AN EMAIL from Andrew Rankine raises concerns about Dr Frankâs Pet Pain Spray, a homeopathic treatment for cats and dogs suffering from arthritis. It set us ferreting around, and we soon found a on James Randiâs quack-busting website. Here we came across a notion that hadnât previously occurred to us, despite it being so obvious. Perhaps homeopathic treatments for animals are said to âworkâ not because the animals report feeling better â how could they? â but because their owners and the homeopaths who treat them report that they are better. Itâs the placebo effect again, but the effect is vicarious, working on the owners and homeopathic veterinarians, not the animals.
By way of an anecdotal example, a link on the Randi site takes us to a on the website of the wonderfully named . Here âa veterinary surgeon from East Sussexâ reports on a client who brought in a dog with a skin problem, but who refused to allow the vet to do the requisite tests. Instead, he announced he was âoff to see the local homeopathâ. A couple of months later he returned with the dog, saying: âI just wanted to let you see what a brilliant job the homeopath did when you were completely useless.â
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The vet comments: âWhat could I say? The dog stood there, to my eyes actually slightly worse than it had been on the day Iâd last seen it. Frankly, it looked just awful. But in the ownerâs eyes there had been a massive improvement. I think this is how homoeopathy âworksâ in quite a lot of cases. Somebody wants to believe the animal is better, so it is better.â
There is, however, a further possibility which is raised by one of the contributors to the Randi discussion. If the owner is happy because they believe a homeopathic treatment has made their dog better, then perhaps their happiness will make the dog feel happier too â and as the vicarious placebo effects bounce back and forth, perhaps all this happiness will assist the dogâs recovery from the condition it is being treated for. So perhaps homeopathy for pets can sometimes âworkâ after all.
HERE is a Large Hadron Collider story that slipped though our files at the time of the colliderâs activation at CERN last month but has surfaced again. Marylin Ennis tells us she was inspired by an old 51¶ŻÂț story about people placing bets on whether the LHC would find the Higgs boson when it went into operation (New51¶ŻÂț.com news service, 26 August 2004). She phoned Ladbrokes betting office in Belfast, UK, and asked, âDo you take unusual bets?â
âYes, love, what is it?â
âThere is a big experiment going to take place soon in Switzerland and I want to place a bet on the Higgs boson being found at the LHC at CERN.â
âA what?â
âOh dear, its hard to explain.â
âIs it a horse?â
âNo itâs a particle. Itâs really small.â
âLove, I donât know what youâre talking about, you need to phone head office in London.â
Sadly, after three days of Marylinâs enquiries, Ladbrokes declined to take the bet. But she says there is now a hot tip circulating in Belfast for Higgs Boson running in the 3.30 at Cern.
STILL on the LHC, Deborah Sutcliffe of the Artemisia research group has sent us a photo of a Large Hadron Collider cake (see photo, right). She baked it on the understanding that if people and cakes were still in existence in the evening of the day the LHC was switched on, she and her colleagues would eat it. In the event, all was well and they had cake for dinner.
The photo of the cake shows that it was decorated with what look to us like marzipan balls but which Deborah assures us are protons. âThe thing among the protons,â she says of what we thought was a small kitsch model of a deer, âis, of course, a Higgs boson.â
âOn the side of Chris Hopeâs bottle of Hook Norton Haymaker Pale Ale it says: âWhere progress is measured in pints â Volume 500 mlââ
You can see the photo of the cake by enlarging the image, above right.
LAST on this topic, Philip Welsby writes to tell us that no one noticed that the universe branched in two when the LHC went into operation on 10 September. Luckily, he says, âwe were in the universe that continuedâ rather than in the one that got swallowed up by a black hole.
FINALLY, something completely different: Krys Modrzewski tells us that on a recent trip to India he came across the Touchwood Aviation Academy in Raipur, Chattisgarh. He checked on the internet and so did we â and, yes, it is real, and they do train pilots there, no doubt always hoping for the best.
