at War: Jimmy Wales Sets His Sights on Homeopathy
By Jessica Roy 1/31 5:29pm
(Photo: Blogger)
Homeopathy, an alternative form of medicine employed by free-spirited aunts everywhere, has just made a very potent enemy. On his newly-minted Quora blog, Wikipedia cofounder Jimmy Wales voiced his disapproval for the method, which has been systematically proven to be an ineffective pseudoscience.
While suffering from a cold, Mr. Wales asked a pharmacist in London to suggest a remedy. The pharmacist suggested Oscillococcinum, a French homeopathic remedy that he claimed would “disrupt the DNA of the virus before it could make [him] ill.” Unfortunately for this poor pharmacist, he had no idea who he was talking to.
Mr. Wales politely declined the recommendation and instead purchased some cough drops. But his hatred for homeopathy was reignited.
The flu, Mr. Wales argues, is a dangerous virus that kills people every year, and yet some people may eschew a life-saving vaccine in order to take homeopathic remedies that are falsely marketed as being effective. “What I want to know is this: why is this legal?” Mr. Wales wondered. “Or, if it is not legal, then what can be done about it?”
Since the Wikipedia cofounder is a little busy at the moment, he asked who he should contact to help fight the good fight against homeopathy. “This is not my primary area of interest and so I am not the right person to lead it myself,” he wrote. “But I would like to help.”
Mr. Wales is not alone: Many technologists, scientists, Singulatarians and skeptics have also voiced their anti-homeopathy stance. Last year, Singularity University’s VP of academics Vivek Wadha came under fire for allegedly spreading the dark art of “pseudoscience” when he let a homeopath speak to students.
(h/t Carl Franzen)
Jessica Roy is a reporter for Betabeat and the New York Observer. Follow Jessica on Twitter or via RSS. jroy@observer.com
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Gregory Kohs · Top Commenter · Founder at MyWikiBiz
Fascinating how neither Wales nor BetaBeat mention that Wales is a financial investor in Quora. So, click on through to Quora, everyone! And, if you ask a question that is the least bit critical of Jimmy Wales, Quora business developer Marc Bodnick will be there within minutes to delete your question and block your IP address from the site. “What I want to know is this: why is this legal?” -
Dana Ullman · Top Commenter · Writer/Publisher at Fan of Dana Ullman and Respect for Homeopathy
Wow…Jimmy Wales’ antagonism to homeopathy explains a LOT to me. I was prohibited (!) from editing any article on homeopathy on Wikipedia for the “crime” of editing under my REAL name. When some of the strong antagonists to homeopathy realized that I have written several books on homeopathy, they declared that I had a “conflict of interest.” Rather than respect me as an “expert” on the subject, they got enraged because I was citing and quoting references to the peer-review literature that showed the biological activity and clinical efficacy of homeopathic medicines. Even though it is COMMON for medical doctors to edit on medical subject, they are NEVER prohibited from doing so. Now, I understand that the effort to STOP me from editing the truly awful mis-information on homeopathy at Wikipedia came from “up high.” What a dirty dirty dog.-
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Dana Ullman · Top Commenter · Writer/Publisher at Fan of Dana Ullman and Respect for Homeopathy
Denial of evidence is evidence of an unscientific attitude…and thanx for providing evidence of your head-in-the-sand/mud. It was my links to studies from the Lancet, BMJ, Pediatrics, Chest, Rheumatology, and others that got me into “trouble.” Are you actually suggesting that these journals are homeopathic journals? -
Peter Winter· Top Commenter
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Good on Jimmy Wales, homeopathy is a ridiculous concept with no viable mechanism for its effectiveness and no evidence to support it’s claims. It doesn’t require any deep knowledge to grasp the concept that a bottle of water or a sugar pill with no active ingredients is, at best, a placebo, and at worse, outright fraud.
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Dana Ullman · Top Commenter · Writer/Publisher at Fan of Dana Ullman and Respect for Homeopathy
When people actually say that there is “no viable mechanism” for the efficacy of homeopathy, this statement simply shows their own ignorance. I’m attending a conference at this very moment at Cal Tech…with speakers that include the former chair of immunology at UCLA and a half-dozen others at a similarly high level. Keeping your head in the mud is not a healthy or good scientific attitude. -
No, you’re right. Keep my head in the mud isn’t healthy. What I’ll do is stick to experimentally derived evidence based medicine and not a bottle of what that, by the very rules of the universe, cannot contain anything else. Name dropping -former- immunologists doesn’t support your cause one iota. Would you like me to reel off the millions of doctors who rightfully class homeopathy as little more than a fraudulent attempt to get a piece of the very lucrative drugs industry?
Please, if you have, or know of, a viable mechanism for homeopathy, tell us all. Whilst you’re at it, publish your mechanism in a peer-reviewed journal and the evidence that supports it and I’ll be the first to congratulate you on not only disproving the collective knowledge of chemistry and biology, but the Nobel Prize you’d be guaranteed to earn from that.
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Peter Winter· Top Commenter
It’s simple. I won’t be using wikipedia anymore and now I wish I could get back the $30 I have sent them over the last three years. Mr Wales you are showing your true colours. By criticising methodologies you don’t comprehend simply puts you in the ignorant arrogance category.-
Eh, it’s pretty easy to comprehend something that’s basically “dilute in water until all active ingredient is gone and keep diluting”. Because apparently water has memory or something. And that doesn’t even help with oscillococcinum because it comes in pill form. And even if I didn’t comprehend it but the entirety of the scientific community said it worked or didn’t, that’d be good enough for me.Also, good luck with not using Wikipedia. I give it a week. At most.
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Homeopathy Heals · London, United Kingdom· 1,852 subscribers
We already know Jimmy Wales is anti-homeopathy, by the fact that every time an Expert in Homeopathy wanted to correct the lies in the Wikipedia entry about it, it was changed back immediately.
Although Wikipedia can be very helpful alot of the time, it is also being used as a tool of disinformation for the uninformed. Makes me wonder who put up the money for Wikipedia in the first place and how it gets to be No. 1 link on every subject in the search engines.-
Its fear and lack of knowledge that make people attack what they don’t understand
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Laurie DeFrain Stemm · Tampa, Florida
What happened to Free Will and allowing people to choose what is right from them?
Why are so many people invested in making it illegal when there is NO HARM TO YOU or OTHERS when I use Homeopathy to cure myself! Let me have my freedom of choice, stay out of my business and my life. For all that you care, I’ll just be one of those wackos that die off. I’m done trying to convince anybody of its effectiveness, I just want the opportunity to do what I believe is best for me- and I will continue to use Homeopathy for everything that ails me because it works… for me.-
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Christine Jahnig· Top Commenter
Nathan ScottNo matter how hard you try you can never ban the truth (about homeopathy or anything else). It has a way of persisting, spreading and being recognized for what it is.
You could never convince me, my friends or family that homeopathy either doesn’t work or works by placebo. I’ve had the very best healing from acute conditions, serious and chronic conditions and injuries anyone could hope to have. AND it came from homeopathic medicine alone. In fact, I could say without an iota of exaggeration that homeopathy is the greatest blessing I’ve ever had in my life.
My family and friends have tried it and recognize the healing it’s achieved for them. They’ve told their friends who told their families and friends who tried it and loved it. When someone tries a remedy and then asks “What is this stuff and where can I get it?”, well, that tells the whole story. It’s one of the reasons homeopathic use is growing at rates of 10% to 30% in countries around the world every year. If that isn’t enough, every month more and more studies (published in respected, peer-reviewed journals) prove it works and has biological effects.
We’ll all be using homeopathy and passing on the word for decades to come.
Sorry, you can’t ban the truth.
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Jackson Snellings · Instructional Designer at Hofstra Univ
Powerful placebo effect is powerful.
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Jerome Whitney · Lecturer at International Schools & Universities in London, England
“to hold any belief at all is to simultaneously disbelieve something else. To hold that something is true, another something must be untrue”. A truly critical objective person seeks the true in all positions and then develops working models in response knowing that even such conjecture will be subject to change in the future. -
With a rich history behind it, there’s no doubt that Homeopathy works. That’s why it still exists. The mechanism of action needs to be investigated at the lowest levels of matter(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Picotechnology). Researchers, scientists and well meaning persons like Jimmy Wales need to have an open mind to help understand how it works. Don’t hate Homeopathy just because so many others hate it. -
Christine Jahnig· Top Commenter
As far as the flu goes, Mr. Wales, I’ve used homeopathic Influenzinum for 14 years to prevent the flu. Up to this moment in the 2013 flu season I haven’t had a single symptom in all those years. Before I found homeopathy I was in bed with the flu and out of work for at least a week every other flu season. I can’t use the flu shot because I’m allergic to the base it’s in. It seems you’d rather that I (and many more people like me) got sick — even risked death — rather than use something that actually does prevent the flu (without doing harm). Your point of view doesn’t seem very humanitarian to me! -
Peter Winter· Top Commenter
As for wikipedia, it is becoming less and less relevant for my needs now. Stil it is a general starting point often enough, but it is never the end point. I may as well start jumping the starting point and heading straight for the more informative mid-range of info. It is somewhat against his image for Jimmy to be using his influence for a political agenda. Actually I probably should have sympathy for him, after all he has obviously sold his soul to ‘the man’. -
Dharmesh Bhadja · Homeopathic Consultant, MD at Niramay Homeopathic Clinic
It is like after attending bad lecture at school now I am blaming whole education system… Exaggerated reaction. -
Homeopathy Heals · London, United Kingdom· 1,852 subscribers
We already know Jimmy Wales is anti-homeopathy, by the fact that every time an Expert in Homeopathy wanted to correct the lies in the Wikipedia entry about it, it was changed back immediately.
Although Wikipedia can be very helpful alot of the time, it is also being used as a tool of disinformation for the uninformed. Makes me wonder who put up the money for Wikipedia in the first place and how it gets to be.
No. 1 link on every subject in the search engines. -
Peter Winter· Top Commenter
I’m into naturopathy more than homeopathy anyway but the underlying principles are the same, although the ying yang idea inherent in homeopathy is more advanced, more Eastern if you will. It is fine for people to suddenly condemn something they have never even tried, it is just a little too sheeple for me. After all, the steady media campaign against homeopathy is onviously influencing the minds of a number of you. Ever heard of making up your own mind?-
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Laurie DeFrain Stemm · Tampa, Florida
What happened to Free Will and allowing people to choose what is right from them?
Why are so many people invested in making it illegal when there is NO HARM TO YOU or OTHERS when I use Homeopathy to cure myself! Let me have my freedom of choice, stay out of my business and my life. For all that you care, I’ll just be one of those wackos that die off. I’m done trying to convince anybody of its effectiveness, I just want the opportunity to do what I believe is best for me- and I will continue to use Homeopathy for everything that ails me because it works… for me. -
Peter Winter· Top Commenter
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“systematically proven to be”.Words like “proven” aren’t thrown around lightly in science. Technically speaking, nothing is ever proven in science. It would have been better to say someting like “studies suggest that homeopathy is no more effective than an placebo.”
/nitpick
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Peter Winters. I see you and the people who “liked” your ignorance. Animosity is your false sense of “security”. Fyi, cover your profile better and watch that hand which types your lies. -
Spray and Speak Up! You had so much to say Chilly Winter. Would you like for me to post where you live and your contacts(check your lawyers you volunteeref this info)
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@ Peter. Comments please; Did you know (everyone that your “property” is public knowledge available at the office you pay taxes to)?
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@Peter Winter following Mike Adams on Facebook. Check your Facebook- you havea message from me that reads: Want your 30 bucks?
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Trying to give back.
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@Peter Winters. I’ll give you your money back. Just FB me. No catch. 30 bucks is worth you not posting ignorant things.
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“Go Whales”- Elephants say.
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