"Michael Plant" > wrote in message
...
> [Sasha]
>> MENSA:
>> Mr. Serebrayakoff, the founder of MENSA was a countryman of mine and
>> harbored many negative elitist attitudes of people who consider IQ as a
>> substitute for knowledge and hard work.
>> After running away from my own country almost 20 years ago I felt the
>> understandable urge to "belong" and having my IQ tested for free at the
>> Church of Scientology in Stockholm (and run away from their recruiters) I
>> understood that this MENSA place may be a good place to meet people who
>> actually know something. Joined MENSA and alas... What a disappointment!
>> After several years of meetings all over CA, NV and even UT and later NY
>> and
>> NJ, I found nothing but a bunch of self-indulgent, mostly lazy,
>> overwhelmingly sloppy and unbelievably snotty crowd that just happened to
>> have some neurons in their brains wired in a peculiar way that allowed
>> them
>> to see questionable patterns in a very specific and completely useless
>> set
>> of exercises. Oh, wow!
>>
> [More Sasha]
>> Homeopathy -
>> From a point of view of what common people call "common sense" quantum
>> physics makes no sense either. "Common sense" has its areas of
>> application
>> and its gigantic failures as a mental tool.
>> My life and scientific experience proved that never should we mix
>> experiments and theories. Theories are just interesting pastimes.
>> Experiments are the core of science. Most of the medical treatments had
>> ridiculous explanations just before the end of 19th century. But medicine
>> was a very successful discipline despite that since antiquity and did its
>> job pretty well.
>> Jenner invented vaccines having no idea of mechanisms of immune response
>> and
>> was ridiculed for years for attempts to make a hybrid between people and
>> cows for years by people who used arguments very similar to yours.
>> I do not give a damn about homeopathic theories. I do not give a damn if
>> they are capable of understanding the causes and effects of their
>> treatments
>> as long as the treatments themselves show results and I saw that. I have
>> very little interest in so-called "peer reviews" that usually used to
>> validate science because I saw so often how "peers" jump out of their
>> pants
>> to prevent concurrent theories to see the light of day. One of the best
>> examples are these two guys, Marshall and Warren who got their Nobel
>> Prize
>> recently for proving that stomach ulcers is a bacterial disease and can
>> be
>> cured in HOURS!
>> For more than 20 years they were called quacks, their work pushed aside
>> and
>> their results questioned because they attempted to take away hundreds of
>> millions if not billions of dollars from gastroenterologists. I know some
>> of
>> these real quacks who even now resist the truth. Reading about their
>> tribulations and how their work "did not make sense" in the eyes of
>> gastroenterologists is a scary reading that is the best explanation I
>> know
>> why we still have no serious breakthroughs in cancer treatments. Peptic
>> ulcers is just some hundreds of millions of $$, cancer is tens of
>> billions
>> of dollars that can be potentially taken away from cancer surgeons!
>> So before you or my good friends Lew and Michael Plant express their
>> views
>> on homeopathy so cocky and easily, I suggest you exercise a little
>> caution.
>> All you do is to pre-judge something that may as well save your life one
>> day
>> as it did for countless patients. I knew a guy, who is a
>> gastroenterologist
>> himself and despite years of our mutual friend trying to convince him to
>> try
>> antibiotics on his own wife who had peptic ulcers, he, using 'common
>> sense"
>> dismissed the whole thing and her ulcers turned cancerous and she died.
>> His
>> words were "What do two crazy Aussies know about ulcers that I do not
>> know?"
>> Apparently a freaking lot.
>
> [Michael]
> OK, I Michael the Cocky here. Guilty as charged. I admit:
>
> 1) I've never read studies on the efficacy of homeopathy.
>
> 2) I've heard from possibly reliable sources that well
> designed and executed studies exist showing that the
> homeopathic effect surpasses the placibo effect.
>
> 3) I get high marks for glibness and do occasionally
> well with sarcasm. I also score high on lazy and sloppy.
> Happily, these qualities will never compromise the good
> name of MENSA since I have nothing but my wits to put
> on the table. I suffer from mediocrity.
>
> Nicely written and heart felt, Sasha. I enjoyed your
> post above, and I get it.
>
> Michael
>

Always happy to be helpful to my friends.

Sasha.