Of Clathrates and Homeopaths

[malicious_bloke]

The other day, I was indulging in my hobby of poking homeopathy-advocates with the sciency stick and collecting all the little gems of wrongness that pop out, when all of a sudden something NEW (to me at least) appeared! I was shocked, to say the least.

I was thrown a link to this blog and solemnly informed that this was the final proof that an ultradilute solution (read water, water, water and more water with statistically *no* active ingredient left) retains a memory of its past solutes due to the formation of clathrate structures around molecules of solute.

Quite how a clathrate can form around the absense of a guest molecule isn't explained...sadly

 

[ShootMyMonkey]

I've seen the video where he talks about it, and he loads up on phoney-baloney jargon and throws in something about "hyperprotons" and homeopathic remedies being proven to be radioactive because they were captured on beta-scintillation film... Really? Really?

He seems to think that clathrates form when the solution is not really all that dilute and the succussion process sometimes causes clathrates which have the guest molecules to trigger the formation of other clathrates in a sort of nano-crystalloidal restructuring of the water molecules. As the solution becomes more dilute, the false clathrates dominate and cause the real clathrates to maintain their structure even after the guest molecule has been "knocked" free by succussion.