Page 18 - Winter 18

Sound Scientific Principles
by Ilse Pedler, UK
Over the last two months I have read hundreds of e-mails and letters and scientific reports and trial data and arguments both for and against homeopathy and have certainly gained a better appreciation of the place of homeopathy and other complementary therapies in the world.
I have read huge numbers of well-considered letters and articles but also many narrow minded and biased rants and insults.
In early December I went on a poetry weekend in the Lake District and participated in workshops led by 4 leading UK poets and as often happens in poetry workshops, an alchemy occurred between what you are being taught and what is currently in your consciousness. So here is one of the results; the workshop was on surrealism and absurdism in poetry by the amazing Hilda Sheehan and I had just read one of Mark Elliot’s letters and was struck by a particular phrase which I thought pinpointed exactly the mind-set differences between people open to ideas and challenges and those whose minds were closed.
So below is the poem which starts with the quote from Mark’s letter that prompted it. Bet you’ve never inspired a poem before Mark!
Not Mark Elliott
Sound Scientific Principles
The role of science is not to rationalise; it is to put forward questions and hypotheses and test them
The scientists put on their lab coats and returned to their experiments. They put their eyes in the pockets of their lab coats and looked at the evidence. Rationally, they agreed that what they saw could not be true. We must look at our methods they said, the eyes in the pockets of their lab coats blinked. We cannot explain these results, so they must be wrong. Then they took off their ears and they put those in the pockets of their lab coats too. They said, we have heard of other scientists who are excited by results such as these, who debate and hypothesise and question their findings. We do not understand why they do this. We will discard the results of these experiments and start again.
16